Michael Cieply: ‘Hollywoodland’ And The Jews, A Museum Exhibit We Could Use Right Now

Michael Cieply
·3 min read

Is it too early for a New Year’s wish? Well, I’m going to make one anyway.

I wish the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures would hurry up its long-promised Hollywoodland exhibition.

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Officially titled Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital, the exhibit is intended, finally, to recognize that Jews—especially immigrants among them—did more than a little to establish the movie business in Los Angeles, beginning more than a century ago. It is scheduled to open on Sunday, May 19, 2024, and is said on the museum’s website to be the institution’s “first and only permanent exhibition.”

Many observers thought something like this would be part of the package when the Academy Museum first opened, back in September of 2021. It would seem impossible to tell the story of the film business without paying special tribute to the thousands of Jewish executives, filmmakers, and stars who helped to build the studios here. That history still lingers, from the Thalberg Building in Culver City, to the site of Salka Viertel’s salon in Santa Monica Canyon, to the remnants of Poverty Row on Gower and wherever.

But it took time, and a certain amount of pressure from museum donors before the staff got things into focus. “We never had any desire to exclude or not represent the Jewish founders,” Bill Kramer, formerly the museum president and now chief executive of the film Academy, explained to The Forward, which had noted the cultural oversight early on.  “We long planned on having a temporary exhibit highlighting them but are now going to make it permanent.”

Which is grand—or would be, if only that exhibit were in place now, as Jews here, as elsewhere, are facing physical assault, vandalism, synagogue SWAT-ings and hostile protests following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and an ensuing response. It would be a welcome reminder that Jews—many of them poor, and as oppressed in their homelands as any victim group today—often created the films that made you laugh, cry, wonder and feel glad to be alive.

But things move slowly in the museum world.  As of last Monday, there was still no sign of Hollywoodland at the Academy Museum—only a lot of clutter as Netflix prepped for its Maestro premiere, and some giggles and chatter as a busload of school kids were turned away from the scatological, blasphemous and sexually kaleidoscopic John Waters: Pope of Trash installation. (It’s pretty rough; I walked out on the sizzle reel when it got down and dirty with dog poop.)

Down in the gift shop, there was a small Hanukkah display. A book about Jewish comedians, some Adam Sandler greeting cards. But not much.

So I wish they’d hurry it up. Maybe drop a promo into the March 10 Oscar show, or throw up an early billboard or two. We need some Hollywoodland—an overdue thought for the Jews—right now.

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