The message of the trip was clear: go home and bear witness to these atrocities, and for a time newsreels did carry graphic images of bulldozers burying bodies at Bergen-Belsen, an image that would be etched in the collective memory of a generation of people. 'It felt to us like a seminal moment,' says Anker who uncovered documents in the personal files of Jack Warner at USC.

One of the revelations of the film is newsreel footage of thirteen studio moguls visiting the concentration camps immediately after the war at the invitation of General Eisenhower. Director Sidney Lumet in a moving interview recalls attending the premiere of THE GREAT DICTATOR in New York and how surprised he was to hear the word 'Jew' in an American film for the first time. But the most realistic portrayals of the time came from B films such as Columbia Pictures' NONE SHALL ESCAPE (1944) or a rare independent film like Charlie Chaplin's self-financed THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940). IMAGINARY WITNESS shows clips from Warner Brothers' CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (1938), the first of several anti-Nazi features produced by the studios (no actor would agree to play Hitler so the part had to be written out of the movie) and MORTAL STORM, a brave and poignant 1940 MGM film starring Jimmy Stewart.

Hollywood did not totally bury its head in the sand. Many joined the Anti-Nazi League, represented in rare footage of Melvyn Douglas reading a manifesto with James Cagney, Bette Davis, Myrna Loy and others looking on. Yet outside of the films they made, some were outspoken. As the film notes, the studio moguls, who were themselves immigrants, did not want to call attention to their Jewishness and run the risk of having their allegiance to America questioned. And Hollywood was complicit when, in the late '30s, Germany asked that all Jewish studio employees in the country be fired. Newsreel footage from the time, produced by the major studios, is particularly uncritical. The role of Hollywood in the debate about America's responsibility during the early days of Nazism may be new to some people.'Īpparently in the late '20s, ten percent of Hollywood's grosses were earned in Germany, so no one was anxious to look too closely at what was happening there.

Why, for instance, was Hollywood largely silent as the Nazis rose to power in the '30s? 'I think we offer a new perspective,' says Anker, ' at least with regard to America's alleged complicity in the early years. Even for viewers who think they know everything there is to know about the Holocaust, IMAGINARY WITNESS: HOLLYWOOD AND THE HOLOCAUST will still offer some surprises.

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