“Something better than death”

	Helmut Asper’s book tells the story of the Hollywood exiles—in German.

On January 30, 1933 Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany. Most of the Jewish people then working in Germany’s film industry wisely took the Nazi takeover as a signal that it was time for them to get out of Germany. (Others, less wise or less fortunate, died in concentration camps.) Many of the cinema refugees (not all of them Jewish) first went to neighboring France, Austria, or other parts of Europe, including Italy. But such places offered only temporary protection from the Nazi danger. The desired final destination for most was Hollywood.

For some of the emigrés Hollywood became the high point of their career; for others it proved to be a place that offered only “something better than death” (“etwas Besseres als den Tod”). For example, actors Paul Henreid and Peter Lorre, plus directors Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang became very successful and well known in Hollywood. But for every big name among the exiles there are dozens of others that even few film historians would recognize today.

Unlike director Fritz Lang, very few of the Hitler refugees in Hollywood became famous enough to earn a star. PHOTO © Hyde Flippo

Estimates range from about 1,500 to 2,000 film people from Austria and Germany who were driven out of the German film centers in Berlin and Munich. Within months of the 1933 Nazi takeover, Germany’s Ufa studio was responding to political pressure by terminating the contracts of Jewish employees, including the respected producer Erich Pommer. After 1933 this talented diaspora spread out all over the globe, but no less than 800 of these refugees ended up in Hollywood. Very few of them were able to gain fame and fortune in California. Some were even reduced at times to driving cabs or running restaurants in order to survive, but all of them made some contribution to “American” cinema from the 1930s into the 1950s and beyond.

All of the newly arrived German-speaking film people faced a wide range of problems in their new homeland. Besides the obvious language difficulties, they faced many cultural differences and the loss of business connections. The greatest culture shock of all arose from the differences in the way the two studio systems worked. Most of the newly arrived European exiles found it difficult to work within the American studio system with its rigid economic and contractual restraints.

None of the Hitler refugees had an easy time of it, but perhaps the film music composers had the easiest adjustment, being able to speak the universal language of music. On the other hand, most of the actors had a German accent that limited the type of roles they could play in Hollywood. But even film directors or cameramen who had been at the top of their field in Germany had no assurances of getting a similar position with a Hollywood studio. Many a skilled director or cinematographer had to take a job as an assistant or some other lower-ranking position in the American film capital. Of course, many of the film people who arrived in Hollywood after 1933 had far less glamorous jobs behind the scenes. They worked as set designers, choreographers, makeup artists, producers, agents, technicians, writers, and in the numerous other fields of endeavor related to film production.

Some of the exiled Austrians and Germans in Hollywood (Filmexilanten in German) returned to their homelands after the war, but many became U.S. citizens and remained in their adopted homeland for the rest of their lives. You can learn more about many of the 1933 Filmexilanten and others here at the German-Hollywood Connection.

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Copyright © 2005 Hyde Flippo