Language of Film Storyboarding the American Dream:
Jews and the History of Hollywood
Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Bryn Mawr Film Institute
Learn how the Jewish identity of the industry’s prominent moguls was a key ingredient in how Hollywood formed, developed and flourished in the first half of the 20th century. It is no coincidence that it was a small group of Eastern European immigrants (with names like Zukor and Mayer) and first-generation Americans (with names like Warner and Cohn) who took the movies from being dismissed as a fad and a petty amusement to being hailed as a major art form and a mighty industry.
This presentation is part of Andrew Douglas's Language of Film series.
Andrew J. Douglas
Andrew J. Douglas
Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., is the deputy director at Bryn Mawr Film Institute (BMFI), a nonprofit film center outside Philadelphia. Previously, he was BMFI’s founding director of education, having joined the organization in July 2005, four months after its opening. He also educates thousands of students about film each year through classroom visits and during field trips to BMFI, and he presents film lectures and programs to thousands of adults at a range of institutions and organizations in the region.
Douglas has spoken at several colleges and universities, including Bryn Mawr, Penn State, Muhlenberg, Johns Hopkins and Yale. He has also been invited to give talks before a few of Philadelphia’s artistic and cultural organizations, including University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Institute of Contemporary Art and The Philadelphia Orchestra. In addition, he has taught classes in partnership with the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Douglas greatly enjoys the films of Alfred Hitchcock, David Fincher, David Mamet and Michael Mann, and he counts among his all-time favorites The Awful Truth (1937), Strangers on a Train (1951), The Untouchables (1987), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), The Fugitive (1993) and The Social Network (2010). He has held a real Oscar, been used as an excuse for his grandmother to meet Robert Redford and was dressed down by Harrison Ford, whom Douglas still thinks is America’s greatest living movie star.
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