Hollywood 
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SOURCE: Times of Israel
1/18/2021
Outcry over Sparse Representation of Jews in Movie History at New Academy Museum in Hollywood
The contributions of Jewish pioneers of film seem oddly invisible in the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures; some prominent donors hope this changes.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
11/7/2021
The Academy Museum Ignores Hollywood Labor History
by Andy Lewis
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was originally established to help studios negotiate contracts with the studio unions. Today, the on-set tragedy in New Mexico reminds that film production is an industry and workers make it run. The Academy Museum misses that part of the story.
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SOURCE: Forward
10/14/2021
Is the Academy's New Museum Neglecting the Jewish Pioneers of Hollywood?
"After touring the museum’s seven stories, I discovered that Hollywood’s pioneers, who busted their tucheses building the industry it celebrates, ended up on the cutting room floor."
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10/17/2021
Passing Time and the Challenge of Catching "Eyewitnesses to History"
by Thomas Doherty
Historians have only recently wised up to the need to capture eyewitness remembrances of events. As the "Greatest Generation" passes and the Baby Boomers age, a cultural historian urges: talk to people while you still can.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
9/13/2021
"Negotiated Authenticity" and the Precarious Position of Black Creators in Television History
"Since its invention, television has shaped this country’s self-image. To the extent that we share notions of “normal,” “acceptable,” “funny,” “wrong,” and even “American,” television has helped define them. For decades, Black writers were shut out of the rooms in which those notions were scripted."
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SOURCE: Jacobin
9/1/2021
Socialist Actor Ed Asner Fought for Labor
by Jeff Schuhrke
Ed Asner fought for the representation of small-time actors in the Screen Actors Guild and protested American support for right-wing autocrats in Central America.
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SOURCE: Deadline
7/31/2021
Elephant Statues Commemorating D.W. Griffith Removed from Hollywood and Highland Plaza
The statues were an homage to Griffith's film "Intolerance," widely seen as a rebuke of the NAACP and other critics who denounced the racism of his prior pro-KKK film "Birth of a Nation."
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
6/20/2021
"Burn This Letter Please": A Drag Queen's Letters to Hollywood Agent are a Key Source For LGBTQ History
"Collectively, the letters painted a vivid portrait of an intimate existence among a tight group of friends in the late 1950s and early ’60s in New York."
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
3/11/2021
How to Think About Classic Hollywood’s “Problematic” Movies
by Richard Brody
Critic Richard Brody asks whether efforts to put problematic Hollywood movies into context is adequate; there is a systematic lack of attention to characters of color in classic Hollywood that is much tougher to fix.
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SOURCE: Bright Lights Film Journal
2/23/2021
A Star Is Shorn: Thanks to Woefully Underinformed Campus Activists, Acting Legend, Badger Alum, and Civil Rights Champion Fredric March Is Suddenly “Off Wisconsin”
by George Gonis
In 2018, the University of Wisconsin stripped actor Fredric March's name from a campus theater because of his brief affiliation in 1919 with a campus society called the Honorary Ku Klux Klan. The author argues that this misconstrues the nature of the society, which was not affiliated with the "Invisible Empire" KKK, and erases March's steadfast support for civil rights and opposition to Nazism.
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SOURCE: Medium
12/9/2020
The Other ‘Mank’: Joe Mankiewicz and the Wildest Night in Hollywood History
by Greg Mitchell
The Netflix film "Mank" provides an opportunity to remember the civil liberties stand taken by Frank Mankiewicz's brother Joe, who opposed the imposition of loyalty oaths on the Directors' Guild at the height of the postwar red scare.
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SOURCE: USA Today
12/5/2020
Historians Fact-Check 'Mank': Who Really Wrote 'Citizen Kane?' And Does 'Rosebud' Have A Hidden Meaning?
Film historians suggest the new Netflix drama overstates Frank Mankiewicz's influence over the final form of "Citizen Kane" and takes some other liberties with the facts.
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SOURCE: KERA
9/14/2020
Hollywood’s Colorblind Illusion (audio)
American Studies professor Justin Gomer, author of "White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights" discusses the political impact of Hollywood's treatment of race.
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9/13/2020
Native Actors Outside the Frame
by Liza Black
Liza Black's new book traces the lives of prominent and anonymous Native actors, examinng the way that Hollywood films exploited their labor and images while spinning narratives that justified the historical conquest of Native lands.
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SOURCE: NPR
8/6/2020
'And The World Went Crazy': How Hollywood Changed After Hiroshima
Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s wrestled with the idea of a planet without humanity. After "Dr. Strangelove" satirized any effort to treat nuclear war seriously on the big screen, Hollywood viewed the bomb through schlock and horror, until the 1980s revival of sentiment for disarmament and "The Day After."
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/12/2020
In Netflix’s ‘Hollywood,’ One Movie Fixes Racism. Hooray!
Ryan Murphy’s revisionist series is laughably self-satisfied and willfully naïve about complex real-world problems. I also kind of enjoyed it.
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8/11/19
The Cultural History Behind Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
by David L. O'Connor
Like most folktales, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is filled with interesting characters, events, and messages from a bygone era.
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4/14/19
When Women Ran Hollywood
by Juliette Fay
Their names may no longer be widely recognizable, but women built and ran early Hollywood, shaped the industry in myriad ways, and influenced what we see on the silver screen even today.
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SOURCE: NPR
1/5/19
Lois Weber, Hollywood's Forgotten Early Pioneer, Has 2 Films Restored
As Hollywood continues to struggle with the underrepresentation of women behind the camera, most people have forgotten that 100 years ago, one woman ruled.
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SOURCE: The Washington Post
3-10-18
In Winston Churchill, Hollywood rewards a mass murderer
by Shashi Tharoor
Words, in the end, are all that Churchill admirers can point to. His actions are another matter altogether.