The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is unveiling the details of its exhibit, “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,” that opens on May 19.
The exhibit, which will be the Los Angeles museum’s first permanent installation, comes after criticism that the Jewish executives and creatives who built Hollywood were not prominently featured among the Academy’s splashy exhibits after its 2021 opening.
Presented in English and Spanish, the exhibit will tell the origin story of early 20th century filmmaking in Los Angeles, with a focus on the impact of the predominantly Jewish filmmakers who created the studio system.
Neal Gabler, author of “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood” is an advisor for the exhibition, which is curated by Dara Jaffe, associate curator, with support from Gary Dauphin, former associate curator of digital presentations, and Josue L. Lopez, research assistant.
“The American film industry began developing amid an influx of immigration to the United States by Jewish émigrés escaping European pogroms and poverty,” said Jaffe. “Most of Hollywood’s founders were among this wave of Jewish immigrants and recognized that the infant movie business presented an opportunity to raise their marginalized status in an industry that didn’t enforce the same antisemitic barriers as many other professions. Hollywoodland also posits the question: how and why did Los Angeles bloom into a world-renowned cinema capital? The goal of our exhibition is to show the inextricable dovetailing of these histories.”
“We are so proud to bring this foundational story of American filmmaking to the museum as a permanent exhibition,” said Academy Museum director and president, Jacqueline Stewart. “The stories told in Hollywoodland bring the intertwined histories of Los Angeles and the Hollywood studio system to life and resonate with stories of immigrants from around the world.”
Two public programs on opening day will include a book signing with Gabler and a curator conversation with Jaffe, moderated by Stewart.
Located in the Laika gallery, the immersive exhibition covers the beginnings of Hollywood in three parts: Studio Origins; Los Angeles: From Film Frontier to Industry Town; and From the Shetl to the Studio: The Jewish Story of Hollywood, a short documentary narrated by TCM host and author Ben Mankiewicz. “The film examines how antisemitism shaped the founders’ trajectories throughout their careers and how their projected vision of an immigrant’s American Dream came to define America itself on movie screens around the world,” the museum’s statement explained.
The Los Angeles history portion will also address lesser-known stories of independent producers active in early 1900s Los Angeles, focusing on events from 1902–1929. This section includes an animated tabletop map of Los Angeles and projection screen, featuring a timeline relevant to the city’s early film industry, such as filming locations, studio locations, and cultural landmarks.
