The Hollywood Temple Beth El Movie Theater

The Hollywood Temple Beth El Movie Theater:

So many of the members and leaders of Hollywood Temple Beth El were critical figures in the entertainment industry formt he early years until recent times, that we call this section our "Movie Theater". Below you will find clips from films produced, directed, or acted in, by members of Hollywood Temple Beth El, with blockbusters like: Casablanca, The Jazz Singer, The Wizard of Oz, and more!

The Warner Bros

The history of Warner Brothers Pictures sounds like a glittery immigrant success story, but it also includes a significant episode of resistance to the same kind of persecution that the family had once fled, as the anti-Semitism of fascist Europe established a foothold in the U.S. and Hollywood censors started to answer to Joseph Goebbels. “Driven by a personal knowledge of anti-Semitism,” Jack and Harry Warner became “deeply concerned about the rise of Nazism” in the 1930s, as PBS’s History Detectives notes, “and they used their studio to speak out against fascism.”

1939’s Edward G. Robinson-starring Confessions of a Nazi Spy, whose trailer you can see below, is widely “considered the first film to feature Nazis as the enemy,” preceding other PCA-defiant films like Three Stooges’ short You Nazty Spy! and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, both released in 1940.

https://www.openculture.com/2018/07/warner-brothers-resisted-hollywood-ban-anti-nazi-films-1930s-warned-americans-dangers-fascism.html

Watch the Trailer

Confessions of a Nazi Spy Trailer 

https://youtu.be/S4tkNhyQofc?si=m-malKApo-COy8Rh

It was the Warner Bros that also produced the first movie with singing and dialogue, The Jazz Singer. It is of note that this movie had the decidedly Jewish theme of a Cantor’s son, on Yom Kippur, playing in blackface, marking the overlap of white, Jewish and black identities in a culturally shifting America. 

The Jazz Singer

https://youtu.be/HgwI_nRFJ2I?si=Owc_8t5zCueCoSZW

Michael Curtiz 

Directed this Austrian Silent film before he came to Hollywood

MOON OF ISRAEL (1924) an Austrian film of the Exodus

https://youtu.be/ZKv8205oPRA?si=AhYF0NcWFco6m0Lf

and,then,  together with Hal Wallis, made the great historic film:

Casablanca

https://youtu.be/QQoz5o61xpQ?si=OkqxsBOsALqa1O9J

Casablanca is a tale of “ refuges” fleeing the Nazis in wartime Morocco- yet the Jewish identity of these refugees is intentionally kept hidden. Such was the atmosphere of anti-Semitism in America at the time—even though the studio ( Warner Bros), the directors and producers, and even many of the actors were themselves Jewish.

Vera Gordon

Here is a clip posted on You Tube by her Great-niece:

a veteran of the Yiddish theater, in London and New York, she starred in (the silent) Humoresque but she KILLS here, in this brief scene. It's a tour de force.

Vera Gordon in The Big Street

https://youtu.be/z-IWEGGkbsk?si=J4jZmY5xOVIVUvYK

Carmel Myers

The Temptress of Ben Hur

Silent film actress best remembered for her role in Ben Hur' (1925). She also had a successful sound career although ending up in supporting roles.

https://youtu.be/_vaDQrkteY4?si=NeBK9Pb2LQKc791C

Here she is in a full length feature film. The Devil's Circusis a 1926 silent film directed by Benjamin Christensen and starring Norma Shearer and Carmel Myers. 

https://youtu.be/KQpvLFG9RFg?si=BAuk0NZg9FS9KOSu

 Harry "Pop" Sherman (November 5, 1884 – September 25, 1952) was an American film producer known for his work in the Western genre during the 1930s and 1940s 

He brought the character of Hopalong Cassidy to the big screen as an independent producer:

Here;s a clip from the movie, The Frontiersmen : 

https://youtu.be/0hYu3SBNl-U?si=xnMOR8hzdSQmJS-B

Mervyn LeRoy ) was an American film director, film producer and screenplay writer.

Famous for:

Little Ceasar, the great gangster classic, with fellow member, Edward G Robinson.

https://youtu.be/LXpjWpPjgaM?si=RROsiIkklYysa9Ei

and America’s beloved classic:

The Wizard of Oz – here is a play list of excerpts from the original:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gsNSZRntK_TLs9g6W6Lz-5y4TFsFV3C&si=16s9ha16_CODcRrU

https://youtu.be/0hYu3SBNl-U?si=OCFLnvk1BCctFs0G

Jack Pearl, best known for his role as the fabulist, Baron Munchausen.

Meet the Baron:

https://youtu.be/uYMmYNGmDuA?si=pNTYg0iuWvrHESJp

The catchphrase "Vas you dere, Charley?" swept the United States in late 1932 due to the brief popularity of radio comedian Jack Pearl. As the character Baron Munchausen, Pearl would tell increasingly fanciful stories of his travels and exploits to his sidekick "Charley" (originally played by Cliff Hall), who at some point would express disbelief. The Baron would then retort using this catchphrase.

https://youtu.be/l3FPleejIEg?si=BEaRYRWc3FYLFKo2

Edward G Robinson

A clip from another classic,

The Red House is a 1947 American thriller film[1][3] directed by Delmer Daves, and starring Edward G. Robinson, Lon McCallister, Judith Anderson, Rory Calhoun, Allene Roberts, and Julie London. Its plot follows a young woman raised by a brother and sister who are concealing a secret involving an abandoned farmhouse located deep in the woods on their sprawling property.

https://youtu.be/qx05t1k-yGg?si=hUfNWpzIO7HkgV6k

Samuel Bischoff, Producer of more than 400 full-length films, two-reel comedies, and serials between 1922 and 1964.

Earthworm Tractors

Samuel Bischoff & Hal B Wallis 

Featuring Joe E Brown ( one of the Warner Bros stars who greeted HTBE in its 1932 tribute book)

https://youtu.be/rdx4s7HQ3LU?si=12jfenGxc0J7GS3p

George Sidney directed a number of the most popular movie musicals of the 1940s and ’50s

This links to a series of clips from the 1951 musical, Show Boat, featuring the classic “ Old Man River”.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7UuNnvYPeGReZEJPgGWypvS1b2B3XWHM&si=lwfpTEn7c2KcppP_

Hal Wallis

Besides producing “Casablanca” with fellow HTBE member Michael Curtiz, he produced some 400 films, including True Grit, with John Wayne, who won Best Actor in 1970 for the star role: 

https://youtu.be/dyetQkDERNA?si=XiLedltC7HFOAarq

Louis Halper , of the Warner Bros. Studio, pieced together the funds to make the first all taking feature movie

Lights of New York is a 1928 American crime drama film starring Helene Costello, Cullen Landis, Wheeler Oakman and Eugene Pallette, and directed by Bryan Foy. Filmed in the Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system, it is the first all-talking full-length feature film, released by Warner Bros., who had introduced the first feature-length film with synchronized sound Don Juan, in 1926; and the first with spoken dialogue, The Jazz Singer, in 1927

https://youtu.be/oH8-zUXqD_A?si=yQrmxl8-PnWpjiIc

Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal Pictures

Silent classics

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

https://youtu.be/o792vRfkKu0?si=pfcI7875IpSGctiu

The Phantom of the Opera

https://youtu.be/TUamUHcxMVY?si=BQIFj1aZ764mqcll

Joseph Herman Pasternak 

one of Hollywood's top film producers, assumed the office of Chairman of the Board of HTBE! 

This clip features Deanna Durbin and the noted conductor, Leopold Stokowski

One Hundred Men and a Girl

https://youtu.be/UfcFMv8DWAc?si=Z_OVUILM37xfC9NE

Destry Rides Again with Marlene Dietrich Trailer

https://youtu.be/Vu3bd6e815k?si=psC351Lj0nLZa351

Summer Stock with Judy Garland and Gene Kelley

Selected clips

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7ENlMnNoSEDKnciCsoqjt49waDR0UG9e&si=LA3UOtGP1GYRZrzr

Harold and Leo Popkin launch Million Dollar Productions and the film “The Duke is Tops”, which soon is renamed as “ Bronze Venus”, featuring Ralph Cooper and Lena Horn.

Ten years after Al Jolson plays a Jew playing in blackface, two Jewish brothers fund a  full length feature film with a black cast, that now launches the career of Lena Horn.

https://youtu.be/JjszOtGXujg?si=x4gb2ix5Fgb23buG

Aubrey Morris--one of the lack actors of note who attended Hollywood Temple Beth El and served as our official Cohen for the priestly benediction. He was a member of a family of distinguished British  actors. He was so much nicer and sweeter a person than the characters he often portrayed.

Here is a tribute to him:

https://youtu.be/qQcGBGUR2jk?si=F5xcFcd8xaJAMgfx

He is best known for the character of P R Deltoid in the bizarre movie, A Clockwork Orange.

https://youtu.be/Op60zP0Yl5g?si=h8bE3WYJ_YWTkekN&t=88