- “You and I have seen boards turn down such plays as the ‘Life of the Savior’ because they thought it might offend the Hebrews.”
It is apparent that “Jewish sensitiveness” is a spoiled child which has been unduly coddled and that it has interfered to such an extent that the real question becomes one of non-Jewish rights.
The Jewish defenders have been asking, Why should a nation of 110,000,000 people be considered in danger from 3,000,000 Jews? And “Gentile fronts,” with all the zest of a new idea, have shouted the same challenging question.
It might be advantageous to answer thus: Why should a country of 110,000,000 people, mostly of Christian faith and practice, be prevented from seeing the “Life of the Savior” portrayed on the screen because it is feared to offend the Jews?
The answer in both cases is not a comparison of numbers, but a recognition of the fact that, as in the motion picture world the Jews are at the neck of the bottle where they can absolutely control what goes to the public, so they are in other fields at corresponding places of control.
But whether the Jewish producer is qualified to do better than he is doing is a question. When you consider the conditions from which many of them sprang, you will be rendered rather hopeless of voluntary reform.
Why were not “Way Down East” and “The Shepherd of the Hills” put on the screen by Jews? Because the Jews in control of the movies have no knowledge of American rural life, and therefore no feeling for it. The Jew is a product of city life, and that peculiar phase of city life which is found in the ghetto. He sees in a farmer only a “hick” and a “rube.” You may rest entirely assured that it was not the Yankee, himself a product of the farms, who turned the agriculturist into a joke, until today the joke has emptied our farms of men. The theatrical “hick” and “rube” of the gold-brick story and the hayseed play, were of Jewish origin. The Jew is a product of city life, and of that phase of city life where the “wits” play a large part. The America of the average Jew who caters to the entertainment of Americans
