13 - The Silver Screen and the Golden Land: Hollywood and ‘Hereness’ in the Pages of Film-Nayes (1936–1938)

Summary

On 21 and 28 February 1934, the Yiddish-language, Polish newspaper Vokhnshrift far Literatur, Kunst un Kultur (Weekly for Literature, Art and Culture) published two articles entitled ‘In di Fabrik fun Lebedike Shotns’ – or ‘In the Factory of Living Shadows’. Both articles essentially presented to readers a series of observations connected to the cinema industry, accompanied by a series of photographs and sketches of mostly Hollywood stars and personalities. The opening section of the first article was entitled ‘On the Extras Market’; I wish to draw attention to it here as it taps usefully into a number of the topics this chapter will focus on.

Indeed, in just a few paragraphs, the author of the piece sketches a picture, almost filmic in its vivid description, of a number of young, Polish-Jewish youths, whose ‘mania’ for particular Hollywood stars has led them down the path of working as underpaid extras in the Polish film industry. They are now gathered together in impoverished surroundings, where the author finds them: the dark-haired young men who fancy themselves the second Rudolph Valentino or Ramon Novarro, the fair-haired girl who strives to be a Greta Garbo at all costs. Throughout this brief piece, their poverty is emphasised, as is the ultimate pointlessness of their ambitions – the girl may, the author notes, have Garbo's hair and Garbo's figure, but she definitely has not her talent!

The piece is therefore not an idealised narrative of an easy road to stardom – but at the same time, and perhaps surprisingly, it is also not a cautionary tale. It does not strive to reveal, to such would-be Valentinos and (perhaps especially!) Garbos, the abuses and misery to which they might fall victim, and to steer them onto a more prudent path. Instead, its author states his confidence that the girl who fancies herself a second Garbo will, no doubt, yet awaken from her Greta-mania and will find more productive work in time; but in the meantime, she's ‘roguishly’ smoking a cigarette, just like her idol, and – it is implied – is having a rather fun time (6).