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HOLLYWOOD CAVES IN
J. Hoberman writes about Nazi pressure on Hollywood film-makers (LRB,
19 December 2013). In the early 1930s the Austrian novelist Franz
Werfel wrote The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, an epic about a small
community of Armenians who, during the First World War, resisted
rather than succumb to a genocidal Turkey. The book was a bestseller
in Germany and Austria, and was translated into many languages,
including English.
In the mid-1930s MGM bought the movie rights, did its own translation
of the novel, and even went into pre-production, with Clark Gable as
the lead. But the studio shut it down soon afterwards when Turkey's
ambassador to the US, Mehmed Ertegun, said that if the film was made
Turkey would launch a global boycott against MGM. Since then several
Hollywood personalities - Sylvester Stallone, for one - have expressed
interest in filming the novel, only to withdraw from the project later.
Jirair Tutunjian Toronto
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/letters
J. Hoberman writes about Nazi pressure on Hollywood film-makers (LRB,
19 December 2013). In the early 1930s the Austrian novelist Franz
Werfel wrote The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, an epic about a small
community of Armenians who, during the First World War, resisted
rather than succumb to a genocidal Turkey. The book was a bestseller
in Germany and Austria, and was translated into many languages,
including English.
In the mid-1930s MGM bought the movie rights, did its own translation
of the novel, and even went into pre-production, with Clark Gable as
the lead. But the studio shut it down soon afterwards when Turkey's
ambassador to the US, Mehmed Ertegun, said that if the film was made
Turkey would launch a global boycott against MGM. Since then several
Hollywood personalities - Sylvester Stallone, for one - have expressed
interest in filming the novel, only to withdraw from the project later.
Jirair Tutunjian Toronto
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/letters