Gentleman’s Agreement

Today is my birthday and I’m continuing the tradition I started last year of looking at the Best Picture winners that were made in the year of my AGE. A year ago I wrote about the 1946 Oscar winner, “The Best Years of Our Lives,” a story about men trying to reconcile their pasts with the present. Could I relate? You betcha. Now that I’m 47, I’m contemplating the 1947 Oscar winner, “Gentleman’s Agreement.” I know what you’re thinking—how could a story about Jewish identity and anti-Semitism possibly hold any interest for me? (Ha-ha.)

Adapted from the novel by Laura Z. Hobson, “Gentleman's Agreement” stars Gregory Peck as Phil Green, a Gentile journalist for a progressive magazine who decides to pose as a Jew in order to write a series of hard-hitting articles about anti-Semitism. Although skeptical at first that people will treat him differently, Green soon learns firsthand about the insidious forms of prejudice that Jews had to face in 1940s America. Green is a widower raising his young son Tommy (played by Dean Stockwell), and he's horrified when Tommy is attacked on the school playground when his classmates find out that he is “Jewish.” Even Phil’s staunchly liberal girlfriend Kathy (the great Dorothy McGuire), reveals her latent anti-Semitism in several superbly written encounters with Phil and Tommy.

While the movie creaks quite a bit when viewing it with today’s sensibilities, you have to remember what a taboo subject anti-Semitism was in those days. True to form, the Jewish studio heads wouldn't touch the film, and they even went so far as to beg the producer not to make it, saying it would just “stir up trouble.” I always think of the scene in the Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy classic “Woman of the Year” when Hepburn’s Tess Harding is seen at her desk conversing easily in foreign tongues with world leaders. At one point in the original scene, Hepburn is on the phone with someone in Eastern Europe and launches into fluent Yiddish. MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, himself a Jewish immigrant, forced director George Stevens to cut this segment, refusing to let his shiksa star utter a language he apparently felt was beneath her. Despite the ban by most studios, “Gentleman’s Agreement” found a champion in, of all people, Midwestern Methodist Darryl Zanuck at 20th Century Fox (known back then as “the goy studio”). Zanuck hired Eliza Kazan to direct the film and even ordered a scene to be written that mirrored the movie moguls’ reluctance to see this topic addressed publicly.

Laura Z. Hobson wrote the book after witnessing the appalling actions of Rep. John Rankin, who called columnist Walter Winchell “ the little kike” on the floor of the House of Representatives and spewed other anti-Semitic epithets that were wildly applauded by members of Congress. Rankin is named in the film along with several other national figures who were blatant bigots including Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo and Christian Nationalist Leader Gerald L. K. Smith who claimed the Holocaust was a Jewish fabrication. Another figure who is alluded to is popular radio commentator Father Charles Edward Coughlin, Roman Catholic priest and vile son of a bitch who captivated millions of Americans in the 1920s and 30s with his fiery brand of hate rhetoric. On December 18, 1938, thousands of Coughlin's followers marched in New York protesting potential asylum law changes that would have allowed more Jews to enter the country. These devoted Americans chanted, “Send the Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!” and “Wait until Hitler comes over here!” The Catholic Church finally forced Coughlin off the air in 1942 and sent him back to being a parish priest. Needless to say, Father Coughlin always maintained the full support (financial and otherwise) of automobile magnate Henry Ford, one of the most virulent anti-Semites this country has ever known.

Following World War II, film executives didn’t want to look at the plight of Eastern European Jewry, much less the Jews in their own backyard. Zanuck deserves a lot of credit for taking on Hobson’s book. He was appalled by the recent full revelations of what happened to Europe's Jews in the Nazi death camps and felt the time was right for this story. Writer Moss Hart adapted the book into a screenplay that was rife with gems:

Tommy: What's anti-Semitism?
Phil: Well, uh, that's when some people don't like other people just because they're Jews.
Tommy: Why not? Are Jews bad?
Phil: Well, some are and some aren't, just like with everyone else.
Tommy: What are Jews, anyway?
Phil: Well, uh, it's like this. Remember last week when you asked me about that big church, and I told you there are all different kinds of churches? Well, the people who go to that particular church are called Catholics, and there are people who go to different churches and they're called Protestants, and there are people who go to different churches and they're called Jews, only they call their churches temples or synagogues.
Tommy: Why don't some people like them?
Phil: Well, I can't really explain it, Tommy.

My favorite scenes are those with Dorothy McGuire’s tortured upper crust liberal, Kathy Lacey, who is so reluctant to face her own prejudices.

Phil: I'm going to let everybody know I'm Jewish.
Kathy: Jewish? But you're not! Are you? Not that it would make any difference to me. But you said, “Let everybody know,” as if you really were. So I just wondered. Not that it would make any difference to me. (Pause.) Phil, you're annoyed.
Phil: No, I'm just thinking.
Kathy: Well, don't look serious about it. Surely you must know where I stand.
Phil: Oh, I do.
Kathy: You just caught me off-guard.

Tommy: They called me a dirty Jew and a stinking kike, and they all ran away.
Kathy: Oh, darling, it's not true. You're no more Jewish than I am. It's just some horrible mistake.
Phil: Kathy!
Tommy: They were playing, and I asked if I could play too, and one said that no dirty little Jew could play with them, and they all yelled those other things. I tried to speak, and they all yelled that my father has a long curly beard, and they turned and ran. Why did they do it, Pop?
Phil: Did you want to tell them that you weren't Jewish?
Tommy: No.
Phil: That's good. There are a lot of kids just like you who are Jewish, and if you had said that, you'd be admitting there was something bad in being Jewish.

There’s a gaggle of superb character actors in this film including John Garfield as Dave Goldman, Phil’s Jewish army buddy. Garfield, born Jacob Garfinkle, gives one of his best performances as the good-natured Dave who is philosophical about the bigotry he faces as a Jew in America. The always great Anne Revere plays Peck’s nervous but supportive mother (“You think there's enough anti-Semitism in life already without people reading about it?”), and Celeste Holm won a Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as the fashion editor Anne Dettrey. June Havoc (the former real-life “Baby June” from “Gypsy”) plays a self-hating Jew named Elaine Wales (who changed her name from Estelle Walovsky) who works for Gregory Peck’s character.

Elaine: You just let them get one wrong Jew in here, and it'll come out on us. It's no fun taking the blame for the kikey ones.
Phil: Miss Wales, I'm going to be frank with you. I want you to know that words like kike and yid and coon and nigger make me sick no matter who says them.
Elaine: Oh, but I only said it about a type of Jew.
Phil: Well, it's the word that I'm talking about.
Elaine: Oh, but sometimes I even say it about myself. Like, if I'm about to do something I know I shouldn't, I'll say, “Don't be such a little kike.”

Sweet. Should I start saying that to my daughter when she’s doing something she shouldn’t?

Is “Gentleman’s Agreement” an ancient relic with little relevance to current American culture? Not hardly. There may not be any more restrictive covenants barring Jews from buying homes in certain neighborhoods or preventing Jews from checking into fancy hotels, but I think you’ll agree that bigotry is alive and well in this great land of ours. There’s plenty to go around for Jews, Arabs, African-Americans, gays, and about a million other groups. As long as we think such bigotry is the doing of a few silly snobs, like Dorothy McGuire’s character does, we run the risk of not taking seriously some very real threats to our democracy. If I had to take one lesson from this film for my 47th year, I guess it would be to not allow statements about individuals or other groups that I find insulting or demeaning to pass by without comment.

Good Lord, I sure didn’t expect my birthday post to be this preachy. But cheer up, people, the 1948 winner of the Best Picture Oscar is that madcap romp “Hamlet” starring Laurence Olivier. That should make for a riotous post a year from today! Oh well, at least it’s not the 1990 version of Shakespeare's play starring everyone’s favorite anti-Semite, Mel Gibson.

“Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

Comments

[Mindy Garza]

Hope you have a wonderful birthday!

[Neil]

Happy Birthday, Danny! Only you would write a long, brainy piece about movies and Jews as a birthday card to your readers! That's what makes you so special. Are all Virgos like this?

[tamarika]

Happy Birthday, Danny.
Now you *know* that your conclusion speaks to *me!* "As long as we think such bigotry is the doing of a few silly snobs, like Dorothy McGuire’s character does, we run the risk of not taking seriously the very serious threats to our democracy ... I guess it would be to not allow statements about individuals or other groups that I find insulting or demeaning to pass by without comment." YES!

In fact, I might have to use it in one of my presentations this fall, if you don't mind. What a gift!

Have a great day, I'll be thinking of you. Ah, to be 47 again ... I have some stuff I would like to redo!

[Barbara S.]

Happy Birthday Danny! You are one fine writer! Have a great day.

[Emily]

Happy, happy birthday, Danny! And here's another happy thought for it: Doesn't Rush Limbaugh, and his multitude of listeners, remind you of Father Coughlin and his multitude of followers? Now, go forget about all this stuff and have some cake and enjoy yourself.

[cruisin-mom]

Happy Birthday Danny...great post, you are adorable in that picture...scary to think that things haven't changed much since that book was written, or movie made. Thanks, Mel, for reminding us of that!

[Kerry]

Happy Birthday, bubelah! xo

[Pearl]

Danny, happy birthday! Hope you have a spectacular year personally, and share lots more with us BLOGGINGLY!

[Elisabeth]

Danny - Thank you so much for stopping by my blog to wish me a happy birthday. Happy birthday to you too! Hope you had a great one, with lots of presents and good cake (I didn't have cake - I don't really have a sweet tooth, and neither does my lovely boyfriend), but I got good gifts.

This birthday post was great. First, it's a wonderful concept to write about a movie released on the year of your age. And, even though I had never seen, and not even ever heard of "Gentleman's Agreement," I now need to check it out. Any kind of racism sucks, and I often feel ashamed of being French because of the French's reputation for being anti-semites. And father Coughlin, don't even get me started on that guy - another reason to repudiate the Roman Catholic Church, as I did many years ago.

[OldOldOldLady Of The Hills]

Oh My Dear Danny! What a GREAT GREAT post!

I LOVE "Gentlemen's Agreement" for all the reasons you stated, and more...
(AND BY THE WAY...ANN REVERE WAS BLACKLISTED...YES, BLACKLISTED, during those horrid horrible days of the early 50's...for being an...OH SHOCK!...Liberal!
Talk about prejudice!)

The Dorothy McGuire character was such a marvelous conglomeration of the "White Bread" people who did not think they were bigots---still with us today I might add---
And dear Dorothy McGuire was brilliant in this part.
Truthfully, there is nothing dated about this film. NOTHING! SAD TO SAY.
The only thing "dated" is that Anti-Anything, still exists. Anti-Semitism right up there at the top of that list along with Blacks, Gays, Mexicans, you-name-it, etc....

A Very Happy Birthday to you Danny...
"GENTLEMEN'S AGGREEMENT" is a great great film to be remembered and touted in today's world of stupid movies that have no..I repeat, NO, convictions about anything!!!

OY! I say. OY VEY!

[Laurie]

Happy Birthday Danny!

I think you should write about whatever you want to on your birthday.

Much love!

[Rhea]

Happy Birthday, Danny! I have been interested in renting "Gentleman's Agreement" for a while, so I was especially intrigued by your post today.

[Danya]

Happy Birthday, Danny! you are a wonderful writer - I enjoy every single post of yours. may all your wishes come through and may you write many many more articles!
your cousin from switzerland

[Arlene]

Danny...hope you had a great day!!! See you at the reunion!

[david]

Danny:

Really, really sorry I missed your birthday. Hope it was great.

As my great-aunt said, kipp hopp de good woik.

[Rosie]

Wow...another great post...and another movie to rent.

I hope you had a wonderful birthday!

[Vicki Forman]

Oh my gosh, your birthday and my brother's birthday are one and the same, and only a year apart. These coincidences must stop, I tell you. Stop.