An Empire of Their Own : How the Jews Invented Hollywood

First h/b edition published 1988 by Crown Publishers, Inc. This p/b edition published 1989 by Anchor Books / Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. An Empre of Their Own - Front Cover Half-title Title Page Printer's Imprint Contents Quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Last Tycoon Introduction Part One—The Men 1. The Killer 2. “Don’t Be a Salary Slave!” 3. Born on the Fourth of July 4. Between the Old Life and the New 5. “I Don’t Get Ulcers. I Give ‘Em!” ~photoplates (1-8)~ Part Two—The Empire 6. In Their Image 7. How They Lived ~photoplates (9-16)~ 8. Rabbi to the Stars 9. Refugees and British Actors ~photoplates (17-24)~ 10. The End Epilogue Reference Notes Introduction 1. The Killer 2. “Don’t Be a Salary Slave!” 3. Born on the Fourth of July 4. Between the Old Life and the New 5. “I Don’t Get Ulcers. I Give ‘Em!” 6. In Their Image 7. How They Lived 8. Rabbi to the Stars 9. Refugees and British Actors 10. The End A Note On Sources A Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments Index About the Author Rear Cover A provocative, original, and richly entertaining group biography of the Jewish immigrants who were the moving forces behind the creation of America's motion picture industry. The names Harry Cohn, William Fox, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Jack and Harry Warner, and Adolph Zucker are giants in the history of contemporary Hollywood, outsiders who dared to invent their own vision of the American Dream. Even to this day, the American values defined largely by the movies of these émigrés endure in American cinema and culture. Who these men were, how they came to dominate Hollywood, and what they gained and lost in the process is the exhilarating story of An Empire of Their Own. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for history, this "wonderful history of the golden age of the movie moguls" (Chicago Tribune ) is a provocative, original, and richly entertaining group biography of the Jewish immigrants who were the moving forces behind the creation of America's motion picture industry.

This is a provocative and richly entertaining biography of the Jewish immigrants who were the loving forces behind the creation of America's motion picture industry.

THIS BOOK BEGINS, AS HOLLYwood itself did, with something of a paradox.