“A MATCH LIT NEAR EXCELSIOR”: GERALD P. NYE AND CHARLES LINDBERGH, 1941

According to a series of polls commissioned by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation between 1938 and 1946, approximately one-third to one-half of all U.S. citizens believed that Jews held too much power. By April 1940, more Americans expressed this belief than those who did not. By July 1945, the number of people who responded yes to the question “Do you think the Jews have too much power and influence in this country?” had peaked to 67 percent. This figure was nearly thrice the number of those who had answered no. It was not until June 1962 that a Gallup Poll showed that 17 percent of Americans would answer yes to this same question.

Despite such opinion data, wartime reports of Nazi atrocities in Europe generated widespread sympathy for the plight of European Jews and aroused opposition to Germany's policy of genocide. Yet, a majority of Americans adhered to the belief that had served both Nazism and the publication empire of Ford so well: namely, that alleged Jewish power posed a threat to culture, politics, and nationhood. By 1941, this older fear would crash headlong into a newfound sympathy vaunting Jewish assimilation as the patriotic epitome of why the United States needed to fight the good fight. While activating the Hollywood Question might appear as a political blunder in hindsight, before 1941 the charge had been little more than an ill-advised observation. Schulberg's “idea of Rivington Street” rendered the anti-Semitism of the Hollywood Question less potent, using a Jewish foil to show Gentiles as capable of the same peccadilloes.