The Jewish immigrants who founded and came to dominate the American film industry,
created an image of America out of their own idealism … a vision that proved so powerful
that it came to shape the myths, values, traditions and archetypes of America herself.
For these men, prevented from entering the real corridors of gentility and power in America,
cut their lives to the pattern of American respectability as they saw it.
In the process, they created a new country, an ’empire of their own,’ and colonized the
American imagination to such an extent, that this country came to be largely identified
by its movies.
