Hollywood and Hitler: portraits of Thomas Doherty and Ben Urwand for the Chronicle of Higher Education

October 11, 2013

Thomas Doherty is a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. His most recent book is “Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939”

Ben Urwand is a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. His most recent book “The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler” alleges that Hollywood studios actively cooperated with Nazi propaganda efforts in order to secure the German movie market.

Thomas Doherty is a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. His most recent book is “Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939”

A few months back, I photographed both Ben Urwand of Harvard and Thomas Doherty of Brandeis University for the Chronicle of Higher Education's coverage of their books on Hollywood's cooperation and complicity with Nazi Germany (my images appear in the print edition of the Chronicle's magazine The Chronicle Review, but not online). Not unsurprisingly, their writing has been discussed and written about countless times online and in print, especially Urwand's allegations that (primarily Jewish) Hollywood producers in the 1930s bargained with Hitler's regime and the German consulate in Los Angeles to edit scripts and cancel anti-Nazi films in exchange for distribution rights in Nazi Germany. Here's a long New Yorker review of both Urwand's and Doherty's books: Hitler in Hollywood: Did the studios collaborate?