Schmuel Gelbfisz, Lazar Meir and the Wonsal brothers are not names that immediately come to mind when thinking about Hollywood legends, but Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer and the Warner brothers are.
These monumental Hollywood figures changed their given Jewish names to ones they thought would be more palatable to Americans in the early 20th century in hopes of increasing their chances of success. While their studios had tremendous accomplishments, creating some of the best films of all time, these men’s birth names are not widely known.
The Academy Museum is aiming to change that.
A new exhibition titled “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,” which opens Sunday to the public, explores the stories of the Jewish filmmakers and studio founders who helped cement the Los Angeles area as the world capital of entertainment. It will be the museum’s first permanent exhibition.
“We want people to come away with a richer understanding of how this city is so intertwined with this industry and also a deeper understanding of why this is specifically a Jewish immigrant story,” said Dara Jaffe, an associate curator at the Academy Museum, who spearheaded the exhibition.
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The immersive exhibition traces the development of the major Hollywood studios and the golden age of film in the early 20th century through the perspective of Jewish immigrants who were at the heart of the industry’s establishment.
Since it opened in 2021, the Academy Museum has been dogged by criticism for scarcely highlighting or recognizing the predominantly Jewish group of filmmakers who developed the industry. The Eastern European Jewish immigrants who laid the groundwork for Hollywood and their first-generation American Jewish children were not featured in the museum’s ambitious exhibitions that emphasized and celebrated the work of groups often marginalized in Hollywood.
Jaffe said the museum had always planned to include the stories of the Jewish founders in their exhibitions eventually, but also understands the criticism over the lack of representation at the time of the museum’s opening. She said she welcomed feedback while curating the exhibition to ensure it was something the filmmaking and Jewish communities felt accurately represented the history.
“We completely feel it is foundational to who we are as a film museum, representing this industry, and it’s central to who we are as a film museum in Los Angeles,” Jaffe said. “It’s important to us that every visitor who comes can get this story of the founding of Hollywood and the Jewish studio heads.”
The exhibition weaves the stories of a developing Los Angeles and film industry with the lives of the Jewish immigrants and first-generation Jewish Americans who founded and built Hollywood as we know it.
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(Joshua White / JWPictures / Academy Museum)
With the exhibition opening amid Jewish American Heritage Month and during a time of rising antisemitism, Jaffe said she wants visitors to leave the exhibition with deeper knowledge of the relationship between Jewish people and filmmaking — and to understand that the history of that relationship is not “fodder for further antisemitism.”
“There have been so many times over the past couple years where I wished this exhibition was already open so we could point to it and say, ‘Please, come learn more,’ ” Jaffe said. “It’s a relief that it finally will be open.”
Author and film critic Neal Gabler, who wrote 1988‘s “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” served as an advisor on the exhibition and will speak at its opening night event. In the widely cited book, Gabler wrote that Jews often faced barriers to entry in other industries, and entertainment was a field where they saw an opportunity to develop their own business.
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Gabler wrote in his introduction that Jews created “their idealized America on the screen” — with strong families led by valorous fathers, ardent patriotism and resilience — and in doing so, American values became defined by their work.
Two sections of the exhibition’s three distinct parts spotlight these Jewish founders and their respective studios — Universal, Fox (later 20th Century-Fox), Paramount, United Artists and Warner Bros., to name a few — and how they built up the idea of the American Dream.
The “Studio Origins” section features multimedia displays that detail the founding of each of “the majors,” as they were often called, and dives into the stories of their respective founders. It also explores how the studio system operated in the late 1920s through the late ‘40s, when the eight major studios dominated production and often signed long-term contracts with actors and filmmakers.
The exhibition includes a short documentary about the studio founders’ lives and their experiences of immigration and antisemitism.
(Joshua White / JWPictures / Academy Museum)
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An original short-form documentary titled “From the Shtetl to the Studio: The Jewish Story of Hollywood,” focuses on the founders’ immigration stories and the challenges they faced as they built Hollywood. It details how experiencing antisemitism and oppression affected their careers. Ben Mankiewicz, the host of Turner Classic Movies and the grandson of “Citizen Kane” co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, narrates the documentary, which features archival images and video clips.
The exhibition also includes an animated tabletop and projections to illustrate how L.A. evolved alongside the growing film industry. The immersive display maps the city from 1902, when the first dedicated movie theater was built in L.A., through 1929, the year of the first Academy Awards. Jaffe said she wanted to make sure the exhibition “organically balanced” the stories of the founders and the city.
“Hollywood is both a place and an idea. There’s the geographic city of Los Angeles and Hollywood as a mythological symbol,” Jaffe said. “There was filmmaking in Los Angeles before the Jewish founders established the studio system, but it was truly the studio system that transformed Los Angeles into the idea of the mythological symbol of Hollywood.”
by Sean P. Aune | January 10, 2026January 10, 2026 10:30 am EST
Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
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This time around, it’s Jan. 10, 1986, and we’re off to see Black Moon Rising.
Black Moon Rising
What was the obsession in the 1980s with super vehicles?
Sam Quint (Tommy Lee Jones) is hired to steal a computer tape with evidence against a company on it. While being pursued, he tucks it in the parachute of a prototype vehicle called the Black Moon. While trying to retrieve it, the car is stolen by Nina (Linda Hamilton), a car thief working for a car theft ring. Both of them want out of their lives, and it looks like the Black Moon could be their ticket out.
Blue Thunder in the movies, Airwolf and Knight Rider on TV, the 1980s loved an impractical ‘super’ vehicle. In this case, the car plays a very minor role up until the final action set piece, and the story is far more about the characters and their motivations.
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The movie is silly as you would expect it to be, but it is never a bad watch. It’s just not anything particularly memorable.
1986 Movie Reviews will continue on Jan. 17, 2026, with The Adventures of the American Rabbit, The Adventures of Mark Twain, The Clan of the Cave Bear, Iron Eagle, The Longshot, and Troll.
California helped make them the rich. Now a small proposed tax is spooking them out of the state.
California helped make them among the richest people in the world. Now they’re fleeing because California wants a little something back.
The proposed California Billionaire Tax Act has plutocrats saying they are considering deserting the Golden State for fear they’ll have to pay a one-time, 5% tax, on top of the other taxes they barely pay in comparison to the rest of us. Think of it as the Dust Bowl migration in reverse, with The Monied headed East to grow their fortunes.
The measure would apply to billionaires residing in California as of Jan. 1, 2026, meaning that 2025 was a big moving year month among the 200 wealthiest California households subject to the tax.
The recently departed reportedly include In-n-Out Burger owner and heiress Lynsi Snyder, PayPal co-founder and conservative donor Peter Thiel, Venture Capitalist David Sacks, co-founder of Craft Ventures, and Google co-founder Larry Page, who recently purchased $173 million worth of waterfront property in Miami’s Coconut Grove. Thank goodness he landed on his feet in these tough times.
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The principal sponsor behind the Billionaire Tax Act is the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), which contends that the tax could raise a $100 billion to offset severe federal cutbacks to California’s public education, food assistance and Medicaid programs.
The initiative is designed to offset some of the tax breaks that billionaires received from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act recently passed by the Republican-dominated Congress and signed by President Trump.
According to my colleague Michael Hiltzik, the bill “will funnel as much as $1 trillion in tax benefits to the wealthy over the next decade, while blowing a hole in state and local budgets for healthcare and other needs.”
The drafters of the Billionaire Tax Act still have to gather around 875,000 signatures from registered voters by June 24 for the measure to qualify on November’s ballot. But given the public ire toward the growing wealth of the 1%, and the affordability crisis engulfing much of the rest of the nation, it has a fair chance of making it onto the ballot.
If the tax should be voted into law, what would it mean for those poor tycoons who failed to pack up the Lamborghinis in time? For Thiel, whose net worth is around $27.5 billion, it would be around $1.2 billion, should he choose to stay, and he’d have up to five years to pay it.
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Yes, it’s a lot … if you’re not a billionaire. It’s doubtful any of the potentially affected affluents would feel the pinch, but it could make a world of difference for kids depending on free school lunches, or folks who need medical care but can’t afford it because they’ve been squeezed by a system that places much of the tax burden on them.
According to the California Budget & Policy Center, the bottom fifth of California’s non-elderly families, with an average annual income of $13,900, spend an estimated 10.5% of their incomes on state and local taxes. In comparison, the wealthiest 1% of families, with an average annual income of $2.0 million, spend an estimated 8.7% of their incomes on state and local taxes.
“It’s a matter of values,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) posted on X. “We believe billionaires can pay a modest wealth tax so working-class Californians have Medicaid.”
Many have argued losing all that wealth to other states will hurt California in the long run.
Even Gov. Gavin Newsom has argued against the measure, citing that the wealthy can relocate anywhere else to evade the tax. During the New York Times DealBook Summit last month, Newsom said, “You can’t isolate yourself from the 49 others. We’re in a competitive environment.”
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He has a point, as do others who contend that the proposed tax may hurt California rather then help.
Sacks signaled he was leaving California by posting an image of the Texas flag on Dec. 31 on X and writing: “God bless Texas.” He followed with a post that read, “As a response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital and Austin will replace SF as the tech capital.”
Arguments aside, it’s disturbing to think that some of the richest people in the nation would rather pick up and move than put a small fraction of their vast California-made — or in the case of the burger chain, inherited — fortunes toward helping others who need a financial boost.
A still from ‘Song Sung Blue’.
| Photo Credit: Focus Features/YouTube
There is something unputdownable about Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) from the first moment one sees him at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting celebrating his 20th sober birthday. He encourages the group to sing the famous Neil Diamond number, ‘Song Sung Blue,’ with him, and we are carried along on a wave of his enthusiasm.
Song Sung Blue (English)
Director: Craig Brewer
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Michael Imperioli, Ella Anderson, Mustafa Shakir, Fisher Stevens, Jim Belushi
Runtime: 132 minutes
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Storyline: Mike and Claire find and rescue each other from the slings and arrows of mediocrity when they form a Neil Diamond tribute band
We learn that Mike is a music impersonator who refuses to come on stage as anyone but himself, Lightning, at the Wisconsin State Fair. At the fair, he meets Claire (Kate Hudson), who is performing as Patsy Cline. Sparks fly between the two, and Claire suggests Mike perform a Neil Diamond tribute.
Claire and Mike start a relationship and a Neil Diamond tribute band, called Lightning and Thunder. They marry and after some initial hesitation, Claire’s children from her first marriage, Rachel (Ella Anderson) and Dayna (Hudson Hensley), and Mike’s daughter from an earlier marriage, Angelina (King Princess), become friends.
Members from Mike’s old band join the group, including Mark Shurilla (Michael Imperioli), a Buddy Holly impersonator and Sex Machine (Mustafa Shakir), who sings as James Brown. His dentist/manager, Dave Watson (Fisher Stevens), believes in him, even fixing his tooth with a little lightning bolt!
The tribute band meets with success, including opening for Pearl Jam, with the front man for the grunge band, Eddie Vedder (John Beckwith), joining Lightning and Thunder for a rendition of ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’ at the 1995 Pearl Jam concert in Milwaukee.
There is heartbreak, anger, addiction, and the rise again before the final tragedy. Song Sung Blue, based on Greg Kohs’ eponymous documentary, is a gentle look into a musician’s life. When Mike says, “I’m not a songwriter. I’m not a sex symbol. But I am an entertainer,” he shows that dreams do not have to die. Mike and Claire reveal that even if you do not conquer the world like a rock god, you can achieve success doing what makes you happy.
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ALSO READ: ‘Run Away’ series review: Perfect pulp to kick off the New Year
Song Sung Blue is a validation for all the regular folk with modest dreams, but dreams nevertheless. As the poet said, “there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.” Hudson and Jackman power through the songs and tears like champs, leaving us laughing, tapping our feet, and wiping away the errant tears all at once.
The period detail is spot on (never mind the distracting wigs). The chance to hear a generous catalogue of Diamond’s music in arena-quality sound is not to be missed, in a movie that offers a satisfying catharsis. Music is most definitely the food of love, so may we all please have a second and third helping?
