It’s remarkable that Los Angeles, a city built on the convenient collision of dreamers and boosters, became the unlikely refuge for Jewish artists and intellectuals who fled Hitler’s persecution and added important chapters to the cultural history of L. A. During the 1930s and 1940s, many of the artists, writers, moviemakers and musicians who fled Europe settled in Los Angeles, a large number in Santa Monica Canyon and Pacific Palisades. Some, like filmmaker Billy Wilder and writers Bertold and Salka Viertel, came at the behest of the movie studios; others came because of friends or relatives, and others were drawn by the balmy weather. The Skirball Museum has just opened the first exhibition focusing on the major contributions Jewish exiles made to the cultural foundation of Los Angeles. Over the last 18 months, Associate Curator Tal Gozani has been researching and interpreting the journeys of these 11 men and women who, because of their perceived intellectual capital, escaped the restrictive U.S. immigration laws enacted in 1924, but who nevertheless did not escape the emotional and political displacement, having lost their European citizenship and sense of place in their homelands. Gozani took into consideration a number of factors in choosing the ‘migr’s to be highlighted. She wanted to include women, she said in an interview, and there also had be to enough resource material available. The Warner Bros. Library and the Arnold Schoenberg center in Vienna provided extensive information, and she was lucky that Salka Viertel had written ‘The Kindness of Strangers,’ which described her early years in California, culminating with America’s entry into World War II. Some artists, like Bertold Brecht, were excluded because they weren’t Jewish. The exhibition was conceived as a companion piece to the Albert Einstein show currently on view at the Skirball. Einstein spent three winters in California’1931, 1932 and 1933 at Caltech. He associated himself with other ‘migr’s and with Hollywood and lent his considerable influence and resources to advocate on behalf of other artists and scientists trapped in Nazi Europe. ‘Throughout this nine-month exhibition we knew we needed to create related elements that would look deeper at L.A. and the ‘migr’, including the cultural history preceding and through the Nazi period that defined Einstein’s experience,’ said Lori Starr, director of the Skirball Museum. The show, ‘Driven into Paradise,’ has been mounted in the Ruby Gallery, which is the informal gathering place in front of the auditorium, and one of the most prominent places in the museum. Conceived to be self-contained, the exhibition was designed to travel to libraries and cultural institutions around the country. The ‘migr’s highlighted are filmmakers Michael Curtiz and Billy Wilder, composers Arnold Schoenberg and Ernst Toch, artists Otto and Gertrud Natzler, art collector Galka Scheyer and writers Vicki Baum, Lion Feuchtwanger, Salka Viertel and Franz Werfel. Each artist has his or her own display panel, which includes a small biography, photographs, documents, and film clips or music samples where appropriate. The Natzlers’ exhibit even includes a sampling of their ceramic pots demonstrating Gertrud’s fine crafting and Otto’s innovative glazes. Each of these talented men and women had enjoyed a productive creative life in Europe which, despite the upheaval in their lives, the displacement and loss that drove them to safety in America, continued in their new lives. Lion Feuchtwanger, born in an affluent Orthodox Jewish family in Munich, had already published his first novel by his early 20s. In these early works he alerted the world to the dangers of German nationalism, and warned German Jews against complacency. His outspokenness established him as one of the foremost anti-fascist writers of the time. Feuchtwanger was in America when Hitler came to power in 1933, and was warned not to return to Germany. While in exile in France, he and his wife Marta were assisted by President Roosevelt in immigrating to the United States and arrived in Los Angeles in 1941. Within two years, the couple’s home Villa Aurora on Paseo Miramar became an intellectual and artistic free zone, where ‘migr’s would gather to exchange ideas and support one another. Frequent visitors included Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Fritz Lang, Aldous Huxley, Bertold Brecht, Peter Lorre and Arnold Schoenberg. Feuchtwanger continued to write prolifically, adopting American themes such as the Salem witch hunts into his novels’an ironic choice in light of the government’s suspicion that the fiercely anti-fascist ‘migr’s were communists. Otto and Gertrud Natzler arrived here after leaving behind promising careers as ceramists in Vienna. They brought with them a kiln, a potter’s wheel, and 20 kilos of uranium oxide for glazes and a crate of ceramics. Over the next three decades, Gertrud produced her wafer-thin bowls, vases, jars and bottles while Otto experimented with new, local glaze ingredients, and perfected over 2,000 glazes. Until Gertrud’s death in 1971, the Natzlers created some 25,000 vessels and helped establish ceramics as a form of high art. In a marked departure from the fecundity of the others’ creative energy, Ernst Toch’s creative impetus waned during the war years. Under pressure to support his wife and child, he gave up his own composing, and went to work writing film scores for various studios and teaching musical composition at USC. A massive heart attack in 1948 forced him to realign his priorities, and he quit both jobs to concentrate on his own compositions. Over the last 16 years of his life, he completed seven symphonies and developed his own strategy for writing approachable and lively atonal music. He is also remembered today as the inventor of the genre of spoken music. Each of these immigrants maintained a commitment to artistic and political freedom, some by working to save other German intellectuals in Europe, others by using their talents to challenge injustices they saw around them in their adopted country. During the 1930s and 1940s, many of Michael Curtiz’s films focused on controversial domestic social issues, including the elusiveness of the American Dream for groups at the margins of American society. In ‘Black Fury’ (1935), he depicted the desperate plight of working-class immigrants in an American coal-mining town. And Billy Wilder, who came to Hollywood in 1934 when Columbia purchased a story from him, moved into directing movies that often treated taboo topics in a charming and amusing manner. In ‘Some Like It Hot,’ he used good humor to feast on the topic of gender confusion. These ‘migr’s shared the courage and resourcefulness necessary to survive and prosper in the new country, but suffered the guilt of knowing that while they were safe from tyranny, many others perished, and that Europe would bear the physical cost of war. In her memoir, Salka Viertel reflects on her safe life in Santa Monica Canyon and the guilt she feels over having been spared. ‘The unconcerned sunbathers on the beach, their hairless bodies glistening and brown, the gigantic trucks rumbling on the highway, the supermarkets with their mountains of food, the studio with the oh-so-relaxed employees, the chatting extras pouring out from the stages at lunch time, the pompous executives marching to their ‘exclusive dining room’ or to the barbershop, stopping to flirt with the endearing ‘young talent”all these scenes were a nerve-racking contrast to the war horror I constantly imagined.’ The life stories of these European Jewish ‘migr’s are stories of culture shock, isolation and anti-immigrant discrimination, but also of resilient men and women who produced some of the great art, music, literature and film of the 20th century. The Skirball Museum is located at 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., off the 405 Freeway. Admission is free to the Ruby Gallery. Contact: 440-4500 or visit www.skirball.org.
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