Dan Lewis

Gentleman`s Agreement Director

Gentleman`s Agreement not only won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director, but was also one of Fox`s most successful films in 1947. However, the political nature of the film angered the House Un-American Activities Committee, with Elia Kazan, Darryl Zanuck, John Garfield and Anne Revere all called to testify before the committee. Revere refused to testify, and although Garfield appeared, he refused to “give names.” Both were placed on the red channels of the Hollywood blacklist. Garfield remained on the blacklist for a year, was again called to testify against his wife and died of a heart attack at the age of 39 before his second hearing. In 1947, the Oscar for Best Picture was awarded to Gentleman`s Agreement with Gregory Peck as a campaign reporter on a mission. The awards for Best Director were also awarded to Elia Kazan and Best Supporting Actress to Celeste Holm. At first glance, this sounds like a “publishing film” rather worthy of the 1940s, the kind of film the Academy thought it was honoring. But gentleman`s Agreement is always a captivating, fascinating, somewhat boring, by turns naïve and very sharp film, fascinating for what it puts and omchant. It is about the anti-Semitism of prosperous post-war America and the insidious way in which Jews were excluded from high-level social clubs, resorts and, of course, jobs. There have been no official bans, just a nod and a nod and a “gentleman`s agreement” between nice conservatives they know the kind of people they want to be associated with. This is the kind of everyday prejudice that Groucho Marx elegantly dismissed with his joke that he did not want to join a club that would have him as a member. Philip Schuyler Green, a widowed journalist, comes from California to New York with his son Tommy and his mother to work for Smith`s Weekly, a leading national magazine. John Minify, the publisher, wants Phil to write a series about anti-Semitism, but Phil is lukewarm about commissioning.

At one party, Phil Minify`s niece meets Kathy Lacy, a divorcee to whom Phil is attracted, and Kathy reminds her uncle that she proposed the series some time ago. Tommy asks his father about anti-Semitism, and when Phil has trouble explaining it, he decides to accept the mission. But he is frustrated by his inability to find a satisfactory approach, because he and Minify want the series to go beyond simply unmasking the crackpot mentality. After trying to imagine what his childhood Jewish friend Dave Goldman, who is now in the army abroad, must feel when he sees bigotry, Phil decides to write from the perspective of a Jew. However, he continued to find it difficult to write until he realized that certain things could never be known until they were discovered first-hand, and that the only way to have the necessary experience was to appear Jewish in the eyes of others. When Minify announces the series of a Luncheon group, Phil incidentally mentions that he is Jewish. Later, Phil learns from his new secretary that she was told there were no posts in the magazine when she applied under her real name Estelle Walofsky, but when she applied again with Ethel Wales, she got the job. On his first day as a Jew, Phil becomes the target of defamation and learns discriminatory rules in his building. When he talks to Kathy, whom he fell in love with, about his “Winkel” story, she is at first confused that he can really be Jewish.