In reaction to an Anti-Defamation league poll which showed last month that only 22% of people now believe that Jews run the movie and television industries, compared with 47% in 1964, Joel Stein (who is Jewish) protested in the Los Angeles Times:“I have never been so upset by a poll in all my life…Jews totally run Hollywood.” Citing a recent open letter placed in the Los Angeles Times by heads of the eight major studios demanding that the Screen Actors Guild sign its contract, Stein noted that all eight of the studio heads who signed the letter were Jewish. In his search for non-Jewish Hollywood executives, Stein found that,“the Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.” Stein called up Abel Foxman, chairman of the Anti-Defamation league, to discuss the implications of the poll. Foxman argued, “That’s a very dangerous phrase, ‘Jews control Hollywood.’ What is true is that there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood.” Stein believes “Foxman would prefer people say that many executives in the industry ‘happen to be Jewish,’ as in ‘all eight major film studios are run by men who happen to be Jewish.’”

 

How Jewish is Hollywood? (by Joel Stein, Los Angeles Times)