Quote: (01-15-2017 11:39 PM)MOVSM Wrote:
Quote: (01-15-2017 07:26 PM)Robert High Hawk Wrote:
Hollywood was was MUCH better when there were less foreigners and outsiders.
I like to dispute this claim: List of Jewish actors. Russian Americans. German Americans. Greek Americans. Hungarian Americans.
The lists are full of actors/comedians/celebrities from various European countries. Hollywood was always full of foreigners. Hollywood was built by foreigners.
I looked over the entire Russian AMERICAN list you cited. First and foremost, that list, and I presume the other ones you posted above, cite ridiculously loose immigrant connections such as: "Amanda Bynes, actress, mother of Russian Jewish descent", or "Jennifer Connelly, actress, mother is of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent" etc... for at least 80% of the names on that list. So actual Russian born immigrants on the list... not so much. Furthermore, about half of the names on the last are from fairly recent actors (about past 10 years), which was exactly point. I will go over the German American list next for my own interest, but I suspect that the number of actual German born immigrants on that list is equally small.
This is an entirely different argument over what constitutes "American" but if we go by the definition that being native born means you are American, well, that list doesn't show a whole lot of non-Americans, and again even most of those were quite recent.
That said, to agree somewhat with your point, Hollywood in the 40s was much more diverse than your average Pennsylvania steel mill (which was probably manned by largely Czech immigrants).
My (admittedly poorly stated) point was that simply due to the fact that interests, tastes, and art were incredibly less globalized than today, talent, creation, production, and distribution was performed by and catered to distinctly less diverse America, with less foreigners involved. And it is my contention the art of those earlier (let's say up until the 70s), was at the very least as good, or better, than the filth that comes out today.
Merryl Streep said without diversity there would be no good American art, and my argument is back when there was less diversity, the art was as good or better than today, so her statement is wrong. Admittedly my knowledge of historical Hollywood is weak at best, so apologies if this wildly ignorant or inaccurate.