In the 1930s, The Jewish German Modernist painter and art dealer Galka Scheyer was desperately attempting to lure the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky from Europe to the relative safety of Los Angeles — or at least convince him of its importance. According to the highly informative book "Hollywood Haven: Homes and Haunts of the European Emigres and Exiles in Los Angeles" by Cornelius Schnauber, she wrote him the following letter from her home in L.A.:
"[famed Viennese-born director] Fritz Lang is coming to my house for a picnic, and since he spends all of his money for the fight against Hitler, I will tell him that you were among those who were damaged by Hitler. And since he really understands your work, he has to buy your work because of Hitler."
Jewish German Modernist painter Galka Scheyer in a letter written out to Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky
This networking was the lifeblood of the hundreds of artistic and intellectual refugees, many of them German-speaking, who were displaced from their homelands and found themselves exiles in a bright, sunny place that to many seemed superficial and stupefying. However, through a tight-knit network of salons and social centers, many were able to forge a new life — and a new career in the entertainment industry during the 1930s and '40s.
German Exiles (Preview)
"It was really important that the refugee community was so tight-knit," says John William Waxman, son of the émigré composer Franz Waxman. "The thing in Hollywood...it's 25% talent and 75% connections."
Nowhere were more connections made than at the majestic Villa Aurora in the Pacific Palisades. Purchased in 1943 by the successful Jewish German writer Lion Feuchtwanger and his charming wife, Marta, the 14-room Spanish Revival mansion boasted an organ to accompany film screenings and one of the most impressive libraries in Southern California.
"He considered himself as something like a godfather to these 'artists in exile,'" violinist Daniel Hope told Deutsche Welle.
The Feuchtwangers regularly hosted readings, concerts and receptions. Guests included Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Bruno Frank, Charlie Chaplin, Franz Werfel and his wife Alma Mahler-Werfel, Hans Eisler, Ernst Toch and many more artists and intellectuals," reports the Villa's website. Today the Villa is a historic monument and cultural institution fostering transatlantic artistic relations.
Of equal importance to displaced émigrés was the intellectual, fun-loving salon of the effervescent, witty actress turned screenwriter Salka Viertel. The Austrian-Hungarian émigré's home at 165 Mayberry Road off the Pacific Coast Highway (where she lived from 1928) was "the most important address in Los Angeles for the émigrés and others," according to the film critic John Russel Taylor, per Schnauber.
Viertel was famous for her weekly Sunday gatherings, where she entertained everyone from Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, Arnold Schoenberg to her close friend (and rumored girlfriend) Greta Garbo.
How to beat Hollywood at its own shallow game was a frequent topic of discussion. According to Viertel’s autobiography, "The Kindness of Strangers," at one point, Brecht tried to convince her to write a seemingly crowd-pleasing commercial hit, stating, "we could write our story in such a way that they [the studio] would not notice what a highbrow masterpiece it was."
On another occasion, as director Fred Zinneman was walking by Salka's home, he told Salka to draw the blackout curtains and stop the noise. The Washington Post's Michael Dirda writes, "As [Viertel’s biographer] Rifkind wryly observes, here were 'two Hollywood notables arguing in German about U.S. government blackout rules,' while a houseful of enemy aliens who had barely escaped their deaths in Europe let off steam. It must have been, from Salka's point of view, a thoroughly successful evening."
But Viertel’s home was not just a place to forget the troubles in Europe. It also became a main base for émigré efforts to help rescue those still trapped in Nazi occupied or threatened areas.
Famed Austrian director Ernst Lubitsch was also a noted host to his fellow German exiles. "He had a circle and a Sunday afternoon coffee klatch," John Waxman says. "He employed a lot of them. Marlene Dietrich was one of the people that went to this on a regular basis. And she said to Lubitsch, 'You know, it's great that you're bringing out the writers and the actors and the directors, but what about the people...the film editors, the make-up artists, all these guys that worked for us and got no name recognition. We need to start a fund for them.' And she did. She personally started another fund that brought out a whole other category of refugees."
The widening European diaspora displaced by the war quickly found their own niches in homes throughout Los Angeles. "There were cliques, like the French, the Brits, the Germans, the Austrians. They pretty much hung out together," Waxman says. "There was also the language barrier for a lot of them. Billy Wilder was very different. He didn't want to hang out originally because he wanted to learn English. The beginning of "Sunset Boulevard" is very apocryphal because he would hole up in his apartment and listen to sports broadcasts on the radio. That's how he learned English."
However, for those who wanted to continue speaking German there was the welcoming home of Franz and Alma Werfel at 610 North Bedford Drive. There was also the writer Bruno and Liesl Frank’s home at 515 Camden Drive. They made their guests Klaus and Erika Mann feel so at home that they effused in a letter:
"We were deeply moved. 'It’s like being in Munich' we claimed…everything was really very similar at the Franks, because these two people have the very rare talent and capability of creating an atmosphere around them. You always immediately feel at home."
Klaus and Erika Mann, in a letter written to out to writer Bruno and Liesl Frank
This feeling of comfort, belonging and intellectual stimulation would serve Hollywood’s émigrés well as many battled the horrors and sadness of being exiled from their homeland. As the exiled Austrian actress Gisela Werbezirk once said of her life in L.A., per Schnauber: “I am happy, but not exactly glad.”
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