'A World Film Fight': Behind the Scenes With Hollywood and Fascist Italy

• Published in: Film & history 2017-06, Vol.47 (1), p.4-17
• Main Author: Welky, David
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Dictators; Diplomacy; Fascism; Film history; Hays, Will; History; International relations; Learning transfer; Motion picture industry; Motion pictures; Mussolini, Benito; Philosophy; Production and direction
• ISSN: 0360-3695; 1548-9922; 1548-9922
• DOI: 10.1353/flm.2017.a668275

While he is understood to have played a key role in rationalizing the business of moviemaking, and in making movies respectable by selling the idea that they were a glamorous yet moralistic form of entertainment, the lack of scholarship on Hays makes it difficult to say exactly how he spent his twenty-three years in office.2 With studio executives' interests in mind, Hays took the lead in preserving Hollywood's profitable relationship with Italy by whatever means possible. only when the Fascists, pursuing their own, nationalistic priorities, made it nearly impossible to do business in their country did Hays and the studios take a principled stand not for democracy or individual freedoms, but rather for the free market-a market in which Americans could sell their products anywhere in the world without interference. Because American studios drew about half of their profits from overseas markets, industry leaders conceded the need to do business with unsavory sorts lest their businesses, and their stockholders, sink into financial oblivion. Italy's nationalistic, protectionist measures challenged this nascent free-trade philosophy. [...]the State Department feared that accepting Italy's film restrictions without a fight would encourage other countries to discriminate against Hollywood and other American industries. According to Kaster's sources, Italian theater owners were rumbling about raising the dubbing tax, this time from 30,000 lire per picture to a punitive 100,000 lire ($5,000). According to Variety, 30 December 1936, MGM could export $298,000, Paramount $126,500, Twentieth Century-Fox $105,300, Warner Bros. $101,750, United Artists $92,500, Columbia $77,500, RKO $75,000, and Universal $41,500.