Germans in "The Great Gatsby"

I'm watching the 1974 version of Gatsby, with Robert Redford, Maia Farrow, Bruce Dern, Karen Black, and Sam Waterston.  I forgot that one of the rumors about Gatsby is that he's German, and that's how he got all his money; he's related to the Kaiser. 
The woman who tells this to Nick Carraway, the narrator, whispers it, as if it's scandalous, which it would be in the 1920s, so soon after the Great War. 
We also know that Nick was in the war, so his reaction - or lack of one - is actually interesting.  He knows it's just a rumor, but if it isn't, he doesn't really seem to care.  Germans to him aren't really an enemy because, perhaps, he has dealt with real Germans, not just stereotyped versions as portrayed by the yellow press.

Six Stars

Woody Allen, "Annie Hall," 1977.

William Holden, "Born Yesterday," 1950

Judy Holliday, "Born Yesterday," 1950

Diane Keaton, "Annie Hall," 1977.

Eric von Stroheim, "Five Graves to Cairo," 1943.

Orson Welles, "The Third Man," 1949.

Stars Stars Stars

Jean Arthur, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," 1939.

Fred Astaire, "Silk Stockings," 1957.

Cyd Charrise, "Silk Stockings," 1957.

Harpo Marx, "A Night at the Opera," 1935.

Ray Milland, "The Uninvited," 1944.

Fay Wray, "Doctor X," 1932.

More Movie Star Sketches

Judy Garland, "The Pirate," 1948.

Gene Kelly, "An American in Paris," 1951.

Lauren Bacall, "Dark Passage," 1947.

Ingrid Bergman, "Casablanca," 1942.

Humphrey Bogart, "The Big Sleep," 1946.

Claudette Colbert, "The Palm Beach Story," 1942.

Bette Davis, "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex," 1939.

Greta Garbo, "Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise)" 1931.

Ava Gardner, "The Bribe," 1949.

Peter Lorre, "The Beast with Five Fingers," 1946.

Christopher Reeve, "Superman," 1978.

Lupe Velez "The Half-Naked Truth" 1932.

Irene Dunne, "Together Again," 1944.

"Good" Germans in 1955's "East of Eden"

Another Entry in my Continuing Series on Germans and German-Americans in Cinema

Director Elia Kazan's "East of Eden" is remembered primarily for James Dean's method acting.  This Cain and Abel story of two brothers, Cal (Dean) and Aron competing for the love of their father, Adam (Raymond Massey) and a girl (Julie Harris) is set in the early years of World War One.  Cal is perhaps the "bad" son, rebellious, while Aron is considered "good."   

A significant subplot involves the small framing town's reaction to German-Americans who live and work among them.

Gustav Albrecht (played by character actor Harold Gordon), a friend of Cal Trask and his family, is a shoemaker.  He speaks with a German accent that some in the town find amusing but not threatening.  Early in the film, amidst the patriotism that came when the Dough Boys first leave to fight, Gustav (or Gus, as some call him) is a trusted member of the community. 

But as the war drags on and more young boys are called up to fight, and replace the soldiers who have died, Gus's problems begin to mount.

Early in the film Gus and the Trasks begin worrying about rising tensions.  Gus expresses his disbelief at the war being Germany's fault, and when confronted with rumors of German atrocities he says "it's not true, especially for the good Germans."

As new recruits march through the town, a rock is thrown through Gus's shop window as someone yells for him to "go home."

At a carnival, a soldier gives a recruitment speech, mentioning "atrocities of the Hun."  Listening, Gus says they are "lies, all lies," and another person in the audience says "there's that German again, I'ld like to give him a piece of my mind."

A group follows Gus and try to get him alone by offering to buy him a drink - Gus calls one of them a "schweinhund" and pushes him.  The crowd, now a mob, follow Gus home and trample his prize rose bushes. 

Cal's brother Aron tries to placate the mob by reminding them they like Gus and his funny accent, but then someone presents Gus with a telegram reporting the death of a townswoman's son.  She accuses Gus of not being sorry, then of not being sorry enough.   A towns person says he is tired of Aron "sticking up for" the German, and questions Aron's patriotism because he hasn't enlisted yet.

The mob begins destroying the property, ripping up fences, as someone yells to Gus "this'll make you sorry."

Cal shows up and immediately pushes his way to Gus, and begins punching.  The sheriff shows up before things get too violent.  He calls everyone by name, calming the situation by subtly reminding everyone they were once all friends.  He tells Gus someone owes him an apology.

This film presents many contemporary issues for Germansn and German-Americans, in 1955.  Gus the comedic German, with a comical accent; Gus reaffirming his patriotism as a recent immigrant; and Gus having to defend his home country, and in effect his own recent past.  It's interesting that Gus never stops defending Germany.  His opinions that Germany wasn't the cause of the war, or guilty of atrocities to the extent claimed, put him in a minority in 1917, and in stark contrast to the more recent events of World War Two. 

I don't know how audiences would have reacted to Gus in 1955.  Would they be sympathetic to him, as many people thought Germany was responsible for World War One, just as it was for World War Two?  Or would they see the complexity of his situation, an immigrant who once fit in, now turned against because not of who he is, but simply because of where he was born?

It's an interesting subplot.  Germans and Germna-Americans on film in the 1950s often had to deal with the recent past, addressing the idea that they are or were "good" Germans, as opposed to the "bad" ones responsible for the war.  The prejudice Gus faces because of his birth reflects on Cal's identity of being the "bad" son, as opposed to the "good" Aron.  Is someone good or bad because of their birth?  Gus thinks not, and the film proves Cal maybe isn't bad either.

Why Mrs. Goethe?

An Examination of Mrs. Goethe, a German Housekeeper, in 1963's "The Thrill of it All"

Another Entry in my Continuing Series on Germans and German-Americans in Cinema

I'm accustomed to seeing Germans portrayed as mad scientists, cold-hearted businessmen, and of course Nazis.  But I was surprised by a different kind of role for a German in 1963's "The Thrill of it All," starring James Garner as Dr. Gerald Boyer and Doris Day as his wife Beverly.  The film was directed by Norman Jewison and written by Carl Reiner, with a story by Carl Reiner and Larry Gelbart.

Doris Day plays a housewife married to a successful doctor, James Garner.  Doris gets discovered by a soap manufacturer and she becomes the company's spokesperson, doing live commercials for a television show.  (The TV show features Carl Reiner in a variety of interesting roles, including a cowboy and a Nazi.)  Garner becomes jealous of his wife's success and is upset that she's away from home working so much.  In his opinion her work isn't as valuable as his work delivering children as an obstetrician.  He spends the last part of the film trying to make Doris jealous by pretending to have an affair.  She ultimately gives in to his demands and quits the very lucrative spokesperson job, preferring instead to be the wife of a doctor.

They are a well-to-do couple, with two children and a large house.  At the beginning of the film they have a maid, an older American woman, who seems perfectly good at taking care of the kids.  But there's a scene, after Day has begun her new job, where Garner accidentally enters the maid's room at night.  She reads this as an advance and is so appalled she quits.  It's all a stretch and not very funny.

Day hires a new maid, Mrs. Goethe, played by Lucy Landau, and for some reason she is German immigrant who speaks poor English and is befuddled by Day's and Garner's family life.  She's portly and bit homely, and she's unable to answer the phone correctly.  Garner calls to talk to Day, but when he introduces himself on the phone, the maid answers with "Dr. Boyer nicht home, he hospital."    She speaks to everyone with this mix of rudimentary German and pidgin English.    Later in the film she's unable to explain to the doctor that his wife is upstairs filming a commercial, and he walks in on the shoot, becoming angry that they are working in their bedroom (and disrupting his attempts at being amorous).  A few other times in the film she is the first to discover the chaos affecting the family, but her poor English leaves her unable to explain the situation to anyone correctly.  Instead she's left to mutter "ach du lieber" exasperatedly. 

I think this is very similar to the treatment other ethnic groups have received on film and in other media.  Japanese gardeners and houseboys in the 1930s, black maids from the 1930s to the 1950s, Chinese laundry men, Hispanic maids, black train porters - they all have been subtly and overtly degraded over time.  Germans have had a different experience, presented primarily as hard working immigrants, at first, but then almost uniformly as fascist enemies of America.  This portrait of Mrs. Goethe as a befuddled maid stands out as a strange anomaly. 

The choice of the maid's name, Mrs. Goethe, is also odd.  Goethe is one of Germany's great poets.  Why name a woman who can't speak any more than pidgin English and rudimentary German after such a great, well respected poet? 

"The Thrill of it All" came just 18 years after the end of World War Two, and I wonder how many Americans saw Mrs. Goethe as some kind of comeuppance for Germans.  It's a strange portrayal that provides some insight of what other ethnic groups on film have to deal with, even to this day.

"Casablanca" and the Last "Good" Germans?

There is an older German couple in "Casablanca" who are given a brief scene.  Karl, the German (or Austrian - it's never made clear, but he speaks German), brings the couple a bottle of good brandy to share a drink.  The couple is heading to America, but in the film they never say why they are leaving or how they got out of Germany.  

This older couple, who appear to be in their early sixties, are stereotypically cute.  They attempt to speak English and say "what watch" when they mean to ask the time.  (In German, "Uhr" means "clock," but it also means "time" and "o'clock.")  They call each other by very sweet nicknames in a mish-mosh of German and English.

What's interesting is that they have no interaction, at all, with the German soldiers in the film, particularly Major Strasser.  I think what the filmmakers are doing is reminding the audience that America wasn't at war with Germans like this older couple, who certainly had counterparts in America.  They could be any German-American's Oma und Opa.   We were at war with Nazis like Strasser.

Finally, much of the theme of "Casablanca," which came out in 1942, is about the need of the free people of the good Western nations to show unity against the Nazis and fascism.  "Good" Germans might still be included in that group, especially in 1942 America.  By 1943 I don't think there are any examples of any "good" Germans in any American film, and none would appear until well after the war.