Cinema's Exiles

Watch a preview of CINEMA'S EXILES: FROM HITLER TO HOLLYWOOD. The film premieres on PBS stations in January 2009.

CINEMA’S EXILES: FROM HITLER TO HOLLYWOOD traces the experiences of the Jews who fled Nazi Germany and took refuge in Hollywood, and examines their impact on both the German and the American cinemas.

View a slideshow of the famed actors, directors and producers behind some of Hollywood's greatest films.

If you ask Franz Waxman’s son, John Waxman, to discuss his own life’s work–a library of music for motion pictures, one of the largest in the world– he immediately starts reminiscing about his father and the “Hollywood Sound”. There are very few people who remember this musical heritage–there are very few left who care.

How much do you know about the influence of Europe's exiled Jewish filmmakers on old Hollywood? Take our quiz.

As Hitler expands his territory in Europe, more and more of Germany's film professionals leave for Hollywood.

Called 'Billie' by his mother, a fan of William Cody, Wilder became a reporter for the yellow press when his father moved his family from rural Galicia to Vienna just before World War I.

Franz Waxman led a variety of musical lives as composer, conductor and impresario.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold elevated the status of film music from incidental accompaniment to a new art form. A successful composer on the Continent and protégé of impresario Max Reinhardt before emigrating to the United States, Korngold was a child prodigy who began composing at age 13.

Frederick Hollander (a.k.a Friedrich Hollaender) was born to German parents in London on October 18, 1896. His father Victor was a widely acclaimed composer of revues, operettas and popular songs, still known today for his "Kirschen in Nachbars Garten" and "Schaukellied."