Page 22 THE VILLADOM TIMES III • December 12, 2012 obtained film rights even before the English translation was released, and pre-production work started casting a young Clark Gable as the Armenian hero. Mehmed Münir Ertegün, the Turkish ambassador, contacted the U.S. State Department and urged that the film not be produced. “If the movie is made, Turkey will launch a worldwide campaign against it,” Ertegün told MGM. “It rekindles the Armenian Question. The Armenian Question is settled.” The regime of Kemal Ataturk took power after World War I and was not directly responsible for the Armenian murders, but agitated to see that the massacres were not subsequently publicized. Ertegün also obliquely threatened the Jews. He said, “Jewish firms which maintain commercial relations with our country will also suffer if they fail to stop this hostile propaganda.” The film died on the cutting room floor. A few years later, more censorship hit Hollywood from a source perhaps even more contaminated. James Whale, a British veteran of World War I and the director of the original “Frankenstein” and “The Invisible Man,” was setting up to film “The Road Back,” based on the anti-violence and anti-military novel of Erich Maria Remarque, author of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” The year was 1937, and while the worst of Hitler’s atrocities were yet to come, his re-militarization of Germany and the Nuremburg Laws restricting Jews from the professions and from intermarriage with Aryans were already on the books. “The Road Back” was published in 1931 before Hitler came to power, and was anti-militarist rather than specifically anti-Nazi. The hard-core German monarchist and militarist in the book is probably based on Hermann Ehrhardt. Ehrhardt despised Hitler and was targeted for assassination by Hitler during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. Remarque was a pacifist and an internationalist. He detested Hitler even more than Ehrhardt did, and got out of Germany as soon as Hitler came to power. Remarque was a marked man. The Nazi government later executed Remarque’s beloved sister Erna just to get back at him, and then sent him a bill for the cost of the execution. The Los Angeles consul for the Third Reich, George Gyssling, got on the phone to Universal, which had produced the smash 1930 hit film version of “All Quiet on the Western Front” and said the film gave an “untrue and distorted picture of the German people” and tried to get it squelched. Remarque was a German World War I veteran and so were the good guys in his book, as were the bad guys. The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the Screen Actors Guild stood up for Whale, and the film was completed as Whale had intended, or just slightly watered down. “The Road Back” received generally favorable reviews. Then the studio knuckled under to the Nazi demands behind Whale’s back, cut some scenes, reshot new material, and released a film about a tragic era that was essentially a comedy. The move flopped, and Whale was furious. Universal tried to dump Whale and then assigned him to a series of B movies, one of which, “The Man in the Iron Mask,” was a hit. Whale left Hollywood for good shortly before Pearl Harbor and ultimately committed suicide due to health problems. The Chinese, as the successors to the Turks and the Nazi Germans as censors of American films, have a lot going for them and a lot going against them. American treatment of Asians has been cursory or negative, except as the villains in war movies. A recent Chinese-American-produced PBS TV documentary with cuts from American films offered the American audience the 1961 musical “Flower Drum Song.” Of the five featured players, Nancy Kwan was half-Chinese. James Shigeta and Jack Soo were Japanese-American. Miyoshi Umeki was Japanese, and Juanita Hall was white, black, and Indian. Benson Fong, billed sixth, and some of the extras were of Chinese ancestry. Reiko Sato, a JapaneseAmerican, did the dance sequence in “Love, Look Away.” Lena Horne, an African-American, dubbed Sato’s singing voice. The film got favorable reviews because it was a “great break-through for Chinese culture in America.” The Japanese and the African-Americans also did okay. The Chinese have a right to sing the blues, but turning the Asian villains of a juvenile slaughter film from Chinese into North Koreans is not the nicest way to handle it. The Chinese censors need to reflect that dimwits with lots of guns cannot tell one Asian from another and sometimes have bad impulse control. Guy Aoki, head of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans in Burbank, protested the concept of having white kids with delinquent potential bump off Asian “invaders” as a form of entertainment. He is undoubtedly right. Hollywood does not need Chinese censors any more than Hollywood in days of yore needed Turkish or Nazi censors. Hollywood needs a conscience transplant from the rest of America. Hollywood movie remakes are seldom in the same league with the original films, but one recent effort has raised some concerns. I have always had a favorite fantasy about Hollywood: Don Siegel, who brought in a roster of action films, walks up to John Milius, embraces him, and says, “It is you who will console us for the death of Sam Pekinpah!” To understand why this is amusing, the one must know that Josef Hadyn said Beethoven would console everyone after the early death of Mozart. It would also be important to understand that Siegel made “Dirty Harry,” Pekinpah made “The Wild Bunch,” and Milius made the original “Red Dawn.” The 1984 version of “Red Dawn” has elite Soviet paratroopers wafting down out of a clear blue sky to invade a rustic, isolated western American town and subjecting the community to the usual Soviet program: harsh martial law with the outright murder of Americans who disagree. This stuff really happened to the Poles, the Czechs, and the Hungarians, so there is a reality reference, especially since the film was made while the Berlin Wall was still standing. In the film, some of the high school students steal guns and take to the woods and start killing the invaders with the limited help of U.S. armed forces. This movie was calibrated as one of the most violent films ever shown in theaters and was, among other things, the first film rated PG-13. I refuse to ruin the ending, but if elite Russian troops were that easy to kill, the people in Vladivostok would now speak German. The new “Red Dawn” has high school students defending rustic isolated western America from North Koreans! How did the North Koreans invade North America? When MGM originally planned the movie in 2008, the invading force was supposed to have been Chinese, but the film had to be temporarily shelved due to financial problems. The film’s backers claimed the villains were switched from Chinese to North Koreans to maintain access to Chinese box offices. The Chinese claim they told the American filmmakers to expect a boycott and other trouble if the Chinese were shown as military invaders of the United States. Never mind Tibet. This Chinese arm-twisting has an odd ring of veracity, because it has happened in Hollywood before, though the long-suffering Chinese, whose nationals were often played by unconvincing whites -- anyone remember Katherine Hepburn in “Dragon Seed”? -- were not the culprits. In 1933, Franz Werfel published a book called “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.” The book was a novelized version of the Armenian resistance to Turkish massacres during World War I. Werfel’s book was notably fair. He mentions a sometimes drastic Armenian resistance movement as the trigger for the vastly overdone and outrageous Turkish response, and mentions that Kaiser Wilhelm’s German diplomats and missionaries tried to save Armenians if at all possible, with at least some survivors. The book was a major literary success. It was banned in newly Nazi Germany after initial praise due to pressure from the Turkish government, but the English translation sold 34,000 copies in the first two weeks. Hollywood took notice. Irving Thalberg of MGM had Hollywood gets some new censors Public hearings scheduled (continued from page 11) of the filing. The council decided to address backyard driveways before a request is made, borough officials noted. Ordinance 1012 states, “In all residential zones, all driveways accessory to residential dwellings shall comply with the following requirements…No driveway shall provide for access to or from a public street through the rear yard of any property.” Introduced at the governing body’s last public meeting, Ordinance 1013 includes a detailed fee schedule for licenses. According to that schedule, restaurants that serve 25 to 49 diners would pay $200 for a license in 2013 and $250 in 2014 and beyond. Restaurants that serve 50 to 100 diners would pay $250 next year and $300 afterward, and restaurants that serve over 100 patrons would pay $300 next year and $350 afterward. The fee for bakeries, butchers, delicatessens, and school catering would be $200 in 2013 and $225 afterward. License fees for convenience stores would be $150 in 2013 and $200 afterward, and fees for nursery/day care and dairy would be $175 in 2013 and $200 beyond. The fee for dairy-milk would be $50 in 2013 and later rise to $75. License fees for ice cream and mobile vendors would be $100 in 2013 and would remain at that rate afterward. The fee for keeping poultry or fowl and for special temporary licenses would be $50 for 2013 and beyond. Fees for pet shops/grooming/boarding would be $150 next year and rise to $175 afterward. Licenses for handling produce would be $150 next year and beyond, and fees for handling prepackaged items would be $80 next year and beyond. Supermarket license fees would be $800 in 2013 and afterward. Late fees would be assessed at half of the license fee. The ordinance would also establish fees for plan reviews. New establishments would pay $150 for a review, while those seeking alterations or modifications and those effecting a change of ownership would pay $100. The public hearings on both of these proposed ordinances will be held as part of the Ho-Ho-Kus Council’s Dec. 18 meeting. That session will be held at 8 p.m. in borough hall, 333 Warren Avenue in Ho-Ho-Kus. J. CRUSCO Tyler to remain involved (continued from page 11) senior citizens, and school groups. In addition, she has served as an executive board member with the Northwest Bergen Emergency Medical Association and as a delegate to the New Jersey First Aid Council. She served at the World Trade Center in 1993 and on Sept. 11 and 12, 2001. She has been active during many natural disasters and power failures. In 2010, Tyler spearheaded a successful fund drive for the purchase of a lightning detection system. She has received the Dr. Harry Brandeis Memorial Community Service Award for her work in the Borough of Ho-Ho-Kus. This award, which was named for a respected Bergen County physician and philanthropist, is presented by the Community Resource Council in Hackensack to individuals who have made significant contributions to the community. Raised in Rutherford, Tyler grew up in a large family. She coached all three of her daughters’ softball and basketball teams in the Ho-Ho-Kus/Saddle River Recreation Leagues. She enjoys playing softball and volleyball, hiking, horseback riding, snowmobiling, and jet skiing.