Mrs. O’Leary (Alice Brady) is a symbol of the American pioneering spirit in In Old Chicago (1937) while Mamma Corleone (the late jazz singer Morgana King) raises a brood of law-breakers in The Godfather (1972)

The musical Cabaret, play and film, got it wrong via one of its popular songs: It’s Hollywood movies—not money—which makes the world go around.

Since its inception in the early to mid-1920s, Hollywood, that large plot of land in central L.A., became, like many an American business, a subject of awe for the world. It benefitted from American inventiveness (via Thomas Edison), American creativity (via filmmaker D.W. Griffith) and American technological advancements (via sound recording, special effects, lighting techniques, etc., which continue to the present day, e.g. the Steadicam in the mid-1970s).

French brothers Louis and Auguste Lumiere are considered co-creators of the medium along with Edison. The Italians are credited with inventing the movie spectacle (Cabiria, 1913). And from 1917 to the early 1930s, the Germans at UFA Studios introduced the first great film genre (Expressionism).

But it was America–with its unique mixture of ingenuity, naiveté, sentimentality, and crass commercialism—which set a standard of movie mythology which nations around the world admired both then and now. Actors became “stars.” Our films promoted symbolic figures: the gangster, the cowboy, the business titan. And although the studio system stifled creativity both for directors and actors (treating them like chattel), the sheer, over-the-top spectacle of movies-as-product, with films being mass-produced like shiny new cars on an assembly line, added to our sense of manifest destiny via movie screens. People around the world admired the fantasy worlds which Hollywood promoted.  Still do.

Even ethnic and racial stereotypes were unblinkingly accepted.  It wasn’t until the mid-1960s, with the collapse of the studio system, that audiences began to hunger less for frothy Hollywood fantasies than for more realistic subjects. The Europeans, including the Italians via 1940s neo-realism, had already led the way. It would take another near-60 years—that is, with the 2020 George Floyd protests—before American movies fully committed to erasing gross stereotypes.

Not, of course, for Italian Americans.

These musings were brought about by, of all things, a viewing of the 1937 Hollywood epic, In Old Chicago. What immediately struck me was the treatment of its main characters, the O’Leary family. Yes, Mrs. O’Leary (Alice Brady, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress) had a bit of a clichéd Hollywood Irish brogue (though not overly so). Yet her two sons (Don Ameche and Tyrone Power) did not. And although a female German character whom the third son weds has a Teutonic twang, she and the rest of the (admittedly thinly drawn) characters are treated with dignity.

I can’t think of any Hollywood epic back in the day which treated a blatantly “ethnic” family so even-handedly. Indeed, over the decades, and even when a particular film may have been mediocre, Hollywood slowly, steadily moved forward via humanizing various ethnic and racial groups even more deliberately: Gentleman’s Agreement (1947, Jews); I Remember Mama (1948, Norwegians); No Way Out (1950, African Americans); Sayonara (1957, Asian Americans); and Cheyenne Autumn (1964, Native Americans).

And what did Italian Americans get at the tail end of this otherwise positive movement? The Godfather (1972), aka, the gift that keeps on giving. Puzo and Coppola’s roman a barf mythologized our community on the big screen, too—not as admirable Americans, as in the examples listed above, but as shady “families” undercutting American law-and-order. And, if not that, there is always the Italian buffoon image (Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny, 1992) to counter-balance the idea that every Italian surnamed citizen in America has a handy mobster in his or her closet.

Note: In Old Chicago does show Mrs. O’Leary’s cow accidentally knocking over a lantern, thus setting the city on fire. Yet on October 5th, 1998, after testimony from local historians, the Chicago City Council exonerated Mrs. O’Leary from any guilt via that horrific event. According to Alderman Ed Burke: “The press (of the time) was eager to find Mrs. O’Leary a scapegoat as a working-class woman and as an immigrant. They always found it comfortable to vilify Irish Catholics who had not quite assimilated into American society.”

(Incidentally, this same alderman, Ed Burke, was indicted for corruption in 2019 and is now awaiting trial. Apparently, Burke assimilated quite well.)

It should be noted that in the film, Mrs. O’Leary is NOT demonized. In fact, the film ends with her sitting on a boat in Lake Michigan as she watches the city she loves burn to the ground. The cinematographer practically gives her a halo as she delivers a teary-eyed speech about the fighting spirit of the O’Leary clan.

My question: When do Italian Americans get the chance to deconstruct Hollywood’s hatchet job on our community? -BDC