A digital topography map in the Academy Museum’s new “Hollywoodland” exhibit showcases how Los Angeles transformed between 1900-1930. (photo by Rance Collins)

The Academy Museum’s “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital” opened on May 19. The exhibit is the first permanent exhibition at Los Angeles’ preeminent film museum. “Hollywoodland” honors the moguls, largely Jewish immigrants, who established the major studios of the so-called Golden Age.

“It details how the American movie industry, built predominantly by Jewish immigrants, transformed Los Angeles into the mythological concept of Hollywood, and it addresses the complex legacy that the studio system leaves behind,” director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Picture Jacqueline Stewart said.

The exhibit explores how MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount and others were founded by first-generation Americans who would come to redefine the American dream, all while making a modest California city into a metropolis. Between 1910 and 1930, the film industry drove unprecedented population growth, as L.A. ballooned from roughly 100,000 to 1.2 million people.

During this period, hundreds of movie companies were established, bought out and disbanded, leaving eight major studios in the wake of migration and construction.

“The goal of our exhibition is to show the inextricable dovetailing of these histories,” associate curator Dara Jaffe said.

The movie capital is indeed painstakingly explored in the “Hollywoodland” exhibit. A digital topography map serves as its centerpiece, tracking the growth of the city and the industry year-by-year. Eight accompanying panels tell the story of the studios, describing how a visionary like Carl Laemmle took part of the Hollywood hills and created the first studio tourist attraction in Universal – which put up bleachers and let guests watch as silent greats crafted early masterpieces – or how Adolf Zukor led Paramount Pictures in its heyday.

According to the studio’s panel, “Zukor aimed to elevate the artistic status of movies to gain social respectability otherwise out of reach for a Jewish immigrant.” A continuously-running, roughly 20-minute documentary plays along with the exhibit, narrated by Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz, whose grandfather wrote the 1941 classic “Citizen Kane,” expanding upon the idea. The film uses rare archival footage to illustrate how these Jewish leaders saw the industry, then in its infancy, as an opportunity to find respect in a country plagued with antisemitism. By the mid-1920s, half of all Americans went to the movies weekly, and the riches that followed industry leaders led to visits from all ranks of nobility – from U.S. presidents to European royals.

“Most of Hollywood’s founders were among [a] wave of Jewish immigrants, and recognized that the burgeoning movie business presented an opportunity to raise their marginalized status in an industry that didn’t enforce the same antisemitic barriers as many other professions,” Jaffe said.

The exhibit also looks at how the leaders attempted to assimilate with American society – presenting idealistic interpretations of suburban life, like those depicted in the MGM “Andy Hardy” film series. In the fictious worlds projected on screen, the U.S. was seen as uniformly middle class, white and presumedly Christian. Outside of occasional outliers, like Warner Bros.’ “The Life of Emile Zola” and 20th Century Fox’s “Gentleman’s Agreement,” the studio system largely steered clear of its founders’ ethnicities. Even as the seedier social issues of society were presented, like in “The Public Enemy” and other gangster flicks, the strict, self-imposed film Production Code made sure that the “all-American” ideals were held as the moralistic ideal.

The exhibit is available to all museum attendees. The Academy Museum, located at 6067 Wilshire Blvd., is open daily from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. For tickets and information, visit academymuseum.org.

“‘Hollywoodland’ is a labor of love that we’ve been working on for several years,” Jaffe said. “It’s foundational relevance to the industry on which this museum is built makes it a perfect debut permanent exhibition.”