Figuring Jewishness in Cukor's 'A Double Life'

Abstract

This study considers the ways in which Jewishness figures in the production of the 1947 film A Double Life, contextualized within Hollywood director George Cukor's personal experience, film oeuvre, and the post-World War II era in which it was released. Issues of cultural assimilation and discourses of gender, race, class, and ethnicity are evident in film form, content, and especially process, including casting, direction, narrative, and visual design. From the film's mobilization of blackface to its condemnation of "ethnic" femininity, this little-studied, Oscar-nominated thriller about a murderous Shakespearean actor offers valuable commentary on Jewish identity and anxieties in mid-twentieth-century America.