The "B" movie goes to war in Hitler, beast of Berlin.

Miller, Cynthia J.

During the 1930s, the neighborhood movie house was a place of refuge for many--the pressures and strains of the world vanished amidst the laughter, thrills, and chills of the Golden Era of the "B" movie. In the world outside, people were weighed down with the burdens of the era--living with memories of the family, friends, and neighbors who died in World War I; struggling to survive the effects of the Great Depression; and cautiously witnessing the strife of the Spanish Civil War--but once inside the movie house doors, the tensions of everyday life melted away as the "Bs" brought low-budget action, suspense, comedy, and melodrama into the lives of the movie-going masses. With a shriek, a pratfall, or a fiendish glare, "B" movies served up extra helpings of the over-the-top escapism that Americans craved. By the end of the decade, however, the boundaries between the world of the cinema and the world outside began to erode. The question of whether or not to once again become involved in Europe's recurring struggles was beginning to polarize popular sentiment, and, as the conflicts in Europe and Asia escalated, the film industry once again engaged with the more serious affairs of the world.

Hollywood's "Poverty Row," known for its quick, low-budget "B" productions pandering to desires for over-the-top entertainment, produced a small film, Hitler, Beast of Berlin (1939), that played a striking role in the national tug-of-war over military preparedness. While other films of the interwar era whispered words of fear or caution in the ears of American moviegoers, Beast of Berlin screamed--it mocked, shocked, and menaced in defiance of the Third Reich. Dismissed by critics as an artistic flop, but a masterful work of propaganda (Crowther, Morrison, Thirer), Beast of Berlin combined images depicting life inside the Third Reich and slap-in-the-face, exploitation-style public relations to create one of the first few blatantly interventionist films of the pre-war years and also one of the first to openly cast the Nazi regime in a villainous light. The film brought vivid, tangible oppression onto the screens and into the lives of theater-goers in support of U.S. involvement in the European conflict.

Produced by Ben Judell in 1939, Hitler, Beast of Berlin was one of the inaugural efforts of the small, independent Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC)--which, in 1943, would become the infamous Producers Releasing Corporation. When the German invasion of Poland (September 1939) produced widespread concern in Hollywood, Judell's low-budget studio was one of the first to act, and it did so in sensationalist form, setting aside other projects to rush into production of Hitler, Beast of Berlin, based on the novel and screenplay, Goose Step (n.d.) by Broadway producer-director Shepard Traube. In line with the studio's lowbrow dedication to "high entertainment and exploitation values" (Fernett 99), Judell changed the title to the more dynamic Hitler, Beast of Berlin, hoping to capitalize on the notoriety of the 1918 film, Kaiser: Beast of Berlin, which, during the previous world-wide struggle, had incited audiences to anti-German riots in several cities. Subsequently the PDC project became Beasts of Berlin, but as public sentiment mounted in favor of the Allied cause, the "Hitler" title shouted at audiences from marquees and lobby posters. At the time of its official release date (Oct. 15, 1939), Beast of Berlin was a 'hot' item, regardless of its "B" status. Cited as pro-war, inflammatory, and offensive to Germany--it was quickly sanctioned by the Production Code Administration (PCA) and censorship boards in several states. After a month of editing and title-changing, it reopened to reviewer praise as the first fiction feature to depict the terrors of life inside the Fuhrer's Reich.

Hollywood and Intervention

Before 1936, the idea of meddling in world affairs was a complex and unpopular one, and it would continue to be so until it became clear that intervention was unavoidable. At home, pressures and tensions ran high--the German American Bund, with about 25,000 dues-paying members, carried out a high-profile, often volatile campaign for neutrality from a pro-German political, while influential figures such as Charles Lindberg and Senator Gerald Nye (R 1926-1944) would soon create and support the nation's most powerful isolationist group, the America First Committee. By 1937, the political lines were drawn. On one side, President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned in his Quarantine Speech (October 15, 1937): "If those things [war] come to pass in other parts of the world, let no one imagine that America will escape...." On the other side, Senator Nye spoke for America's isolationists:

 There can be no objection to any hand our government
 may take which strives to bring world peace to the world
 so long as that hand does not take 130,000,000 people
 into another world death march. I very much fear that
 we are once again being caused to feel that the call is
 upon America to police a world that chooses to follow
 insane leaders ... Once again we are baited to thrill to a
 call to save the world. (Akers 81-82)

With the formal outbreak of war in Europe in September of 1939, the debate in the art, literature, and film communities took a more tangible form. Roosevelt still publicly pledged neutrality, but Hollywood was already oriented toward interventionism (Birdwell). As Allen Rostron points out, the advance of fascism and the outbreak of war in Europe offered enticing subject matter for films: "Wars have obvious dramatic potential, and the studios knew a story 'ripped from the headlines' could draw audiences" (85). At the same time, studios had tangible reasons for their caution. Overseas box-office receipts were a substantial part of their profits, while at home most of the heartland was fervently isolationist. Films stepping too far into controversial territory risked hostile reactions, including censorship.

And censorship was active in the late 1930s. The presumed power of the movies made their content a hot issue. Scores of cities and many states had set up censorship boards early in the century, and, in the late interwar era, they were becoming more active. Fearing federal censorship or a break up of the film industry, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) preached for Hollywood to purvey only "pure entertainment"--wholesome films that avoided social and political issues. The Production Code, which imposed stringent restrictions on motion picture portrayals of a wide range of subjects, political and moral, had largely been ignored since its inception in 1930, but it was reinvigorated in 1934, causing a sharp cutback in the treatment of social and political issues by the major studios (Bernstein). The war was an irresistible subject for Hollywood, but it also threatened the doctrine of "pure entertainment." But, as the nation geared for battle, the movies became a prime instrument for public persuasion--so much so that Joseph Breen, the head of the Production Code Administration, accused Hollywood (and in particular the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League) of an attempt to "capture the screen of the United States for Communistic propaganda purposes" (Koppes and Black 22).

In 1939 Warner Bros. broke through the barrier on political topics and premiered the controversial Confessions of a Nazi Spy, which claimed in melodramatic fashion that Germany sought to conquer the world. The picture's release netted a host of problems for the studio: an injunction from the German-American Bund; official protest from the German Ambassador, Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff; and threats on the lives of Jack Warner and the film's star, Edward G. Robinson (Shane 40, Birdwell 76). Shot in less than a week, PDC's low-budget but even more riveting Hitler, Beast of Berlin was scheduled to open soon after, but it ran into opposition from the Production Code Administration as well as from local censorship boards. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York wanted the name "Hitler" deleted from the title (Fernett 103). The war still had not hit close enough to home, and the film's detractors felt it was offensive to Germans and German-Americans alike. Chicago and Providence turned the film down completely, as an organized opposition to the film gathered steam. After a title change to Beasts of Berlin and a wide range of edits, including the deletion of several remarks about Roosevelt, the film opened in New York in late November. Shortly after its opening, a reviewer for "Box Office" cited the film as being: "a timely picture, filmed with the realization of what was happening in Germany" (Fernett 103). The stage was then set for the appearance of a rapid succession of pro-intervention films, to include Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (United Artists, 1940), I Married a Nazi (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1940), and A Yank in the R.A.F. (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1941). In 1939, though, only six titles in all dealt directly with Germany and the European situation, and, of those, all but Hitler, Beast of Berlin were tales of espionage (Television Spy, Espionage Agent, The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt, They Made her a Spy, and Confessions of a Nazi Spy).

The Rhetoric of Intervention

Propaganda is a vague concept--or as Koppes and Black note "Propaganda is a bit like pornography--hard to define, but most people think they will know it when they see it" (49)--and in Hitler, Beast of Berlin, critics, censors, and audiences alike knew what they were seeing. In classic "B" movie fashion, viewers are dragged headlong into a Manichean battle of good and evil, absolute right versus absolute wrong, where characters, dialogue, and ideological positions all work in concert to drive home the point that intervention in Europe is the only logical and moral course of action.

The film focuses on a small group in Germany's underground actively resisting growing Nazi power until the male members are apprehended and sent to a concentration camp. Roland Drew plays Hans Memling, the group's dedicated ideological leader. Hans is a former pilot in the German military, and his combat background rescues his anti-Nazi position from that of easy-to-write-off idealist, illustrating that his resistance to the Third Reich is rooted in moral and political principles rather than in pacifism or fear.

Alan Ladd (as Karl) and Steffi Duna (as Hans' wife, Elsa) play the doubters--sympathetic, yet raising all the arguments, questions, and "what ifs" that a typical isolationist might entertain about the necessity of intervention, the costs of the fight for democracy, and the ethical dilemma of sacrificing individual happiness and comfort for the vague concept of a greater good. With a lack of pretense and subtlety typical of "B" movies, the film blatantly foregrounds doubts about the wisdom of resistance in order to allay them, as Elsa asks "Will democracy happen in our lifetime? Are we fighting for something we'll never see the results of?" Karl presents the well-intentioned counter to intervention, taking an academic and historic perspective that there has not been a tyrant in history who has ruled permanently--that, eventually, this Nazi regime, too, shall pass. Hans admonishes him that "people have to want democracy" and that Germans must experience true self-government in order to know what it is really like and be willing to rise up in its defense. He responds to Karl's fear of the futility of a small resistance effort by reminding him (optimistically) that "We have friends everywhere."

And finally, Anna (Greta Granstedt) is the modern American-type woman who has a sense of duty to her country and political convictions that override any feminine stereotype. Anna is paired with Ladd's doubting Karl, in parallel to Hans and the fearful Elsa. Strong, independent, and dedicated, Anna places her ideal of the greater good before personal happiness. When Karl asks her to marry him, she says no--she needs to continue to work for the Cause: "If we marry, the state will demand children of us. That's what a woman is for in the New Germany." Anna chooses "the fight" over marriage and children as her means of resisting Nazi ideology.

Supporting characters run the gamut of good to evil--from corrupt, high-ranking Gestapo officers, driven by ego and embodying the "insanity" and lack of reason that would later be used to characterize the Third Reich, to a sympathetic Storm Trooper who is punished for rejecting the brutality of the concentration camps yet still clings to the notion that "All will be corrected in time. Hitler will see that justice be done to all people." This strategy of creating a contrast of good Germans versus evil Germans--the humane, yet faithful Storm Trooper, members of the resistance, and the dissatisfied but compliant men and women townspeople, contrasted against corrupt lawyers and dogmatic military officers-was also an effective means of assuring that Hitler, Beast of Berlin did not fall into the Production Code's "hate film" category and be subject to further sanctions and editing, as the "national feelings" section of the code required that "the history, institutions, prominent people and citizenry of other nations, shall be represented fairly" (Koppes and Black 29). And "fairness," in the case of motion pictures, meant that no group--be it national, ethnic, political, or occupational--could be portrayed as innately, overarchingly, evil. According to the code, immorality could be attributed to particular individuals within the Nazi regime but not wholesale across the German people.

The necessary code-satisfying "fairness" is established early in the film; it opens with newsreel footage of an ominous sea of Storm Troopers parading by torchlight with Nazi flags flying, blended into fictional scenes of average townspeople complying with the Nazi salute but with resentful looks, subtle head shaking, and downcast eyes. Their demeanor forecasts the unrest of the storyline, which begins in a secret room where members of the underground resistance are printing flyers to be disguised as official leaflets. The text reads:

 To all Peace-Loving Germans: The National Socialist
 Party is leading the German people to destruction and
 war. Hitler and his murderers have suppressed the
 true state of world opinion concerning what is happening
 within Germany. The entire world is horrified
 by the brutalities that have been visited upon our once
 civilized nation. This constant betrayal of the people
 can lead to but one end--complete annihilation of
 the German nation.

The rhetoric here is designed to convey an alignment between the audience and "real" Germans. It alludes to the horrors of the Nazi regime while, at the same time, reinforcing the notion that "civilized" Germans, who undoubtedly share the moral convictions of middle-class American filmgoers, are desperately unaware of foreign support.

As the film continues, so does its appeal to democracy and similarity on various social and ideological levels. Bracketed vignettes provide dialogue from characters representing sectors significant to U.S. audiences about Hitler's war machine undermining the nation's resources and the economy--a woman in a grocery store complains bitterly that, under the Third Reich, food prices have gone up while quality has gone down; rail workers grumble about the destruction of independent unions. A church sermon adds the issue of religious freedom to the mix when a priest reminds his parishioners that "dissenters are suffering and dying to keep the love of God in the hearts of your children and your children's children." Even nature is invoked to support intervention, when--during a picnic--Elsa contemplates the tree she's lying under and comments "This is the Germany we love. This tree has been here since before Hitler and Goebels, and it will be here long after they're gone ... Perhaps if they thought of that, they'd take it down."

The counter to these positive images is, of course, demonizing images of hostile, aggressive, overtly anti-American Gestapo and Storm Troopers. Stark lighting, melodramatic dialogue, and harsh camera angles invoke the power of the "B" film to create menacing Nazi figures, eager to display their military power. When one trooper asks another: "Do you think there's going to be another world war?" His companion responds: "Let it come--today, we have the greatest army in the world. Today the German people are united. The English will never fight us."

When the subject of world war is once again introduced, the camp's commanding officer tells his subordinates that he welcomes the prospect of battle. When his newspaper is delivered, he reads aloud: "Roosevelt appeals to Hitler for peaceful solution" and tosses the paper to the floor with scorn. It is clear that the avoidance of confrontation, either through diplomacy or isolation, is seen by the Third Reich's true believers as a sign of weakness. While several of these anti-Roosevelt scenes were allowed to remain in the final cut, one, in which the Colonel refers to Roosevelt as a "meddling fool" was excised by censors (Rostron).

In another scene, a direct confrontation takes place between Hans and the concentration camp's commanding officer. After several days of numbing detention, an exhausted Hans is summoned for an "interview." The Colonel, who served with Hans in the army, attempts to turn his loyalties: "At Versailles, the rest of the world robbed Germany, the Fatherland, from everything we hold dear--our possessions and our honor. Now, with Hitler's leadership and direction, Germany holds its head high." Hans resists, and ultimately counters: "If I find myself in a mad house and I'm still sane, I cannot believe I must submit myself to the rule of a lunatic!" In response to this cri de coeur, he is then dragged away to be "re-educated."

Image Politics

Continuing the trend which had begun in the films of WWI, and which had also been heavily used during the Spanish Civil War, Hitler, Beast of Berlin used "factual" footage to blur the line between fiction and reality. Utilized primarily at the film's beginning and end, this footage frames the scripted drama in ways that are familiar to the viewing experiences of American audiences who were regular consumers of the newsreel series "March of Time." Beast of Berlin opens with newsreel scenes of storm troopers parading through small towns, dominating the otherwise peaceful landscape. These clips are intermingled with dramatizations of women, children, and elderly townspeople with wary demeanors, offering reluctant salutes--delivering an image of the Third Reich as a grim force choking the flow of everyday German life. At film's end, Hans, Elsa, and their new baby escape to Switzerland. As Elsa begs him to stay, Hans attempts to explain to her why he must leave her, their child, and their newfound safety to return home. A montage of newsreel images of warfare and death support his admonishment that they can never truly be free as long as Germany is a dictatorship. The scene closes with Elsa winning him over by reminding him that "Here, you are free to tell the rest of the world what is happening in Germany and that what is going on does not speak the hearts of the German people."

While the controversial Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) earlier that fall was the first anti-Nazi film produced by a major studio and the film industry's call to consciousness for audiences about the Nazi threat in America, Beast of Berlin was the first to actually dramatize horrific Nazi excesses. Its scenes in concentration camps were considered inflammatory to the Hitler regime at a time when diplomatic solutions were still being entertained, and many were lost to censorship edits (Rostron). Still, remaining scenes effectively convey the hopelessness and brutality of the early camps. Arriving prisoners are told they are under "protective arrest," considered enemies of the state until proven otherwise. At intake, they are fingerprinted, weighed, and measured--objectified as the sum totals of so much flesh. Once processed, they are beaten, humiliated, exercised in the yard, or worked on road crews until they drop from exhaustion and malnourishment.

As the resistance members acclimate to the barracks, an already established prisoner is pointed out to them as being "not right"--insane. He shuffles through the barracks like a robot, disoriented and unaware of his surroundings. The ensuing dialogue reveals that his arrest was at the hands of his own son, who had joined the Hitler regime: "When he found out his son joined the Nazis, he tried to shoot him" rather than see his offspring betray basic German values and ideals. The old man is broken--handed over in scorn by the son he tried to save. When the two later meet in the barracks, the father pleads "Wilhelm! Take off that uniform! Please!" The soldier reacts with scorn, grabbing his father by the shirt and hurling him out onto the floor and out into the yard with the other prisoners--a vivid symbol of families torn apart by brutal dogmatism.

Another polarizing scene, illustrating the Nazi threat to the fabric of society, shows a barracks guard tearing the rosary beads from around the neck of a priest and crushing them. A close-up shows the guard's boot heel smashing the beads to bits, callously shattering the priest's hope and faith underfoot, as well as demonstrating that Catholicism--or any other competing ideology--is powerless against the Nazi regime.

The harshness of the Third Reich is also made tangible through depictions of the prisoners' quarters. The barracks are concrete and barren, consisting only of bunks with a water trough for cleaning and drinking in the middle of the room. The spectre of the ominous "Room 14" where "instruction," "convincing," and interrogation occur, hangs over the prisoners. As the disappearance of several prisoners illustrates, it is often a place from which there is no return. When one of the resistance supporters fails to reappear in the barracks, Hans demands to know what happened to him. The guard smiles broadly, "He fell down the stairs and broke his neck" and then becomes menacing: "And if you don't mind your business, the same could happen to you!" Later, when Hans defies the commanding officer, he also is taken off-camera to Room 14 and beaten senseless while his fellow captives listen to his screams. When he is subsequently returned to view, barely able to stand, he is forced into a torture box--an upright coffin with only a barred opening across the face--and left alone murmuring Elsa's name.

Exploitation Goes to War

Mysterious deaths ... implements of torture ... shrieks of pain ... this sort of gut-wrenching, "B" movie sensationalism was not unfamiliar to Ben Judell, who came to Producer's Distributing with a track record in exploitation films. Prior to filming Beast of Berlin, his credits included a trio of 1938 scandal flicks: Rebellious Daughters, Delinquent Parents, and Slander House, followed, in 1939, by pulp shockers Torture Ship, Buried Alive, and Invisible Killer, all produced either during or immediately after work on Hitler, Beast of Berlin (Dixon). Suspense, terror, and melodrama drove the thin plots of these low-budget pictures electrified by fiendish killers and mad scientists. Judell's flair for exploitation led Hitler, Beast of Berlin to make its strongest mark on the politics of pre-war films. The film's promotional strategy was an odd mixture of the approach taken for earlier films like Three Comrades (1938) and Blockade (1938), each of which were promoted by campaigns that expressly disavowed any propagandistic intent yet utilized a sensational publicity approach generally reserved for mainstream exploitation films. The main title image of Hitler, Beast of Berlin announced that it reflected no bias, prejudice, or hatred of any individual, group, or nation; a critic for the New York Sun reported that this disclaimer prompted a roar of laughter (Creelman). The movie explicitly depicted brutal atrocities suffered by the resistance heroes as well as verbal abuse and scorn toward not only the resistance but Jews, Catholics, and, of course, faint-hearted Americans.

Similarly, the press kit for Beast of Berlin contained a remarkable combination of material urging aggressive exploitation of anti-Nazi sentiment while, at the same time, denying vehemently that the film took any position for or against Nazism. The posters and advertisements prepared for the film contained intimidating images of ominous Gestapo officers standing over bloody and beaten prisoners: "A wail of anguish from a nation in chains" screamed the copy. The ads described the film as "written with the hearts' blood of innocent people" and made "as a monster ravishes a continent" while, at the same time, every prepared review and publicity story in the studio took pains to disclaim that the film reflected any partisan intent: "Hitler, Beast of Berlin is not propaganda. It is not a preachment for or against Nazism. It is not a screen editorial. It does not violate good taste nor is it in any manner offensive." In a prime example of this hypocritical juxtaposition of damnation and denial, one sentence found in the promotional materials described the film as "shorn of all propaganda and without prejudice" while, at the same time, previewing the storyline as depicting the saga of a fearless young German risking all to bring down the Nazi regime so that his unborn children "shall not feel the iron heel of despotism."

In the portion of the press kit meant for exhibitor eyes only, PDC encouraged theaters to adopt this same strategy of ambiguity. The studio requested that each exhibitor place a poster in a prominent lobby position bearing the text "NO WAR, NO HATE, NO PROPAGANDA. Just eloquent and dramatic ENTERTAINMENT." The press kit then recommended that "All exploitation should be BOLD and FLAMBOYANT!" Exhibitors were advised to hang giant blow-up photos of Hitler in their lobbies and on their marquees and that maps of Europe and provocative newspaper headlines about war would make an eye-catching lobby display under the caption "A Madman Redrawing the Map of Europe with a Sword Dipped in the Blood of Innocent Children! Will America be Next?" The press kit also suggested that each theater hire a "stockily built young man with Teutonic features, dress him in a Storm Trooper uniform with a swastika armband" and have him stationed to open car doors and to attract attention in front of the theater. Finally, the kit recommended building a concentration camp "torture box" to drive home "the brutality of Hitler's Gestapo." The film "pulled no punches" in addressing a topic no other American studio had as yet dared to touch (Boehnel).

Conclusion: Opportunism and Opportunity

Controversial in a way that was good for the box office, Hitler, Beast of Berlin was profitable for Producers Distributing Corporation. It took "B" movie melodrama and a stark moral battlefield to the controversy over intervention, creating a familiar framework for grappling with the nation's involvement. Judell's exploitation-style strategies and blood-and-guts sensationalism offered, or perhaps confronted, audiences with new opportunities for considering Hitler and Nazi expansionism. While the film's dialogue acknowledged isolationist arguments, it countered heartland objections with even more compelling heartland values. "Good" Germans were not the cultural "others" of American film audiences; they were reflections of them. Viewed in that light, Germans were not only deserving of interventionist efforts, they represented a moral obligation.

These moral and intellectual appeals were supported by visual and tactile affronts, delivered by the film and its promotion in ways that were largely unfamiliar to filmgoing audiences outside the exploitation genre. Judell brought the horrors of concentration camps onto the screens and into the lobbies of movie houses, forcing Americans to not only look at, but also feel and interact with, the realities he constructed, blurring the boundaries between drama and "fact." Newspaper ads and handbills, asking "What don't they want you to see?" advertised rewards for the return of "stolen" copies of the film. Cardboard stand-ups of Hitler looked on as moviegoers were encouraged to touch and open the torture boxes built for theater lobbies, even to climb inside--to better imagine the atrocities depicted in the film and make an even closer identification between their lives and those of the fictional protagonists. The closer that identification became, the more difficult it would be to maintain a neutral stance.

As it was mobilizing political sentiments, Hitler, Beast of Berlin also made another contribution--as part of the movement to loosen the moralistic fetters on the motion picture industry. The stringent restrictions of the Production Code Administration (along with more generalized pressures from the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency) in the 1930s had begun to "cut the film industry off from the realities of American experience" (Schlesinger 77), and a combination of government censorship and self-regulation threatened to suffocate creativity and social relevance in American films. Only Warner Bros. studio, with its production of Black Legion (1937) and Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), has received any significant recognition for making films of social conscience regarding Nazism prior to 1939 (Birdwell, Schwartzman). In spite of the fact that pressure against "interventionist" films would remain in force until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, fifty anti-Nazi films were released between 1939 and December 7, 1941 (DeGrazia and Newman 60), and Beast of Berlin was one of the earliest. Judell's bent for exploitation-style sensationalism broke new ground and, through scandalous, rousing promotion, made up for what was lost on the screen to censorship. In 1942, after the United States had officially joined the war, Hitler, Beast of Berlin was re-released with even better box office returns and far less scandalous marketing since war was now part of American everyday life. And, instead of "Hitler," another name now dominated Beast of Berlin's handbills and marquees--that of Hollywood's newest star to rise from the "B" list, Alan Ladd--and memories of the film's role in shaping American pre-war sentiment faded in its glow.

Works Cited

Akers, Stanley. The Role of Rhetoric in American Cinema in the U.S. Interventionist Movement, 1936-1945. Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1990.

Bernstein, Matthew. Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era. New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1999.

Birdwell, Michael. Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros.' Campaign Against Nazism. New York: New York UP, 1999.

Boehnel, William. "'Beasts of Berlin' Opens at Globe." New York World-Telegram. November 20, 1939: 39.

Creelman, Eileen. "Review of 'Beasts of Berlin.'" New York Sun. November 20, 1939: 42.

Crowther, Bosley. "Review of 'Beasts of Berlin.'" New York Times. November 20, 1939: 15.

De Grazia, Edward and Roger Newman. Banned Films: Movies, Censors & the First Amendment. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1982.

Dixon, Wheeler. Producers Releasing Corporation: A Comprehensive Filmography and History. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1986.

Fernett, Gene. Hollywood's Poverty Row. Florida: Coral Reef Publications, 1973.

Koppes, Clayton and Gregory Black. Hollywood Goes to War. New York: The Free P, 1987.

Morrison, Hobe. "Review of 'Beasts of Berlin.'" Variety. November 22, 1939:16.

Press kit: "Hitler Beast of Berlin." Hollywood, California: Producers Distributing Corporation, 1939. Author's collection.

Rostron, Allen. "'No war, no hate, no propaganda': promoting films about European war and fascism during the period of American isolationism." Journal of Popular Film and Television 30 (2002): 85-96.

Schlesinger Jr., Arthur. "When the Movies Really Counted." Show. April 1963: 77.

Schwartzman, Roy. "Hollywood's Early Cinematic Responses to Nazism." The Review of Communication 2 (2002): 373-377.

Shane, Russell. An Analysis of Motion Pictures About War Released by the American Film Industry, 1930-1970. New York: Arno P, 1976.

Thirer, Irene. "'Beasts of Berlin' Anti-Nazi Film on View at the Globe." New York Post. November 20, 1939.

Cynthia J. Miller is a cultural anthropologist specializing in urban studies and popular culture. She is currently Scholarin-Residence in the Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College in Boston. Her research has included studies of the social impacts of film and television on rural communities in the Yucatan and South India as well as immigrant communities' uses of cinema to re-create homelands and maintain cultural identity. Her writing has appeared in Women's Studies Quarterly, Human Organization, Social Justice, ISLE, and Anthropologica, as well as in several edited volumes, most recently: Hollywood's West: The American Frontier in Film, Television, and History (Kentucky UP, 2005); Echoes from the Poisoned Well: Global Memories of Environmental Injustice (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), and the forthcoming Indian Diaspora: Retrospect and Prospect (Sage, 2006). Her current project is an examination of the life and works of Poverty Row producer Jed Buell. She also serves as film review co-editor for Film & History.

Cynthia J. Miller

Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies

Emerson College