When Victims Rule (pdf)

JEWISH INFLUENCE IN THE MASS MEDIA (PT. 2)
began when another Jewish owner (Emmanual Isaacs of the “She Club”) asked
him to represent him. [RANKIN, B., 12-5-99, p. 2D]
The Associated Press further noted in 2001 that Gold Club owner Steven Kaplan
(club manager: Norbert Calder) was
“accused of building a $50 million fortune in part by providing prostitutes
for celebrities. Atlanta’s Gold Club is one of the most profitable
nude clubs in the country, popular among convention-goers and visiting
celebrities. Federal investigators say it is also a high-priced brothel
that pumps cash into the Gambino crime family … [The Federal indictment
against Kaplan] says Kaplan ordered more than 20 beatings of
people who did not repay loans at high rates of interest.” [COURT TV,
4-2001]
The most famous “sex club” in history (prospering in the 1970s and 1980s
before the AIDS epidemic) is probably Plato’s Retreat, based in New York City.
Its owner was also Jewish: Larry Levenson. As Jewish scholar David Allyn describes
it:
“First of all, you have to picture the Ansonia Hotel, which is a late 19th
century wedding-cake of a building in the heart of the upper west side
in New York. In the basement of the Ansonia was Plato’s Retreat, then
the world’s most famous sex club. Men and women would stroll about
the Ansonia lobby in nothing but towels. In the club, they would have
sex with possibly a dozen or so people in a single night. Plato’s Retreat
represented the commercial version of what was happening in people’s
apartments and living rooms across the country.” [BOOKMARK, 2000]
In the early movie world, seminal Jewish “vamp” film actress Theda Bara
“scandalized the mores of the middle-classes … Local boards issued edicts condemning
her films.” [HYMAN, p. 118-119] “The first sex symbol [Bara] in
movie history,” says M. H. Goldberg, “was Jewish. (It is interesting to note that
two other sex symbols in movie history – Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor
– converted to Judaism.)” [GOLDBERG, H. M., 1976, p. 166] A little earlier,
Anna Held, of Polish Jewish descent, celebrated a “naughty French persona” in
the Ziegfield Follies and “was an early icon” of “America’s burgeoning cult of celebrity
at the turn of the century.” [LAVITT, P., 2000, p. 263, 268] Vienna-born
Jewish actress Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Kiesler) pushed mores in the movie world
with the European film Ecstasy (1933), featuring partial nudity and daringly
new degrees of eroticism. The film was banned in the U.S. till 1940.
In the early years of the 20th century, Sholom Asch’s play “God of Vengeance”
was performed in New York in Yiddish and then in English off-Broadway
without incident. “Asch’s tale centers on Yankel, a Jew who runs a shady
downstairs brothel with his ex-whore wife, yet is obsessed with protecting the
chastity and piety of his young daughter.” When the play was finally performed
to a broader public on Broadway, it was “shut down by New York police, a landmark
censorship case … The actors, producer, and owner of the Apollo Theatre”
were all arrested and their court trial became “the first jury conviction of
American entertainers charged with presenting ‘immoral’ fare.” Variety maga-
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