Hollywood Scandals: Nazi Director Leni Riefenstahl’s Trip To Tinseltown
As Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, he had a secret weapon at his side: filmmaker Lena Riefenstahl. Her film Triumph of the Will (1935) offered a chilling look at the power of the Nazi Party, and she dazzlingly captured the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Olympia.
By 1938, Riefenstahl decided to burnish her filmmaker credentials with a pilgrimage to Hollywood. But the trip didn’t go exactly as she planned.
Public DomainLeni Riefenstahl was a member of Hitler’s inner circle and a key creator of Nazi propaganda.
When Riefenstahl first arrived in New York City, she enjoyed a hero’s welcome. Journalists salivated over her beauty, her seventeen steamer trunks of haute couture, and her rumored romantic relationship with Adolf Hitler himself.
“The mysterious fraulein of Germany, the shapely and auburn-tressed Leni Riefenstahl — reported to be the object of Hitler’s next Anschluss — arrived on the Europa yesterday, declaring that all is platonic between her and Der Fuhrer,” raved the New York Daily News.
But on Nov. 9, 1938, the American reception of Riefenstahl suddenly cooled. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Kristallnacht had swept through German towns, killing almost 100 German Jews and destroying scores of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses.
By the time Riefenstahl arrived at the golden gates of Hollywood, she found them firmly shut. Only filmmaker Walt Disney and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper agreed to meet with her. But though Hopper offered Riefenstahl her support, Disney refused to screen or promote Olympia.
Furious, Riefenstahl soon afterward returned to Europe. She snapped at reporters that, “I was received warmly all over America, with the exception of the Hollywood cinema industry, directed by Jews or members of anti-German leagues, where I was given a hostile reception.”
Of all the Hollywood scandals on this list, though, this one stands the test of time. Before long, Nazi Germany embarked on a murderous crusade. And many in Hollywood could say that they’d refused to meet with one of the regime’s top propagandists.
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