Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 24: 289295, 2007 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN:

: 1050-9208 print / 1543-5326 online DOI: 10.1080/10509200500486395

Saludos Amigos: Hollywood and FDRs Good Neighbor Policy

DALE ADAMS

Every student of American lm history is familiar with how, after the myth-making aesthetic success of Citizen Kane (1940), Orson Welles second lm, The Magnicent Ambersons (1942), was edited not to Welles intent and some scenes re-shot or added by the studio while Welles was off on some putative South American bacchanal adventure. What is generally not familiar to the lm student, however, is why Welles had exited Hollywood before editing Ambersons to pursue that adventure. In short, Welles had been recruited by his thirty-four-year-old friend Nelson Rockefeller to go to South America to make a documentary lm that would enhance the Latin American image in the United States as part of the cultural initiatives Rockefeller had envisioned for what was being touted as Franklin Delano Roosevelts Good Neighbor Policy. Welles documentary, to be titled Its All True, was never nished, and much of the footage assumed to have been lost, although in 1993 lmmakers Bill Krohn, Myron Meisel, and Richard Wilson, from considerable vaulted footage they had discovered in 1985, released an unnished version of the lm with Welles original title. Intended as a three-episode documentary, the main episode, Four Men on a Raft, is almost fully extant and contains images as powerful as any Welles used in Kane or Ambersons. Having read a December 8, 1941, Time magazine article about four Brazilian shermenjangdeiroswho had sailed some 1,650 miles from their village Fortaleza on the north coast of Brazil down to Rio de Janeiro to protest to Brazilian President Vargas the injustice of Brazilian social-security laws that excluded jangdeiros, Welles felt the Homeric voyage that wrought a political miracle in Brazil, as Time (30) referred to the jangdeiros ocean trek, would indeed enhance Americas appreciation of Latin American Everymen, although that December 8, 1941, Time release date made the jangdeiros voyage a generally forgotten event in world affairs immediately after December 7, 1941. Nevertheless, though 1940s audiences were not to see Its All True, Hollywood would indeed play an important role in the success of FDRs Good Neighbor Policy. So much so that, as Brian ONeill has noted, FDRs Good Neighbor Policy came to be known unofcially as Hollywoods Good Neighbor Policy (359). At the time Rockefeller enticed twenty-seven-year-old Welles to pursue the Latin American lm project, Rockefeller was ofcially the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA), in the U.S. Department of State. In 1940 FDR himself had appointed Rockefeller to that position, which was Rockefellers initial foray into government service
Dale T. Adams, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, has taught English and lm studies at Lee College, Baytown, Texas, for the past 40 years, and currently serves as the chair of the English/Communications Division. He has published numerous articles on lm, and is a past recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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and a position which he had envisioned for himself. That is to say, in the early 1900s, the Rockefeller family was interested in Latin America because of their oil investments primarily in Venezuela but also in other Latin American countries. But the Rockefellers began to expand their Latin American economic and business interests with humanitarian and cultural concerns, establishing the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913 that initially focused its attention on eliminating tropical diseases, enlarging public health facilities, training nurses, and searching for medical cures (Gellman 143). However, in the spring of 1940, Nelson Rockefeller and a group of his business associates traveled extensively through the Americas and returned lled with trepidation over the extent of Nazi inltration in the Americas (Gellman 148). Rockefeller, of course, was not the rst to be alarmed about a growing Nazi presence in Latin America in the 30s. As early as 1936 Carl Ackerman, a Columbia University School of Journalism dean, was asked by the State Department to explore ways to increase U.S. contact with Latin American journalists. After extensive travel in Latin America, Ackerman reported his observance of an alarming acceptance of European totalitarianism, and he warned that the next few years will determine whether South America is to remain American or become Italo-Germanized (Gellman 144). Ackerman went on to say, We must provide recognition for South America in the news, in education, in science and literature (Gellman 144). This and other such reports of Nazi inltration into Latin American affairs had also concerned Roosevelt and his Latin American advisors. Indeed, by 1939 Roosevelt was convinced that Nazi Germany [because of incipient German inuence in Latin America] posed a major threat to the security of the United States and the Monroe Doctrine (Smith 71). Two clear indications of the validity of Roosevelts fears that Latin American countries were susceptible to Nazi inuence were Hollywood connected. That is to say, Anatole Litvaks 1939 lm Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Hollywoods opening salvo in its pre-WWII anti-Nazi attack, was banned in eighteen Latin American countries, nine of which were in the other Americas [i.e., those Latin American countries of special interest to Nazi Germany]: Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, and Ecuador (Richard xxvii). Moreover, a year later almost all the Latin American nations banned Charlie Chaplins The Great Dictator (1940), which, of course, was Chaplins courageous and prescient assault against Adolf Hitler himself (Richard xxvii). Thus, when Nelson Rockefeller presented his concerns about Nazi inuence in Latin America to his friend and FDR condante Harry Hopkins in a report proposing a government agency to provide greater economic cooperation and closer cultural, scientic, and educational ties (Gellman 148) with Latin America, Roosevelt not only agreed but also asked the young Rockefeller to head up such an agency. Thus was the creation of the Ofce of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) within the State Department. Though the activities of the CIAA were to be economically, politically, and culturally varied, one of the rst efforts of Rockefeller was to create a Motion Picture Division that would concentrate its efforts on seeing that Hollywood lms that heretofore had, by and large, presented negative stereotypical images of Latin Americans would now present Latin Americans in more favorable images. To head this division, Rockefeller chose a long-time friend, John Hay WhitneyJock to his many Hollywood friendswho was also a vice-president of the Museum of Modern Art, a nancial backer of Gone with the Wind, a popular polo player, and general bon vivant (Richard xxvii). A popular gure in Hollywood, Whitney was well known and well liked among Hollywoods aristocracy, and by January 1941 he had formulated his plans and enlisted the aid of the top movie moguls, producers, directors, writers and stars. All promised enthusiastic cooperation (Richard xxviii).

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Perhaps Whitneys most important contribution was in persuading Will Hays and Joseph Breen, who, of course, were the gendarmes of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of Americas self-censorship regulatory arm, the Production Code Administration (PCA), to hire Cuban born Addison Durland (his mother was Cuban) to join Breens staff at the PCA to head up a special Latin American section. As Brian ONeill has noted, Durlands mandate was seemingly straightforward and simple: to ensure that all Hollywood lms be free from anything potentially offensive to Latin sensibilities (359). Actually, Hays and Breen were somewhat easily persuaded by Whitney to bring Durland into the PCA because even before Durland the PCA had exercised certain censorial and regulatory powers over Hollywood lms relative to the treatment of Latin Americans and Latin themes. But, by and large, the PCA before Durland had been more concerned about Latin characters morals than with the stereotypes or political ramications in a given lm. Moreover, some studios and individual producers resisted censorial suggestions and frequently tried to shoot the material the way it was originally scripted (Richard xxi). In some cases, the power of individual stars was such that they could thwart the censorial efforts of the PCA. That was true of Gene Autry, whose Hispanic characters, unlike those in the lms of his cowboy rival Roy Rogers, would be viewed today as functional illiterates at best (Richard xxi) with the most stereotypically affected accents to identify them as Hispanics. In addition, Gene Autry lms employed scenes and dialogue that by todays standards would be objectionable. For example, in George Shermans 1939 Mexicali Rose, Genes comedy sidekick Smiley Burnett declares the he does not speak Mexican as he directs a ragtag group of small Mexican children while singing the names he has given each: This ones Tortilla / That ones Enchilada / Tamale play on the tamborina/The little ones name . . . is Frijoles. . . . (Richard xxii). But with Addison Durland, these kinds of offenses would change. In fact, by 1940, the PCAs censorship and regulatory authority over Hollywood lms would be unquestioned; and whereas the PCA had by and large focused on censoring provocatively sexy scenes and themes (ONeill 362) that had become pervasive in Hollywood lms of the late 20s and early 30s, under Durland the PCA would now with equal fervor focus for political purposes in harmony with FDRs Good Neighbor Policy on improving the Latin image in American lms and changing American attitudes about Latin America, and, it should be noted, on preventing negative Hollywood images of America to be exported to Latin America. Indeed, FDRs Good Neighbor Policy was as much about the U.S. exporting a positive image of the U.S. to Latin America as vice versa (Smith 79) and also about encouraging the people of the hemisphere to adopt American ideas and values (Smith 80). To this end, the Roosevelt administration initiated numerous economic, diplomatic, and cultural efforts, including spearheading and sponsoring international conferences, raising U.S.-Latin American ministries to embassy levels, giving prestigious treatment in Washington D.C. to Latin American leaders, giving added importance to Pan-American Day and encouraging its celebration in the public schools, and sponsoring numerous art exhibit exchanges as well as many exchanges of university professors and students. But a major initiative through its Rockefeller-Whitney-Durland inuence with Hollywoods PCA was to censor or disallow exportation of Hollywood lms to Latin America that reected the U.S. in a negative way. For example, the PCA disallowed John Fords The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Frank Capras Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to be exported to Latin America because of the PCAs perceived negative images of the U.S. in these lms. And the PCA put a halt to early efforts to lm The Treasure of Sierra Madre (eventually directed by John Huston in 1948), as well as a proposed biography

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of Emiliano Zapata, as much for the perceived ugly American motif as for a perceived negative image of Mexicans that would of necessity, in the views of the PCA, be portrayed. Ironically, at the same time the PCA was disallowing the showing of The Grapes of Wrath to Latin American audiences, the Russian government was eagerly showing it to its citizens in hopes of demonstrating that Depression-era America was a failure of democracy only to have the same Russian citizens envy the Joads because at least the Joads had a truck. Hollywoods embracing FDRs Good Neighbor Policy was not entirely altruistic or indicative of a new and higher level of ethnic consciousness but in large measure economic. That is to say, as Europe was becoming more and more under the control of Nazi Germany in the 30s, the European market for Hollywood lms was severely curtailed. Thus, Hollywood began to look to Latin America to make up the loss. As Brian ONeil has noted, Throughout the 1930s, 35 percent of the motion picture industrys gross revenue came from export earnings, 60 percent of which was derived from European distribution. . . . By mid-1938, with the specter of war in Europe becoming ever greater, the studio strategists began to search frantically for untapped or undertapped foreign markets. They deemed the Latin American market a potentially lucrative safeguard against the vicissitudes of the European situation (359260). Thus, ONeil concludes, In early 1939, all the major studios began actively producing Latin-themed good neighborly lms aimed at pleasing Latin American audiences (360). Fredrick B. Pikes 1995 study FDRs Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos is perhaps the most brilliant and thorough history and analysis of the Good Neighbor era. Pike goes beyond a mere recounting of historical and political events and their causes that brought the Good Neighbor Policy to fruition to suggest with considerable insight that certain historically and culturally ingrained U.S. attitudes and sensibilities toward Latin Americans had to change radically before FDRs Good Neighbor Policy could come about. And Pike thoroughly analyzes how these changes vis-` -vis U.S.-Latin a American attitudes took more than U.S. laws, policies, and regulations could effect. In particular, Pike suggests that four changes had to take place relative to: (1) the negative stereotyping of Latin Americans, (2) the inherently American Calvinistic belief that poverty and wealth were Gods just punishment and rewards, (3) the Protestant negative attitudes toward Catholicism, and (4) Americans accepting cultural diversity and primitivism. Pikes thorough examination of all the historical, political, sociological, and philosophical and religious ramications of each of these is far too extensive even for summary in the necessarily limited scope of this paper. In short, Pike argues that the Great Depression was the crucible for a virtual revolution in changing American attitudes that enabled FDR to forge a Good Neighbor policy (33). Nevertheless, what is in the scope of this presentation is to highlight how Hollywood motion pictures of the 1930s and 1940s did indeed contribute signicantly in bringing about changes that characterized FDRs Good Neighbor Policy. By far Hollywoods greatest contribution to the Good Neighbor Policy was in seeing that Addison Durlands mandate was carried out at the PCA to ensure that Hollywood lms eschewed anything potentially offensive to Latin sensibilities. Alfred Charles Richard notes that between 1935 and 1955 more than 300 Hollywood lms focused in one way or another on Mexico and that between 1898 and 1935 the action location for over 500 Hollywood lms had been Mexico. No other foreign nationals, Richard says, have ever been given as much attention by Hollywood lm makers and later by PCA ofcials than the citizens of Mexico (xxi). Broaden to encompass a larger Hispanic concept, Richard says, there is no doubt that aside from Anglos themselves, Hollywood has made more lms about Hispanics than any other people in the world and that from 1922 to the late sixties,

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but specically during its most effective period from 1934 to 1955, the PCA affected every [Hispanic image] portrayed (xxi). Prior to the PCAs censorial and regulatory endeavors, as Alfred Charles Richard, Jr. in his indispensable work Censorship and Hollywoods Hispanic Image: An Interpretive Filmography, 19361955 has exhaustively chronicled, Hispanics in Hollywood lms routinely employed racial epithets such as greaser and spic to refer to Hispanics, presented most male Hispanics often, if not as non-entity cookie-cutter peasants dressed in white cotton, then as either slovenly ignoramuses too lazy to work for what Anglos possessed and incapable of speaking English without broad, affected accents and humorous (at least to Anglos) malapropisms and broken syntax or as greaser banditos who were oversexed and lusting after Anglo women while exercising their only means of livelihood as bandits. In addition, the Hispanic settings were generally quaint if not dirty rural villages or small towns with shady cantinas with the obligatory Hispanic women appropriately costumed as dancehall prostitutes. However, as Richard notes, Using the PCA les, it can easily be demonstrated that in the twenty years between 1935 and 1955, the Hays Ofce [under the watchful eye of Addison Durland] shaped the silver screens Hispanic image by insisting on the removal of what was currently considered to be offensive Hispanic imagery (xx). An ironic sidebar to the success of the PCA in eliminating the negative stereotyping of Hispanics is that, as Brian ONeil and others have pointed out, because Addison Durland was consulting with Latin American elite ofcials and politicians as to what was offensive those same elites promoted another stereotypealbeit a more positive stereotypethat of all Latin Americans as light-skinned, modern, and civilized (360). And Hollywood acquiesced to this new stereotype because it was the elites in Latin American countries that controlled the economic venues for the Latin American distribution of Hollywood lms. Be that as it may, the subsequent history of the Latin American division of the PCA under Durlands direction is a history of censorship and regulation in the production of specic lms that saw the rise to Hollywood notoriety if not stardom of actors such as Carmen Miranda, Ricardo Montalban, Anthony Quinn, Gilbert Roland, Pedro Armendariz, Cesar Romero, Dolores Del Rio, Desi Arnaz, Lupe Velez, Tito Guizar, Fernando Lamas, Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo. Central to the Hollywood studio system of the 30s and 40s was the production of genre lms, including musicals, westerns, melodramas, and series features such as Blondie, Charlie Chan, Abbott and Costello, the Falcon, Andy Hardy, and Henry Aldrich, as well as documentary travelogues, cartoons, and serials. During the Good Neighbor era, Latin American actors and Latin American motifs would be pervasively integrated into each of these, so much so that critics began to refer to Good Neighbor Musicals, Good Neighbor Westerns, and the like. Perhaps the two most inuential and successful lms of the era were Walt Disneys Saludos Amigos in 1943 and Three Caballeros in 1945. Both were combinations of live action and musical cartoons, the latter having Donald Duck cavorting with live actors, including one sequence with a libido roused Donald being kissed by a live-action bathing beautya sequence much to the distaste of one Catholic Commonweal lm critic (Richard 331). Nevertheless, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros were the two most successful inter-Hemispheric ambassadors of good will to come out of [Hollywood] during the Good Neighbor era (Richard 273). In fact, as Richard has noted, No one worked closer with Rockefellers ofce [the CIAA] . . . during [the Good Neighbor era] than Walt Disney. In fact, he was [the CIAAs] chief propagandist for the Good Neighbor policy (273).

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Saludos Amigos, documenting in live footage a two-month tour of Latin American countries by some twenty Disney artists, cinematographers, and technicians, primarily visiting Argentina, Brazil, and Chili, was entirely sponsored by Rockefellers CIAA. The cartoon sequences of Donald Duck, Joe Cariocathe Brazilian parrotand Gaucho Goofy that came out of the Disney Latin American tour have, of course, become classic cartoon sequences. What was equally impressive and surprising to many contemporary American audiences at the time were the live-action documentary sequences that revealed to many Americans for the rst time the modernity and architectural wonders of the large, Latin-American cities with skyscrapers, automobiles, and surprisingly clean and bustling city streets with fashionably western dressed men and womenscenes many Americans associated only with large American and European cities and certainly not what the prevailing Hollywood images of Latin America had been. In short, Saludos Amigos, as Richard has said, did more to cement a community of interest between peoples of the Americas in a few months than the State Department had in fty years (274). Donald Duck and Joe Carioca were so popular after Saludos Amigos that Disney brought both back in The Three Caballeros sequel, adding Panchito, an avian brother to Joe Carioca as the third caballero. While the Disney lms during the Good Neighbor era were the highlights in Hollywood lms enhancing Good Neighbor relationships, it was the aggregate impact of the treatment of Latin Americans and Latin American themes in Hollywoods Good Neighbor musicals, westerns, melodramas, and series that solidied those relationships. Although it is not within the time and scope of this presentation to discuss even a representative few of these lms, sufce to say that Hollywood produced over thirty Good Neighbor musicals between 1938 and 1945 by and large with established Anglo stars but featuring new Latin music and dance personalities such as Carmen Miranda, Tito Guizar, Cesar Romero, and Ricardo Montalban. Romeros and Montalbans distinguished careers, of course, would extend into the end of the century and far beyond their initial Latin identication. Indeed, Hollywood went on to produce more than twenty additional musicals with Latin actors and Latin themes between 1945 and 1955, thus testifying to the fact that both Latin actors and Latin themes had caught on with American audiences as more than just Good Neighbor era politics. And if the careers of Latin actresses such as Dolores Del Rio and Carmen Miranda diminished after WWII (Lupe Velez was a suicide victim in 1944), that may be attributed not to reasons of ethnicity but more to a Hollywood ageist and gender phenomenon (admittedly unfair) that actresses careers as the actresses pushed forty were not as viable as those of male actors, who often were still playing leading roles well into their seventies. Because the two most popular western stars during the Good Neighbor era, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, were singing cowboys, it is often difcult to distinguish except for setting between the Good Neighbor westerns and musicals. Nevertheless, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers each made over thirty lms with Latin actors and Latin themes, often, especially in Roy Rogers lms, with musical extravaganzas. But neither Autry nor Rogers held the record for the most Good Neighbor westerns. That title goes to Tim Holt, who, along with his Hispanic sidekick Chito Rafferty (My mother was Spanish; my father was Irish), made over forty lms, in none of which was a Hispanic presented as a villain or in a negative image. And if Chitos broken English and his subservience to an often-bossy Tim Holt were sometimes played for light comedy, Chitos English was considerably better than both Duncan Renaldos and Leo Carrillos were allowed to become in their Cisco Kid TV series. Other Good Neighbor western cowboys included Buster Crabbe, Tex Ritter, Johnny Mack Brown, Hopalong Cassidy, Wild Bill Elliot, and The Rough RidersTim McCoy,

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Raymond Hatton, and Buck Jones. Many of the Good Neighbor westerns and series lms were spiced up with Latin musical numbers in harmony with the PCAs Good Neighbor requirements. This was especially true of Lupe Velezs highly successful Mexican Spitre series with comedian Leon Errol. But whatever the genre, Addison Durland kept a watchful eye to see that his mandate to ensure that Hollywood exported no lms to Latin America that would offend Latin American sensibilities remain inviolate. As with any sociological or historical study of the inuence of Hollywood motion pictures, the most difcult task is to determine quantitatively the success of that putative inuence. And that task is no less difcult in determining the success of Hollywood lms vis-` -vis FDRs Good Neighbor Policy. Nevertheless, James Desmond in his biography of a Nelson Rockefeller suggests persuasively that the success of the CIAAs motion picture division that ultimately provided for Hollywoods Good Neighbor lms was substantial. And Alfred Charles Richard, Jr. contends that all aspects of Hollywoods support of FDRs Good Neighbor Policy put together the most successful propaganda program ever conceived for Mexico, the Caribbean region, [and] Central and South America (xxix). In essence, Richard contends, Hollywoods contribution to the Good Neighbor Policy improved the stereotypes and changed the imagery both Latin American and the United States held of one another (xxix). In short, Richard concludes, there can be little doubt about the effectiveness [of Hollywoods Good Neighbor lms] in constructing the mythology of inter-American oneness during the war years (xxix). While other FDR Good Neighbor initiatives certainly came into play, there is no question that within a year of FDRs appointment of Nelson Rockefeller as Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and Rockefellers successful efforts to involve Hollywood pictures all Latin American countriesexcept for Argentina, which was still showing Nazi subsidized German newsreelswere by and large importing only American lms. Eventually, all the Latin American nations declared war on the Axis, although Argentina held out until the nal months of the war. As Fredrick B. Pike noted, [T]he [Great] Depression produced a virtual revolution in American attitudes, and . . . out of that revolution issued the public attitudes that enabled FDR to forge a Good Neighbor policy (33); while Pike concludes that American movies reected and nourished that revolution (33).

Works Cited
Desmond, James. Nelson Rockefeller: A Political Biography. New York: Macmillan, 1964. Four Men on a Raft. Time Dec. 8, 1941, 30. Gellman, Irvin F. Good Neighbor Diplomacy: United States Politics in Latin America, 19331945. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1979. ONeil, Brian. The Demands of Authenticity: Addison Durland and Hollywoods Latin Images During World War II. Classic Hollywood Whiteness. Ed. Daniel Bernside. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2001, 359385. Pike, Fredrick B. FDRs Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Richard, Alfred Charles, Jr. Censorship and Hollywoods Hispanic Image: An Interpretive Filmography, 19361955. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993. Smith, Robert Freeman. The Good Neighbor Policy: The Liberal Paradox in United States Relations with Latin America. Watershed of Empire: Essays on New Deal Foreign Policy Eds. Leonard P. Liggio and James J. Martin. Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1976, 6595.