Steven Gaydos Executive VP of ContentAmong its many surprising pieces of entertainment history arcana, the Variety Archives contain stories from the 1930s involving an arena sadly familiar to business managers: government seizures of entertainers’ assets.
But these seizures took place not because of any financial malfeasance, but because the artists were Jewish. As early as 1933, Variety was reporting on music rights organizations fighting over new entertainment industry rules coming out of Germany because “the Nazi powers barred the performances of compositions created by those of Jewish descent.” That was followed by the Nazi regime’s seizures of copyrights and property assets belonging to German show business figures.
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