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**Joseph** · 08-26-2007, 05:58 AM

History: The 74 years of Musa Dagh

by Michelle Ekizian

* Edward Minasian. Musa Dagh: A chronicle of the Armenian Genocide
factor in the subsequent suppression, by the intervention of the
United States government, of the movie based on Franz Werfel's The
Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Nashville, Tennessee: Cold Tree Press, 2007.
385 pp. Illustrated. ISBN: 9781583851593

The world of the 1930s had all but forgotten the Armenian massacres of
1915, and their one and a half million victims annihilated by the
Ottoman Turkish government. It was the time of the Great Depression,
and most people had problems of a more recent vintage to worry about.
But the year 1935 held out a glimmer of hope for those who did
remember: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) announced it was preparing to make
a movie of Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. The epic novel
published a year earlier was based on a true-life incident of
resistance during what would come to be known as the Armenian
Genocide.

That movie was never made. The reason it wasn't made has become the
emblematic tale of the numerous frustrated attempts to portray and
acknowledge the Genocide in a high-profile, public way. The
cause-and-effect narrative of threatening protestations from the
Turkish government, appeasement from U.S. officials, and pressure
exerted on an American industry, has become all too familiar to
Armenian-Americans, and resonates to the present day. The "Hollywood
factor" has made the Musa Dagh episode the stuff of legend: most
Armenians know of it, refer to it, feel outrage over it. Until now,
however, there hasn't been a definitive telling of the story.

Edward Minasian's recently published book, Musa Dagh, fills that
deficiency. Minasian delves into the documentary evidence -- the MGM
archives, U.S. State Department records, Franz Werfel's official
papers -- and tracks down surviving players in the story for their
first-hand insights, to show how the ambitious plans for a 1930s
motion picture version of Musa Dagh were aborted. He also reveals the
continuing collusion of the Turkish government, the U.S. State
Department, and Hollywood studio executives to thwart successive
attempts to mount the film, up through the 1960s. The twisting,
turning odyssey of hopeful starts (often championed by major Hollywood
figures) and crushing terminations (invariably orchestrated from the
behind the scenes) would itself make for an intriguing movie plot.

While censorship of Hollywood products has long since ceased to be a
threat -- these days movies actually thrive on controversial points of
view -- Edward Minasian's book reminds us that the U.S. State
Department and its willingness to succumb to Turkey's bullying has not
changed since the 1930s. What has changed -- and what deserves credit
for some of the recent advances we have seen in Genocide recognition
-- is the presence in Washington of a resourceful and active voice for
the Armenian-American community, and the rise in Turkey of a new
generation willing (at least in some quarters) to question its
government and the prevailing "official" history.

Other constants of the last 70 years are the deep desire among
Armenians to commit the dramatic story of Musa Dagh to film in the way
it was originally intended, and the continuing hope that such a
project would convey the truth of the Armenian Genocide to the public
on a scale as yet unachieved.

* Musa Dagh revelations

Werfel divided his novel into three main sections, which he titled
"books," each annotated with quotes from the biblical Book of
Revelations. Minasian also faintly echoes Revelations in each of his
six books: an example is Minasian's Book III, "Babylon on the Pacific
and on the Potomac," which sets the stage for the "revelations" culled
from Minasian's research.

Minasian's writing style combines an historian's eye for detail with
a dash of showmanship. A World War II veteran who came of age during
the era of the great Hollywood moguls of the 1930s and '40s, he's able
to give a first hand perspective on some of the figures and events he
chronicles. Perhaps because he is a product of that less cynical time,
Minasian takes to heart the acts of deception and trickery he relates
involving the entertainment and political arenas; a writer nourished
on the scandals of our own day might dismiss these as simply par for
the course.

He portrays the first generation of Armenian-Americans emerging from
the Depression as a closely-knit group, whose pride in their ancestral
heritage is overshadowed by a dutiful desire to move forward in
America. (One wonders whether, had Armenian-Americans been less
impressionable, they could have formed a coalition to combat the
internal politicking against the movie -- in the way Jewish groups in
the 1960s quelled dissenting voices during the making of Exodus, about
the founding of Israel.)

The story of the Musa Dagh film begins in 1933, when Louis B. Mayer,
general manager of MGM's studio in Culver City and first
vice-president of Loew's Inc. (the studio's headquarters in New York),
found himself so moved by Werfel's book that he opened negotiations to
acquire the screen rights. These were eventually purchased for
$20,000. The project gained an enthusiastic supporter in the person of
MGM's supervisor of production and Loew's second vice-president,
Irving Thalberg, who would remain the project's strongest advocate
until his own early death.

In Armenian circles, grapevine talk championed Hollywood's sole
director of Armenian heritage, Rouben Mamoulian, as the candidate to
helm the movie.

MGM studio producer and Mayer's son-in-law David O. Selznick
recommended in a memo that the picture be made with Clark Gable in the
central role of Gabriel, and suggested placing the burden of
complicity on one representative Turk rather than on an entire nation.
Then, in a spirit of true American magnanimity, Selznick further
suggested that the Turkish ambassador in Washington should be informed
of the movie plans, as a matter of courtesy.

But opposition from that front had started earlier, when Turkey's
Ambassador Mehmet Munir Ertegun Bey noted a brief news item on the
possibility of the film production, and expressed his concern to the
U.S. State Department's Near Eastern Affairs Division.

As a result, Major Frederick L. Herron, foreign manager of the
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA, better
known as the Hays Office) became the point man for matters concerning
Musa Dagh. In defense of the project, Herron reassured the State
Department by describing the story as a domestic love triangle that
would not contain anything offensive to the Turkish ambassador or his
countrymen.

However, the Turkish ambassador's objections were only temporarily
eased. Ertegun saw red when an in-depth article appeared in the
Washington Herald describing Hollywood's plans to portray "Christians
who combined against Turkish massacres in Armenia." From that point on
a flurry of communications ensued with the State Department -- and
Minasian wonderfully conveys the chain of officials all aflutter, full
of vacillating and paranoid judgments. Lost in all this back-and-forth
correspondence, it becomes clear, is the true content of Werfel's book
and its broader humanitarian meaning, which Werfel himself described
as a "search for humanity everywhere, and to avoid barbarism."

Minasian's chapter on the "Cabal of Conspirators" takes readers to
the year 1935 and an unprecedented development in Hollywood history.
Though it had been common practice for studios to obtain permission
from a foreign government to permit filming in its country, never
before had permission been sought for the initiation of an American
film project. But the stakes seemed grave. Eventually, Turkey
threatened to cut off not only the distribution in Turkey of the Musa
Dagh movie itself, and not only of all MGM movies, but of all
Hollywood-produced films if the project went ahead.

In different contexts, such threats have become a familiar refrain
in our own era: part of the background noise accompanying any
assertion about the Armenian Genocide. But in the 1930s they were new,
seemed credible, and were not so easily dismissed.

* A cadaver in anatomy class

>From 1934 through 1966, MGM initiated numerous failed attempts to make
the movie; at least 12 screenwriters had created scripts and synopses
of Musa Dagh -- amounting to more than 100 submissions to the studio.
Minasian uncovers an MGM office memo from the end of the studio's
tenure on the Musa Dagh project which reads: "This book has been
worked on and reworked more than a cadaver in an anatomy class."

Speculating on the long on-again, off-again history of the movie,
Minasian wonders whether Loews/MGM was periodically bribed to keep any
Musa Dagh project from advancing beyond the pre-production phase.
However, in the two decades following World War II, two political
developments ensured the American government's support for any issue
that Turkey found troublesome. The Truman Doctrine in 1947 and the
alliance against the Communist bloc marked the start of this
"insurance policy," and Turkey's leverage increased in 1959 when its
government agreed to allow an American ballistic missile base on
Turkish soil.

Despite official trepidation to pursue the project, some artistic
souls ventured to crack the opposition hovering around Musa Dagh
during the 1950s Cold War era. Minasian mentions Stanley Kubrick,
Carlo Ponti, Elia Kazan, Henri Verneuil, and Elliot Kastner as among
the luminaries who threw down gauntlets in support of the project.

But a bright ray of hope for producing a blockbuster movie came in
1962, thanks to the celebrated MGM producer Pandro Berman, who
remarked: "the project was announced by MGM 40 times in 40 years ... And
each and every time aroused Turkish indignation to the point it had
become routine."

Berman had real credibility, and with his assistant Hank Moonjean
(Henry Momjian) he envisioned a star-studded, epic treatment for the
film, along the lines of other movies of the day, with Guy Green as
director and writer, Omar Sharif as the hero Gabriel, Audrey Hepburn
or Leslie Caron as his French wife, Dahlia Lavi or Julie Christie as
the young Armenian girl, and Ralph Richardson or Alec Guinness as the
village priest. But Berman's dreams ended in 1965, when the MGM
hierarchy described Musa Dagh as "irrelevant."

It was in response to this attitude that Armenian community activism
at long last reared its head. In 1969, Archbishop Torkom Manoogian, at
the time Primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of
America in New York, telegrammed MGM on behalf of major Armenian
organizations with an offer to rally the Armenian community to counter
Turkish protests: "If the movie had been made as planned in the
1930s," he wrote, "who knows, it may have deterred Hitler and the
Jewish Holocaust." The message did receive a serious reply from the
studio, but no promises, and despite a fresh screenplay the project
remained on the shelf.

Armenians, however, were about to become significantly more
influential in the destiny of the film.

* Armenians at the helm

The year 1970 saw the purchase of MGM by Armenian-American
industrialist Kerk Kerkorian, and shortly thereafter, the sale of the
Musa Dagh screen rights to John Kurkjian, a retired Armenian-American
real estate businessman in Los Angeles. With two Armenians at the
helm, it seemed as though the movie would finally receive its just
due.

Unfortunately, Kurkjian proved a novice at filmmaking. His inability
to raise the funds for the movie's projected budget of $7 million from
the Armenian community further weakened the production, and his
partnership with MGM ended in 1976. Kurkjian did eventually make his
film -- the low-budget 40 Days of Musa Dagh that one can still see
kicking around the dusty video racks of Armenian bookstores -- but it
was hardly an auspicious affair.

Minasian's canny eye catches a change in the political and
bureaucratic assault on the picture around this time. From the 1930s
through '60s Musa Dagh had been the Turkish government's b�te noire,
suppressed with the collusion of the U.S. State Department. But in
light of the Kurkjian production, Minasian suggests that Turkey's
fears about the project may have been motivated at least in part
because of the association with MGM: a film produced by such a dynamic
and powerful entity could certainly be expected to have an impact on
the general public. But the political risk would be much less with a
cash-strapped independent production. When Kukjian was abandoned by
MGM to venture alone into the realm of low-budget movie-making, the
veil of Turkish threats lifted.

Ironically, at the same time MGM was severing its association with
Musa Dagh, an outspoken generation of filmmakers more sympathetic to
causes of human justice, was emerging. The 1970s saw the popular
success of Midnight Express, a movie about the drug world set against
the backdrop of the brutal Turkish penal system. Turkish protests
ensued -- but proved ineffective in the Hollywood of the time.

It is deeply regrettable that during this more "open" period, a
suitable motion picture version of Musa Dagh could not be made --
either as a big budget studio blockbuster or as a finely made
independent film. Irony piles on irony in this phase of the story: MGM
was actually owned by an Armenian at the time; the Armenian-American
community, so proud and eager at the prospect of seeing this story
made into an epic movie, proved unwilling to invest its financial
resources in the venture. All of which regrettably left John Kurkjian
to pick up the pieces and proceed with the production on his own, as
everyone around him -- the studio honchos, fellow Armenians, and (one
can only imagine) Turkish officialdom -- all stood by and watched him
founder.

* Curse or blessing?

Minasian traces the saga to recent years -- by which time the present
author became caught in Musa Dagh's tribulations. In 1989 a German
television producer became involved with the book's screen rights. Now
a man in his 80s, he continues to cycle in and out of Armenian
communities -- partnering occasionally with Hollywood-based producers
-- always on the lookout for potential funders. But like so many
proposals over the years, nothing substantial has come to light.

As one reaches the end of Minasian's account, one can't help but
wonder whether the entire Musa Dagh project lives under some kind of
curse. Or perhaps -- in some twisted, paradoxical way -- its
tumultuous history has merely been a prologue for the realization of
the dream in our own era: an era more receptive to issues of genocide,
an era of greater Armenian prominence in the surrounding culture, and
an era of unparalleled technical capability in film. Providentially,
today's mainstream Hollywood is also home to an astonishing number of
accomplished Armenians in fields like screenwriting, producing, studio
administration, and casting, who are eager to tell their people's
stories. Werfel himself had the village priest in his novel say, when
the villagers were rescued after surviving their ordeal: "The evil
only happened ... to enable God to show us His goodness."

So maybe we're on the verge -- finally -- of seeing this movie done right.

If that's so, Edward Minasian has some advice to offer: "The history
of Musa Dagh in Hollywood serves as a lesson for future attempts at
the movie," he writes, and goes on to lay these out in his book.
Prospective filmmakers should (a) be prepared to deal with Turkish
pressure; (b) provide a budget worthy of an epic film; and (c)
counteract any protests with a publicity campaign that will not only
diminish the opposition, but create an enthusiastic audience for the
film. He also advises that the Armenian Caucus in Congress and
Armenian political action groups need to stay alert throughout the
filmmaking process.

Minasian's research into the attempts at making a motion picture
based on the story of Musa Dagh is truly meticulous -- his extensive
reference notes testify to the sea of documentation he waded through
-- and his treatment surely settles all the matters of fact that have
long since passed into hazy legend in Armenian circles. Now, thanks to
Edward Minasian's Musa Dagh, we know exactly what transpired between
Hollywood, Washington, and Ankara that caused the film project to be
aborted time and again over the course of four decades.

And with that knowledge in hand, maybe we can all move forward and
make this picture.

* * *

Michelle Ekizian is resident composer for the Interfaith Committee of
Remembrance at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Her
current projects include an opera on the life of Arshile Gorky, and a
multi-media concert presentation "Songs of Light and Peace: a
cross-over opera for a world divided." She lives in Mamaroneck, N.Y.

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