The United States and

Public Diplomacy
New Directions in Cultural and International History

Edited by
Kenneth A. Osgood and Brian C. Etheridge

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Introduction. The New International History Meets the New

Cultural History: Public Diplomacy and U.S. Foreign Relations . . 1
Kenneth Osgood and Brian C. Etheridge

part i
public diplomacy as international history
Chapter One. The Anomaly of the Cold War: Cultural Diplomacy
and Civil Society Since  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht
Chapter Two. The Problem of Power in Modern Public Diplomacy.
The Netherlands Information Bureau in World War II and the
Early Cold War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
David J. Snyder
Chapter Three. Ethnicity, Security, and Public Diplomacy:
Irish-Americans and Ireland’s Neutrality in World War II . . . . . . . . 81
John Day Tully
Chapter Four. Hollywood, Tourism, and Dictatorship: Samuel
Bronston’s Special Relationship with the Franco Regime,
–. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Neal M. Rosendorf
Chapter Five. Supranational Public Diplomacy: The Evolution of
the UN Department of Public Information and the Rise of Third
World Advocacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Seth Center
Chapter Six. Transnational Public Diplomacy: Assessing
Salvadoran Revolutionary Efforts to Build U.S. Public
Opposition to Reagan’s Central American Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Héctor Perla Jr.
vi contents

part ii
the united states and public diplomacy
Chapter Seven. Foreign Relations as Domestic Affairs: The Role of
the “Public” in the Origins of U.S. Public Diplomacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Justin Hart
Chapter Eight. Crisis Management and Missed Opportunities:
U.S. Public Diplomacy and the Creation of the Third World,
–. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Jason C. Parker
Chapter Nine. Film as Public Diplomacy: The USIA’s Cold War at
Twenty-Four Frames per Second . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Nicholas J. Cull
Chapter Ten. Mediating Public Diplomacy: Local Conditions and
U.S. Public Diplomacy in Norway in the s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Helge Danielsen
Chapter Eleven. Domestic Politics and Public Diplomacy:
Appalachian Cultural Exhibits and the Changing Nature of
U.S. Public Diplomacy, – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Michael L. Krenn
Chapter Twelve. Networks of Influence: U.S. Exchange Programs
and Western Europe in the s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Giles Scott-Smith
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
 chapter four

HOLLYWOOD, DICTATORSHIP AND PROPAGANDA:

SAMUEL BRONSTON’S SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH
THE FRANCO REGIME, 1957–1973*

Neal M. Rosendorf

“For us, the most important of all arts is the cinema,” Vladimir Lenin
famously declared, recognizing, as did most dictators in the twenti-
eth century, the potential power of cinema to propagandize ideologies
and agendas.1 From an early point in the s, dictatorships saw the
unique, preeminent qualities of American film production. Hollywood
was a huge-scale factory for the manufacture and distribution of motion
pictures both within the United States and internationally. Tyrants and
their propagandists tended either to look admiringly and enviously upon
Hollywood—as did the Soviet premier Josef Stalin, who flatly stated, “If
I could control the medium of the American motion picture, I would
need nothing else to convert the entire world to communism”2—or they
sought to compete with Hollywood and undermine its subversive influ-
ence via locally produced products in the manner of Joseph Goebbels,
Nazi Germany’s minister of propaganda, who asserted, “We must give
[German] film a task and a mission in order that we may use it to conquer
the world. Only then will we also overcome American film.”3 Ultimately,
however, twentieth century dictatorships could find no effective means
of either co-opting or effectively countering Hollywood film production,
with one notable exception: Franco Spain.
The Franco regime was unique among twentieth century dictator-
ships in its capacity to square the circle: it attracted a significant num-
ber of American producers to make big-budget films in Spain, where
the regime could use Hollywood as a propaganda transmitter while

* This chapter is dedicated to the memory of my late mentor Ernest R. May.

1 Quoted in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, eds., The Film Factory: Russian and
Soviet Cinema in Documents, – (London: Routledge, ), p. .
2 Quoted in Anthony Smith, In the Shadow of the Cave: The Broadcaster, His Audience,

and the State (Univ. of Illinois Press, ), .

3 Quoted in Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and its Afterlife

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, ), .

 neal m. rosendorf

exercising control over the films’ content via mandatory script approval.4
For a decade from the early s until the early s, “Hollywood in
Madrid” became one of the key overseas production venues for Amer-
ican-produced and -distributed motion pictures. Although there were
many elements of serendipity in the development of this phenomenon, it
did not happen by accident. It required vision and flexibility on both the
Iberian and Hollywood sides of the equation.
The single most important figure, whether Spanish or American, in
the development of “Hollywood in Madrid,” and the political and eco-
nomic benefits that accrued to the Franco dictatorship, was the film pro-
ducer Samuel Bronston. A pioneer in large-scale U.S. movie-making in
Spain, he established a full-blown American studio with which to com-
pete with U.S.-based production. From the late s through the early
s, Bronston forged and maintained a uniquely intimate relationship
with the Franco regime. Indeed, the Bronston-Franco partnership marks
the closest ongoing political collaboration ever recorded between a Hol-
lywood film production operation and a foreign country.
The symbiosis between the Spanish dictatorship and the American
producer was the result of need and ambition on both sides. The relent-
lessly driven Bronston aspired to inherit Cecil B. DeMille’s mantle as King
of the Epic Movie, and he needed an inexpensive and congenial venue
to film the sort of blockbuster motion pictures that were the rage at the
time. Franco and his minions needed economic and international polit-
ical rehabilitation for a Spain ravaged by civil war and tarred by its close
association with the Axis during World War II. Franco’s regime aspired to
position Spain as a respected Western anticommunist bastion, a “normal
country,” as well as the cultural and ideological leader of the Spanish-
speaking world.5
These mutual needs and ambitions would draw Bronston to Spain,
where he established his studio in Madrid with the close cooperation
of the Franco regime. The Spanish government facilitated the producer’s
efforts at every turn with monetary aid, matériel, logistics, and special
legal arrangements and concessions. The regime’s estimation of Bron-
ston’s singular value was marked by its presentation to him of the Order

4 The only other dictatorship to attract more than a smattering of Hollywood pro-

duction was Tito’s Yugoslavia, in the wake and in emulation of Spain’s dramatic success.
However, the number of pictures produced there was far smaller than in Franco Spain,
and there never developed a “Hollywood in Belgrade” (or Sarajevo, or Zagreb, for that
matter) either in substance or international public perception.
5 Don Carlos Robles Piquer, interview by author, Madrid, Spain, July .
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

of Isabel la Católica, Spain’s highest civilian honor, for his “work in estab-
lishing closer cultural ties between the United States and Spain.”6 High-
ranking regime figures moonlighted as fixers, consultants and scriptwrit-
ers in the Bronston organization.
The regime received much in return from the American film mogul.
Bronston produced several big blockbusters including the highly success-
ful epic El Cid, King of Kings, The Fall of the Roman Empire, and others.
Just as important, Bronston also made, free of charge, a series of propa-
ganda films for the Spanish government that were screened both domes-
tically in Spain and internationally, including in the U.S. His Estudios
Samuel Bronston became the cornerstone of “Hollywood in Madrid,”
bringing in its wake considerable American and other international film
production that made Spain for a time into a leading motion picture cen-
ter. His films, and the gargantuan sets on which he made them, helped
draw large numbers of tourists to Spain from the United States and else-
where.
Both the dictatorship and the producer knew precisely what they
were doing. The Franco regime was implementing a sophisticated inter-
national tourist program that held both economic and political goals.7
American and other foreign film production in Spain fit into this pro-
gram of attracting tourists and had their own discrete economic and
political propaganda value as well. Foreign film producers brought in
hard currency for which Spain was starving and gave work to film techni-
cal personnel and many other service providers at a time of painful eco-
nomic restructuring and concomitant widespread unemployment. Addi-
tionally, foreign production gave a major boost to poor areas of Spain
with attractive shooting locales, including Almeria and Las Rozas—it was
in the latter region that Bronston constructed his stupendous Las Matas

6 “Spain Medals Bronston,” Variety,  October ; “Spain Honors Bronston Work

on Cultural Ties,” Film Daily,  /  / , Make all dates consistent and according to style
sheet, e.g.  April . both cites in “Samuel Bronston” clipping file, Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences (hereafter MHL), Beverly Hills, CA.
7 I have set out at length the background of the Spanish dictatorship’s efforts to use

American tourism for its own economic and political purposes in “Be El Caudillo’s Guest:
The Franco Regime’s Quest for Rehabilitation and Dollars after World War II via the
Promotion of U.S. Tourism to Spain,” Diplomatic History,  (): –. This article
includes a brief discussion of Hollywood production in Franco Spain as a factor in the
regime’s program, a subject I have covered in greater detail in “ ‘Hollywood in Madrid’:
American Film Producers and the Franco Regime, –,” Historical Journal of Film,
Radio and Television,  (): –.
 neal m. rosendorf

outdoor studio, where he built full-size recreations of Peking’s Forbidden

City and the Roman Forum.
At one point the regime produced a top-secret international campaign,
“Operación Propaganda Exterior,” aimed largely but not exclusively at the
Hispanophone world. The plan at one point declared that “an artistic film,
apparently ideologically neutral, has a greater influence on opinion than
those which leave it possible to guess a definite and concrete purpose.”
“Operación PE” placed special emphasis on co-productions between
Spain and other countries.
No single figure was more important to the dictatorship in this regard
than Samuel Bronston, one of the greatest foreign enablers of the Franco
regime, from both a propaganda and economic standpoint. The Amer-
ican producer was keenly aware of the benefits to Franco Spain of bas-
ing his film production operations there. His image-enhancing and fiscal
value, which he pointed out to an already appreciative regime, allowed
him to argue successfully for an unprecedented special status in Spain
as the foreign head of a Spanish-registered corporation. And an equally
appreciative Bronston was unreservedly willing to pledge in return that
concerning both propaganda and economics, “[W]hatever we do will
always be to the benefit of the country that has received us so warmly,” a
promise that entailed placing Spanish government officials on his busi-
ness’s board of directors, submitting his film projects for special autho-
rization by the Ministry of Information and Tourism to make sure they
were sufficiently valuable to the regime, and regularly producing docu-
mentaries and other propaganda films “covering national values.”
Samuel Bronston was one of the most significant actors in a process
that I call “corporatism with a twist”—American business enterprises
working hand in glove not with their own government, but with that
of another country, in this case a combined Hispano-U.S. corporatism.
He also was an avatar of “soft power,” the now-widespread term devised
by the political scientist Joseph S. Nye. According to Nye, soft power
describes a co-opting process by which “[a] country may obtain the
outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries—admiring
its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and
openness—want to follow it . . .. Soft power rests on the ability to shape
the preferences of others.”8 When one thinks of Hollywood and, more
broadly, American popular culture in soft power terms, it is generally

8 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York:

Public Affairs, ), .

 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

assumed that the benefit accrues to the United States. But in fact Bron-
ston placed this soft power at the service of the Spanish dictatorship, a
relationship that reveals much about the ways in which states and non-
state actors alike may seek to do the same in other circumstances.

Bronston’s Road to Madrid

Solomon Bronstein was born in  in the multi-ethnic Bessarabian

town of Ismail and was raised in France. A natural salesman whose best
product was always himself, Bronston worked as a French distribution
representative for U.S. film companies before coming to the United States
in , in the aftermath of a Parisian conviction for check kiting. Sur-
mounting his entanglement with the French authorities, Bronston spent
much of the next two decades as a relatively minor producer in Holly-
wood, better known for his personal elegance and fund-promoting skills
than for the movies he made.
But Bronston was resilient in the face of repeated setbacks and creative
in leveraging his assets. A film property he managed to hold onto through
lean times was a biography of the U.S. naval hero John Paul Jones, a film
that would eventually lead him to Spain. In  Bronston reached out to
recently retired Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, who agreed to serve as the
producer’s personal advisor on the project. Nimitz immediately provided
Bronston entrée to the highest levels of the U.S. Navy, which pledged its
full cooperation with Bronston’s production.9
Bronston also approached other distinguished and well-heeled private
citizens of a patriotic bent who might be interested in aiding a film that
glorified American maritime history and, in some cases, make some
extra money from the effort. These included R. Stuyvesant Pierrepont,
Jr., who became the vice-president and treasurer of Admiralty Pictures
Corporation (the company created to produce the film) and Nelson and
Laurence Rockefeller. Other prominent figures sitting on the company’s

9 Rear Adm. W.F. Boone, Superintendent, U.S. Naval Academy, to Bronston, 

February ; letter from Adm. Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, to Bron-
ston,  February ; letter from Rear Adm. E.B. Taylor, Chief of Information, U.S.
Navy, to Bronston,  February —all from “John Paul Jones” file (hereafter JPJF),
C.D. Jackson Papers (hereafter CDJP), Dwight David Eisenhower Presidential Library,
Abilene, KS (hereafter DDEL). My thanks to senior archivist Dwight Strandberg at the
Eisenhower Library for his efforts in locating and copying these papers.
 neal m. rosendorf

board included Lansdell K. Christie, who had made fortunes first with a
New York barge operation company and then with an iron ore mining
operation in Liberia, and who had been the Democratic Party’s biggest
contributor in the  election; and recently retired career diplomat
Ernest A. Gross, who as deputy U.S. delegate to the United Nations had
famously marshaled support for the Security Council’s condemnation of
North Korea’s invasion of its southern neighbor in June . Ambas-
sador Gross, in turn, helped Bronston beat a path to the door of C.D. Jack-
son, who had recently served as a special assistant and speech writer to
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and whose well-established interest in
the use of media propaganda in the service of U.S. foreign policy was
accompanied by the desire to make a lucrative investment. Jackson would
bring in a cadre of friends as modest-scale backers of the John Paul Jones
project.10
Bronston’s efforts to secure adequate funding for the production waxed
and waned during  and . During this time the producer made
three key contacts with profound ramifications for the rest of his career.
First, a member of a second wave of blue-blood investors included Pierre
S. du Pont III, a senior vice-president of the du Pont family’s holding
company, an outspoken conservative patriot, and a sailing aficionado.
Despite the Delaware aristocrat’s unpretentious, low-key demeanor, he
was evidently thoroughly beguiled by the ex-Bessarabian’s exuberance,
high style, and seemingly boundless self-confidence. The two men would

10 R. Stuyvesant Pierrepont, Jr. deposition,  January , in Pierre du Pont v.

Samuel Bronston, U.S. District Court-Northern District Texas-Dallas, case number CA-
--E, files stored at National Archives Federal Record Center, Fort Worth, TX; log
of telephone call by R.S. Pierrepont, Jr. to Nelson Rockefeller, in re arranging Samuel
Bronston meeting with Rockefeller,  February , Papers of Nelson A. Rockefeller,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY; “Bomi Bonanza,” Time,  March
, !http: //www.time.com / time / magazine /article/,,,.html?promoid=
googlep" ( May ); “Stock Selling in Liberia,” Time,  February , !http://www.
time.com/time/magazine/article/,,,.html" ( May ); Fleet Adm.
Chester W. Nimitz to Amb. Ernest Gross,  February , JPJF, CDJP, DDEL; Amb.
Gross to C.D. Jackson,  March , JPJF, CDJP, DDEL; on the highlights of Ernest
Gross’s career see for example “Shooting in the Yellow Sea,” Time,  September
, !http://www.time.com / time / magazine / article / ,,,.html?promoid
=googlep" ( May ); Trygvie Lie, In the Cause of Peace: Seven Years with the
United Nations (New York: Macmillan, ), chapters –; New York Times obit-
uary of Ernest Gross,  May , !http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res
=DEDACFACAF;" ( May ); R.S. Pierrepont, Jr. to
C.D. Jackson,  March , with attached letter from Jackson to investor sub-group, 
March , JPJF, CDJP, DDEL.
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

subsequently forge a close business partnership that would underwrite

Bronston’s blockbusters and ultimately exact a grievous toll on both of
their careers.11
The second crucial contact was with Victor Oswald, a Swiss national
resident in Madrid, who was a representative of the Chase Manhattan
Bank in Spain (Chase Manhattan was owned by the Rockefeller fam-
ily, and it is likely that Nelson and Laurence Rockefeller, both investors
in the “John Paul Jones” project, put Bronston and Oswald together).
Oswald was aware of a number of American-based individuals and con-
cerns that had frozen funds tied up in Spain—investments in Spanish
businesses or real estate that could not be repatriated to the United States
because of Spanish laws, in the manner of numerous other European
states, which sought to head off capital flight and the damage it might
cause to a weak economy. Among the concerns seeking to move pese-
tas into dollars were the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, General
Motors, Eastman Kodak, and a Swiss holding company, Societe Privee,
that owned industrial property in Spain. Additionally, there was the estate
of the late Isadore Stern, who had died leaving “a very valuable investment
in Spain,” and whose family had tried for years without success to repatri-
ate his money to the United States, owing to the Franco regime’s currency
restrictions. Oswald worked closely with Bronston to nail down funding
for a production whose costs had ballooned from two million dollars to
twice that amount.12

11 See for example affidavit of Pierre du Pont rd,  June , in Samuel Bronston
Productions, Inc. and Samuel Bronston v. Pierre du Pont Pont and Jesse Moss, case num-
ber  / , New York State Supreme Court-New York County, on-site archive at 
Center St., Foley Square, New York; deposition of Pierre S. du Pont, Wilmington, DE, 
January , Richard Fleischer v. Bronston-Bengal Productions [and others], case num-
ber  Civ , U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, document from the
private papers of the film director Richard Fleischer (with thanks to the late Mr. Fleis-
cher’s son Mark Fleischer, Esq., for providing a copy of the transcript to Paul G. Nagle,
with whom I am co-authoring a biography of Samuel Bronston (University of Texas Press,
in contract), and thanks to Mr. Nagle for providing it in turn to me); “Pierre S. du Pont
Director of DuPont,” Wilmington Evening Journal,  October ; “P.S. du Pont III, Oth-
ers Oppose Khrushchev Visit,” Wilmington Morning News,  August , in “Pierre du
Pont rd” clipping file, Wilmington News-Journal, Newcastle, DE (with thanks to News-
Journal librarian Ann Haslam for her kind assistance with clipping files).
12 The information in this paragraph is drawn in part from the testimony of Rudolph

Littauer, Esq.,  December , and Irwin Margulies, Esq.,  December , in John
Paul Jones Productions-New Jersey v. Barnett Glassman, U.S. District Court, New York
City, files stored at the National Archives Central Plains Region facility, Lee’s Summit,
MO [hereafter NARA-LS]. As one participant in setting up the financing structure put
it, “The new financing was predicated on the conversion—largely on the conversion of
 neal m. rosendorf

Bronston’s third crucial new relationship was with Jose Maria de

Areilza, the Conde de Motrico, Spain’s Ambassador to the United States.
A dapper career diplomat, Areilza had in earlier years been an ardent
Falangist (Spanish fascist) but had recently started moving toward a more
moderate conservatism (he would later become a key figure in Spain’s
transition from dictatorship to democracy after Franco’s death).13 More
to the point, he was open to offering his services as a political fixer
to Bronston. The Conde strongly encouraged Bronston to use Iberian
shooting locales when the two were seated together at a State Depart-
ment dinner in ; as the producer would later testify in court, “He
brought me to Spain originally.” Areilza was placed on the Bronston

pesetas into a motion picture, and then the whole picture changed. It was no longer
a question of operating in Hollywood or anywhere else. It had to be done exclusively
in Spain.” (Littauer testimony, –). See as well “Contrato de Colaboracion entre
John Paul Jones, Prod., Inc. y Suevia Films—Cesario Gonzales,”  February —copy
sent to the Chief of the Service of Cinematographic Economic Arrangements, Spanish
Government, in “John Paul Jones” file, Ministry of Information and Tourism, --
, Ministry of Information and Tourism-Culture Ministry files (alphabetized film title
listings), General Archive of the Civil Administration of the State, Alcala de Henares,
Spain (hereafter General Archive Alcala).
13 Most precisely, the Conde was a long-time right-wing monarchist who joined the

Falange movement in the mid-s and was rewarded by Franco for his strong sup-
port during the Spanish Civil War with his appointment as mayor of Bilbao, after that
Republican and Basque nationalist stronghold was overrun by the Nationalist army in
. Areilza would eventually grow disenchanted with Franco and by the s become
a supporter of the pretender to the Spanish throne, Don Juan, and then Prince Juan
Carlos, once Franco pronounced Don Juan’s son as his successor. See José Maria de
Areilza, Diario vasco,  May , article excerpt in Alun Kenwood, ed., The Span-
ish Civil War: A Cultural and Historical Reader (Providence and Oxford: Berg Pub-
lishers, ), ; Jose Maria de Areilza and Fernando Castiella, Reivindicaciones de
España (“Spain’s Claims,” devoted to setting forth Spanish imperial ambitions, especially
in the Mediterranean region, a stance that Areilza and the other author later signifi-
cantly moderated) (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Politicos, ); Emmet John Hughes,
Report from Spain (New York: Henry Holt, ), ; Arthur P. Whitaker, Spain and
the Defense of the West (New York: Council on Foreign Relations [Harper imprint],
), ; Rafael Gomez Perez, El Franquismo y la Iglesia (Madrid: Ediciones Rialp,
),  n; Stanley G. Payne, Fascism in Spain, – (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press), ; Paul Preston, The Politics of Revenge: Fascism and the Military
in Twentieth-Century Spain (London: Routledge, ), xiv, ; Michael Richards, A
Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco’s Spain, –
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ), ; Paul Preston, Juan Carlos:
Steering Spain From Dictatorship to Democracy (New York: Norton, ), –, ;
Stanley G. Payne, Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany and World War II (New Haven:
Yale University Press, ), . My thanks to Professor José Areilza of EMPRESA in
Madrid, a grandson of the Conde de Motrico, for his comments on an earlier draft of this
chapter.
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

payroll and would receive at least  , for use of his “influence to
help us out” with the Spanish government between  and .14
Thus it came to pass that there was one logical place for Bronston
to do the bulk of the filming of John Paul Jones: Spain, which held
out the possibility of the least expensive filming to be had in West-
ern Europe—but there were problems both of technical deficiencies
and official suspicion toward Hollywood to surmount. Fortunately for
both the Spanish film industry and for Samuel Bronston, Spain desper-
ately desired hard currency and international rehabilitation. The regime
was in the midst of implementing a program to promote American
tourism to Spain, as a central element of the regime’s efforts after World
War II to improve Spain’s economic and diplomatic / political circum-
stances; and following in tourism’s wake was the first large-scale Amer-
ican film production in Spain. Sam Bronston would capitalize mightily
on both.

Hollywood and American Tourism in Postwar Franco Spain

In the early s, the Franco regime was in the midst of implementing
a program to promote American tourism to Spain, as a central element
of the regime’s efforts after World War II to improve Spain’s economic
and diplomatic / political circumstances. The Spanish government’s over-
arching goal was to “sell” Franco Spain’s image abroad and particularly to
the United States. The policy aimed to portray Spain as a normal West-
ern country and anticommunist ally, and to bring into Spain desperately
needed hard currency, especially dollars, and investment. The Franco
regime was strongly encouraged in the years following World War II to
look to American tourism’s potential economic and propaganda benefits
to Spain by prominent players within the U.S. travel and tourism indus-
tries, including American Express, Hilton Hotels, Trans-World Airlines,
and top American travel writers. As a report by the Spanish Ministry of
Information and Tourism (MIT) put it in , “[I]t is essential that the
tourist who visits us not only returns here, but that he is converted into

14 Testimony of Samuel Bronston,  June , –, in Bankruptcy of Samuel Bron-

ston,  B , U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, stored at NARA-LS
[Bronston Bankruptcy ]; author interview with Paul Lazarus, Jr., former senior vice-
president of Samuel Bronston Productions, Santa Barbara, CA, January ; and Paul
Lazarus, Jr., “The Madrid Movie Caper,” Focus (University of California Santa Barbara),
v.  (), –.
 neal m. rosendorf

the most active propagandist of our nation, increasing in this manner our
prestige in the world.”15
With tourism to Spain steadily increasing, providing the bulk of the
country’s hard currency and delivering perceived propaganda benefits,
the Franco regime was theoretically open to any means that would in-
crease the number of overseas, and especially American, visitors. Motion
pictures made in Spain were a self-evident enhancement medium. In-
deed, the Ministry of Information and Tourism, with its oversight of
propaganda, film production and tourism, was geared toward harness-
ing the film-tourism synergy, albeit while also committed to combating
“moral pollution.”16 From its earliest days the Franco regime looked to
motion pictures as both an economic and propaganda asset. The dicta-
torship announced in , soon after consolidating its control of Spain,
“The cinematograph industry is perhaps one that most needs the guid-
ing hand of the State . . .. The new State cannot overlook activities of this
kind, which if on the one hand is of great interest to National economy,
on the other hand represents for Spain a great means of material and spir-
itual propaganda.”17 Francisco Franco himself had written a film script,
Raza, in the early s. At the same time, the Ministry of Information
and Tourism was congenitally suspicious of Hollywood—as late as ,
internal MIT documents were warning that the American film produc-
ers and distributors amounted to “the sector most easily penetrated by
Judaism and communism,” and that the regime had to be very wary in its
dealings with them as a result.18 Nonetheless, the inescapable reality was
that the United States dominated the international film market, and the

15 “Anteproyecto de Plan Nacional de Turismo,” July , , section ., box ,
general heading “Cultura,” General Archive Alcala.
16 As one Spanish motion picture director later described filming in Spain during the

s, “Our Ministry . . . functioned as two ministries that contradicted each other. One
that was vigilant and one that stimulated tourism. The one . . . prohibited bikinis on the
screen and the other was encouraging tourism that brought bikinis. Thus one would be
asking oneself, ‘Which of the two should I follow?’ ” Carlos F. Heredero, Las Huellas del
Tiempo: Cine espanol, – (Valencia: Archivo de la Filmoteca de la Generalitat
Valenciana, ), p. .
17 “Cinematograph Regulations: Order dated at Madrid the twentieth of October,

, issued by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce,” in Spain: Black Book Docu-
ments –, UA Collection series F—Black Books, box , folder  (Spain), United
Artists Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI (hereafter UAC, WHS).
18 “Borrador Previo para un Estudio Sobre Fines y Medios de la Propaganda de España

en el Exterior,” dated August , p. , in box , section ., heading “Cultura,”
General Archive Alcala.
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

Franco regime felt compelled to try to come terms with this dominance
and seek a useful accommodation with it.
During the early postwar period the Spanish film industry’s infrastruc-
ture left much to be desired. But despite formidable disincentives, Holly-
wood in the s was financially beleaguered as the result of anti-trust
court rulings and the challenge posed by television; and thus Spain’s rep-
utation as a poor nation with cheap prices attracted the U.S. film indus-
try’s attention. United Artists (UA) in particular had been assiduously
cultivating friendly relations with the Franco regime through its distri-
bution operation in Spain. The “studio without a back lot” became some-
thing of a mecca for independent filmmakers, including such luminar-
ies as Robert Rossen, Stanley Kramer, and King Vidor. Their success—
especially Kramer’s—helped to nudge the Franco regime toward a gen-
erally more receptive attitude to Hollywood production in Spain; and it
provided a perfect template for the far more thoroughgoing partnership
that Samuel Bronston developed with Franco’s dictatorship.

Bronston’s Blockbusters and the MIT

When Samuel Bronston arrived in Madrid in  to shoot John Paul

Jones he found not only promises of official support, but a country that
was by European standards (which were of course lower at the time than
American standards) notably inexpensive to work and live in. Bronston
hired as his director John Villiers Farrow, whose two great passions were
seamanship and conservative Catholicism. The director had nursed since
the late s the obsessive dream to film a life of Christ, to be entitled
“The Son of Man.” Once John Paul Jones was completed, Bronston was
ready to move on to bringing Farrow’s “The Son of Man” to the screen.
In the course of putting this project together Bronston astutely realized
he had a golden opportunity to leapfrog past mere independent producer
status and become something more: a full-blown movie mogul in charge
of his own studio.
Franco Spain offered a unique opportunity: it was dirt-cheap, in con-
trast to Hollywood, Britain, or even Italy. Unlike Italy, there was no
competition from wealthy, established local studios and producers who
already had their own Hollywood connections (in Italy magnates like
Dino di Laurentis, Carlo Ponti, and Bronston’s own sometime business
partner Roberto Haggiag dominated the film industry). Finally and most
important, Spain had a dictatorship that for both economic and political
 neal m. rosendorf

reasons was very open to collaborating with American producers, pro-

vided they toed the line set down by the government. Bronston “saw that
that Spain was a peaceful country where strikes were not allowed, where
the workforce was basically [well-] qualified, and cheap, and . . . with the
necessary land, big land, to produce big films, that was more or less acces-
sible and also cheap. And he was the first intelligent American producer
who discovered that.”19
Moreover, Sam Bronston had another significant asset: a multi-mil-
lionaire patron willing to underwrite his efforts in an ongoing fashion,
Pierre S. du Pont III, one of the twelve backers who put up funds for John
Paul Jones. He was a member of the board of directors at E.I. du Pont
de Nemours & Co. and vice-president of Christiana Securities, the du
Pont family holding company. They met in ; by the following year
they had developed a special relationship concerning the production of
John Paul Jones. Du Pont personally invested nearly  . million, over
a quarter of the film’s total cost. The two men would form a series of
limited companies that would enable Bronston to produce some of the
grandest film spectacles of all time. As the producer’s partner, between
 and  Pierre du Pont would sign guarantee notes on Bronston’s
behalf totaling approximately   million (around   million in 
dollars).20
Bronston’s job of selling his audacious idea of a Hollywood in Madrid
to the Franco regime, which did not even allow foreigners to own the
majority share of their Spanish-based operations, was made considerably
easier by his ability to use the august du Pont name. As Carlos Robles
Piquer the one-time Director General for Information at the Ministry
of Information and Tourism, recently recounted, “All of us . . . saw in
Bronston a very welcome man. Why? Because, first of all he was a movie
producer; second, he was a man of extremely high intelligence . . . . For

19 Robles Piquer, interview by author, Madrid, Spain, July .

20 “Bronston Raps His Ex-Accountant; Repeats ‘Harassment’ by Glassman Can’t Halt
‘John Paul Jones’ Dates,” Variety,  December , in “John Paul Jones” film clipping
collection, MHL; Affadavit of Pierre S. du Pont,  September , pp. – and passim,
in Pierre S. du Pont v. Samuel Bronston, case number  / , New York State
Supreme Court, New York County, court archive at Center St., New York City; Rudolph
Littauer testimony, p. ; “Total Bronston Operation Liabilities About   Mil, Court
Documents Show,” Variety,  /  / , “Samuel Bronston” clipping file, Variety Editorial
Offices, Los Angeles, CA (my thanks to Paul G. Nagle for his instrumental aid in obtaining
Variety’s “Samuel Bronston” clipping files). Dollar conversion courtesy of Measuring
Worth.Com, “Six Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 
to Present,” !http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/" ( May ).
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

the first time, we had an American film producer, intelligent, powerful,

with money, or backed by money . . . and he could invest in movies in
Spain, transforming Spain, or part of Spain, Almeria and Las Rozas in
a great and wonderful plateau to produce films, made in Spain for the
world. And that was the first time that such a thing happened.”21
Additionally, Bronston had in his employ Areilza, the Conde de Mo-
trico, the extremely influential ambassador to the United States. He acted,
as Bronston coyly put it at one point, “as a public relations consultant
in certain ways in the company”—although we are left to ponder to
what extent Ambassador Areilza’s participation with Bronston was a
product of cupidity or an official role to co-opt the American producer
for the regime’s purposes. It would have been no matter to the ruthlessly
instrumental Bronston one way or the other, of course, as long as he
got the access and cutting of bureaucratic red tape that he desired.
Beyond the  , in cash that Bronston paid out directly to the
Spanish diplomat over the course of –, Areilza received pieces
of Bronston’s films as an additional form of payment. With the Conde’s
help, Bronston was able to arrange lucrative licenses for the importation
of   million worth of diverse goods, including oil and business adding
machines into Spain.22 Bronston perpetually operated under Areilza’s
aegis throughout the early s via the Conde’s son, who was one of the
producer’s key attorneys in Spain and the secretary of Bronston’s Spanish
corporation Samuel Bronston Española, S.A.23
Bronston’s effort was further simplified by the preoccupations of
Minister of Information and Tourism Gabriel Arias Salgado, a devout

21 “Pierre S. DuPont: High-Flyin’ Angel,” Variety,  January , in “Samuel Bron-

ston” clipping file, Variety Editorial Offices; Robles Piquer, interview by author, Madrid,
Spain, July .
22 See memorandum from the Director General of Foreign Commerce, Ministry of

Commerce to Samuel Bronston, “Asunto: Pago rodaje peliculas ‘El Hijo del Hombre’ y
‘Nelson,’ ”  /  / , in “El Rey de Reyes” file folder, --, Ministry of Information
and Tourism-Culture Ministry files (alphabetized film title listings), General Archives
Alcala; also Bronston testimony,  June , in Bronston Bankruptcy , pp. –,
and – passim; Bronston testimony  June , same file, –. When asked under
oath, “[A]t that time did you have any alleged influence with the Spanish Government,”
Bronston simply replied, “Yes.” Areilza was a key, seminal source of this influence.
(Bronston testimony  June , same file, pp. –.)
23 Bronston testimony,  /  / , in Bronston Bankruptcy , ; Memorandum from

José Mario Armero, Spanish attorney for Samuel Bronston, to Jesse Moss, Samuel Bron-
ston Productions, Inc., “Report on the Present Situation of Samuel Bronston Espanola,
S.A.,”  June , in binder of same name (gift to author from Raymond Cheesman,
CPA, outside accountant for Samuel Bronston Productions, Inc).
 neal m. rosendorf

Catholic who had publicly declared that his job as Minister was “saving
souls.” The Franco dictatorship expeditiously approved the producer’s
request to begin filming his new Christ story project, and Bronston
transferred his family forthwith from New York to Madrid.24 Even as
Bronston’s film of Christ’s life, now titled King of Kings, was still in
the early stages of production, planning had begun on the film that
would be Samuel Bronston Productions’ greatest commercial and critical
success, El Cid, a subject tailor-made to endear Bronston utterly to the
Franco regime. In the film Charlton Heston portrayed Don Rodrigo
de Bivar, Spain’s greatest hero who began the centuries-long process of
Christian victory over the Moors in Spain. El Cid functioned as the
Iberian legendary equivalent of Roland or King Arthur; and Francisco
Franco fancied himself the Cid’s latter-day incarnation, an image the
regime’s propaganda drove home incessantly.25
The Franco regime continued to extend privileges to Bronston at every
turn. Manuel Fraga Iribarne, the Minister of Information and Tourism
from –, stated flatly that Bronston “was totally different” from
the other American film makers in his status in Spain: “He was a spe-
cial relation; he came here,” meaning he was based in Spain, not Hol-
lywood.26 El Cid was able to mount an exceptionally lavish produc-
tion because Bronston and his company had carte blanche access to
Spain’s castles, walled medieval towns, and natural scenery (El Cid’s
grand screen appearance was also helped by the film’s then-huge  mil-
lion dollar budget). Much of El Cid’s shooting was pointedly scheduled
to be done outdoors around Spain. The avid cooperation of the Franco
regime in arranging for Samuel Bronston Productions to film at many
historical sites was indispensable. Bronston’s prestige in Spain reached a
new high with the world-wide success of El Cid. The Franco regime, and
the Spanish public-at-large, revered the movie as a near-perfect encapsu-
lation of the Spanish heroic sensibility. Unsurprisingly, the Franco regime
bolstered Bronston in ways great and small, such as providing thousands

24 See documents contained in “El Rey de Reyes” file folder, --, Ministry of
Information and Tourism-Culture Ministry files (alphabetized film title listings), General
Archives Alcala; Irene Bronston (Samuel Bronston’s daughter), interview by author,
Berkeley, CA, January ; Dr. William Bronston (Samuel Bronston’s son), interview
by author, Carmichael, CA, December , January ; Dorothea Bronston (Samuel
Bronston’s ex-wife), interview by author, London, July .
25 Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography (New York: Basic Books, ), xvii, , , ,

, –.
26 Robles Piquer, interview by author, Madrid, Spain, July ; Don Manuel Fraga

Iribarne, interview by author, Madrid, July .

 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

of Spanish Army troops to serve as extras for only two dollars per day,
horses included, and holding frequent meetings at the Ministry of Infor-
mation and Tourism to discuss issues of common interest. The capstone
of the Franco regime’s approbation and appreciation was its certifica-
tion that El Cid was officially a film in the “Spanish National Interest.”
Only two films in all of Spanish motion picture history had been awarded
this classification. In evaluating El Cid for this honor, which incidentally
brought with it a substantial subsidy from the Ministry of Information
and Tourism, Government censors uniformly lauded Charlton Heston’s
portrayal of El Cid as a paragon of Spanish rectitude.27

Bronston’s Proposal for Propaganda Cooperation

El Cid fit perfectly into a top-secret plan the Spanish Ministry of Infor-
mation and Tourism put together in  for international pro-Franco
propaganda. “Operación Propaganda Exterior,” as the plan was called,
was initiated in  under the direct orders of Minister of Information
and Tourism Gabriel Arias Salgado. The plan had a dual role to propagate
Spain’s image broadly overseas and to further the longstanding goals of
Hispanidad, the regime’s policy of establishing Franco Spain as the undis-
puted leader of the Hispanophone world. Indeed, as far back as ,
the Spanish government’s “Cinematograph Regulations” explicitly stated,
“The new State must find in the cinematograph a powerful instrument of
diffusion which passing the frontier limits, shall make known, specially
[sic] to our brothers in America, the ideals that today animate Spain, by
means of a flourishing industry, symbol—towards creating an empire—
of the efforts we are disposed to make.”28
The fundamental objectives of the plan were “[t]o impart an under-
standing of the foundations on which our political system are based,”

27 Antonio Recoder (long-time local affiliate of the Motion Picture Export Association

of America), interview by author, Madrid, June ; Leon Patlach and Charlton Hes-
ton, interview by author, April ; Proclamation by the Minister of Information and
Tourism,  January , box , “El Cid” file, Ministry of Information and Tourism-
Culture Ministry files (alphabetized film title listings), General Archives Alcala; see cen-
sors’ reports, box , “El Cid” file, same location as previous cite.
28 “Cinematograph Regulations: Order dated at Madrid the twentieth of October,

, issued by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce,” Spain: Black Book Documents
–, United Artists Collection series F—Black Books, box , folder  (Spain),
UAC WHC. See as well for example Sidney Wexler, “Spain Looks Again at Hispanic
America,” Hispania, September , –.
 neal m. rosendorf

and “[t]o demonstrate that our political system is viable in other coun-
tries, fundamentally in those in which Spanish is spoken.” Operación
PE targeted three elements—the political sector, intellectuals, and “la
masa en general.” Concerning the last group, particular areas of pro-
paganda fomentation included festivals, the press, radio, tourism (of
course), and films, especially Spanish films. The study noted the value
of foreign motion picture production in Spain, of which Samuel Bron-
ston was already the ultimate example, declaring, “Collaboration with
foreign countries produces results, in the case of Operación PE, that are
extremely valuable. [Films that] a foreigner produces in Spain, about any
facet of the national life, present to the foreign public a character of objec-
tivity and dispassion that is not always conceded to nationals . . . Co-
production means . . . for the most part the guarantee of a world-wide
distribution of the film, leaving the public unaware of the actual origin,
obviating all possible suspicion of propaganda.”29
As it turns out, the Bronston-Franco linkages concerning propaganda
design were quite explicit, if initially subtle. Continuing to utilize his
standard modus operandi of co-opting influential government figures,
Bronston drew into his organization Enrique Llovet, a diplomat and
writer just returned from Spain’s embassy in Teheran. Back in Madrid,
Llovet held the position of First Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs’ Instituto de Cultura Hispanica, which sought to “increase and
stimulate and promote the relations between Spain and the Spanish
speaking communities.”30
Llovet would serve as a well-paid script writer and consultant in the
Bronston organization between  and , as well as a director for
two years of Bronston’s Spanish corporation. When asked how he could
both serve as a diplomat and work for Bronston, he explained, “Fortu-
nately, it has always been possible for me to have these two parallel activ-
ities. Up to now I have done  films and of course I maintain both occu-
pations without any problem.” However, Llovet’s participation was not
necessarily a bifurcation of his political and artistic vocations; his activi-

29 “Preliminary Study: Operación Politica Exterior: ‘PE,’ ” dated August , in box

, section ., heading “Cultura,” General Archives Alcala; “Operación Politica
Exterior: ‘PE,’ ” dated August , annex, “Cinematografia.”
30 Deposition of Enrique Llovet,  /  / , p.  and passim, United States v. Bronston,

 Cr. , U.S. Federal Court, First District, New York City, files stored at NARA-
LS; Miguel Olid, “El guionista de Samuel Bronston,” El Pais,  /  / , at !http://www
.elpais.com / articulo / andalucia / LLOVET / _ENRIQUE / guionista / Samuel/Bronston /
elpepuespand/elpand_/Tes" ( May ).
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

ties within the Foreign Affairs Ministry had an explicitly propagandistic

element. We cannot know at this point whether he had been officially
instructed to exploit the Bronston enterprise for the sake of Operación
PE. But we must, first, note the circumstantial evidence—Llovet was in
charge of a government organ dedicated to extending Hispanidad while
he worked for Bronston, including on El Cid. Second, he played a key
role in producing two propaganda short subjects, Objetivo  and Sinfo-
nia Española, out of a total of four that Bronston made for the Spanish
government.31
By  Samuel Bronston cast subtlety to the winds concerning his
service as a propaganda asset. He proposed to the Franco dictatorship
a comprehensive program of political collaboration. With the regime’s
assent, the already intimate relationship between Bronston and the re-
gime became the closest ongoing public diplomacy relationship ever
forged, down to the present day, between a Hollywood filmmaker and
a foreign government. Again it must be stressed that Bronston’s motiva-
tions for his blueprint for collaboration had nothing to do with ideologi-
cal sympathy and everything to do with business. He desired a special
dispensation that would allow his Spanish corporation, Samuel Bron-
ston Española, S.A., to be majority foreign-owned, in contravention of
Spain’s  law requiring that “the capital of companies which pos-
sess or exploit studios, laboratories or in general establishments for cin-
ematographic production in Spain . . ..must be wholly Spanish.”32 This
statute was getting in the way of Bronston’s efforts to arrange foreign
financing to purchase the land and studios he had been using for film
production, and in order to circumvent the law he laid out his col-
laborative offer. After noting at length the manifold economic benefits
to Spain of his production operation, he laid out the political wind-
fall:
From the point of view of information and propaganda, SAMUEL BRON-
STON PRODUCTIONS, INC. are pleased and proud of the success of their
film EL CID throughout the world, and of the way that the name of Spain is
being linked with the exhibition and publicity of this picture. In the film 
DAYS AT PEKING [a depiction of the  Boxer Rebellion] . . . .special

31 Memorandum from José Mario Armero to Jesse Moss, “Report on the Present

Situation of Samuel Bronston Espanola, S.A.,”  June , binder of same name,
Raymond Cheesman accounting files; Llovet deposition, – and passim.
32 “The Law of -XI- Ruling National Industry as applied to Cinematographic

Production,”  January ,  April , binder “Report on the Present Situation
of Samuel Bronston Espanola, S.A.,” Raymond Cheesman accounting files.
 neal m. rosendorf

interest has been taken to see that Spain’s intervention has been duly con-
sidered. Journalists from all parts of the world visit Spain invited by this
company and hundreds of articles speak of Spain, where an American pro-
ducer is making films for the whole world . . . .

Bronston then highlighted the political value of his current project, The
Fall of the Roman Empire, and listed the roster of upcoming documen-
tary films he had already agreed to make on the Franco regime’s behalf.
He projected that his slated future mega-productions would together
“signif[y] approximately an expense of fifty million dollars,” or around
  million in  dollars, an especially welcome boon in the midst
of Spain’s painful economic stabilization policy at the time—as Bron-
ston pointed out. The production capstone, planned for , was to be a
hagiographic portrayal of the Spanish monarch who had sent Columbus
to the New World, expelled the Jews and Muslims from Spain, and insti-
tuted the Inquisition. Isabel of Spain, Bronston suggested, would “be our
biggest production, with a larger budget than any other film yet made”—
a particularly grand claim, given Bronston’s well-known penchant for
astronomical production costs—“and the greatest worldwide exhibition
of characters and deeds from Spanish history.”
In exchange for the foreign owner dispensation he sought, the pro-
ducer promised to codify and deepen his political cooperation with the
Franco dictatorship:
If their activities can be developed in Spain on the basis of the [requested
authorizations], SAMUEL BRONSTON PRODUCTIONS, INC. and par-
ticularly their President, Mr. Samuel Bronston and SAMUEL BRONSTON
ESPAÑOLA, S.A. would like to repeat their offer to the effect that their
work will aim at the widest collaboration in the spreading of Spanish val-
ues. We are making, then, a general declaration that whatever we do will
always be to the benefit of the country which has receive us so warmly and,
more concretely, we are prepared to submit to the following conditions:

(A) We declare that the object of SAMUEL BRONSTON ESPAÑOLA,

S.A. will be . . . .the production of cinematographic films which exalt
the value of Spain . . . .
(B) [SBE, S.A. will] submit the realization of each Spanish film, indepen-
dently of the normal administrative procedure, to the express autho-
rization of the Dirreccion General de Cinematografia y Teatro, so
that the film may conform with . . . .the above point.
(C) Admit two representatives from the Ministry of Information and
Tourism as members of the Board of Directors of SAMUEL BRON-
STON ESPAÑOLA, S.A.
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

(D) [SBE, S.A. will] produce at least one full length or documentary film
per year covering national values in accordance with the suggestions
of the Ministry of Information and Tourism, the worldwide distri-
bution of which will be guaranteed by SAMUEL BRONSTON.33

The Franco regime could not have been more delighted with Bronston’s
extraordinary proposal and enthusiastically agreed to its terms, stipu-
lating that the two Ministry of Information and Tourism officials to be
appointed to SBE, S.A.’s Board of Directors would hold the rank of Direc-
tor General within the Ministry, an expression of the importance to the
regime of the partnership and its activities.34

Bronston’s Propaganda Films for Franco

The Franco regime was grateful for Samuel Bronston’s willingness to col-
laborate explicitly with its propaganda outreach efforts. Bronston was
equally appreciative of the regime and the special treatment they had
accorded him, as he made clear in his proposal for his Spanish corpo-
ration’s special status. Thus it is unsurprising that he repeatedly assented
when Spanish officials approached him with requests to produce pro-
Franco films, even before the Spanish government granted him the waiv-
er authorizing foreign ownership of Samuel Bronston Española, S.A.
Dr. Carlos Robles Piquer was the Director General for Information at
the MIT and one of Fraga’s key lieutenants on propaganda affairs. Rob-
les Piquer was in charge of the information (propaganda), not cinema,
section of the MIT (he would in fact later head the latter branch), but
“I had to do sometimes with the films that dealt with, let’s say, political
problems . . . .” As Robles Piquer later testified under oath, “I, together
with my colleagues and staff members of the Ministry told Mr. Bron-
ston that we would like it very much if he produced some films for infor-
mation and tourism on present day Spain.”35 From this initial approach
came four completed propaganda film projects, with more planned but
not executed.

33 Proposal concerning the legal status of Samuel Bronston Espanola, S.A.,  March

, binder “Report on the Present Situation of Samuel Bronston Espanola, S.A.,”
Raymond Cheesman accounting files.
34 Reply from the Spanish Presidencia del Gobierno granting Bronston’s request, 

May , in binder “Report on the Present Situation of Samuel Bronston Espanola, S.A.,”
Raymond Cheesman accounting files.
35 Robles Piquer deposition, , .
 neal m. rosendorf

Three of the films—El Camino Real (The Royal Road), Sinfonia

Espanola (Spanish Symphony), and El Valle de los Caidos (The Valley of
the Fallen)—were geared to the Ministry of Information and Tourism’s
grand program to promote the official commemoration of the th an-
niversary of the Nationalist victory in the Spanish civil war, referred to as
“ Years of Peace.” The Franco regime wanted to drive home the point
that under El Caudillo’s leadership, Spain had avoided internal chaos and
bloodshed (except, of course, in the jails that held thousands of political
prisoners, many of whom were tortured or executed) and was achieving
social development and prosperity. The regime had multiple target audi-
ences in mind: domestic, Latin American, Western European, and Amer-
ican. As Carlos Robles Piquer put it, the propaganda films, as well as the
feature film El Cid in particular, “were, let’s say, weapons, useful weapons
to present Spain to the world, not only to Hispaniards [sic]—[but] also
to convince the Hispaniards of the benefits of the regime . . ..”36
The first of these propaganda films was the one most especially aimed
at the United States. El Camino Real chronicled the exploits of Father
Junipero Serra, the th-century Spanish cleric who established a string
of missions in California. The idea for the film originated with Manuel
Fraga Iribarne, who in  had assumed the position as Minister of
Information and Tourism, and who was a singularly shrewd strategist of
the uses of media both for direct propaganda purposes and to promote
tourism, which held both economic and propaganda value. “We were
aware that the public opinion in general [in the U.S.] was not in favor of
the Franco regime,” Robles Piquer explained. “One of the reasons why we
organized the [project] on Fray Junipero Serra was to [penetrate] some
sectors of distinguished and high-level opinion in the United States.”
The MIT “was looking for ways to attract distinguished elements in the
American society to Spain . . . . We were looking for any door that we
could open, for that purpose,” when Fraga became aware of the imminent
th anniversary of Fray Junipero Serra’s birth. He quickly realized the
opportunity “to organize a special ceremony to link Spain and U.S.” and
assigned his deputy Robles Piquer to handle the program.37
When Robles Piquer approached Samuel Bronston to make a docu-
mentary film about the cleric, the producer assigned one of his senior
functionaries, Jaime Prades, to oversee the project. Prades wrote and
directed the film himself. The images throughout the motion picture

36 Robles Piquer, interview by author, Madrid, Spain, July .

37 Ibid.
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

were explicit in the U.S.-Spanish linkages the MIT sought to establish,

including the film’s opening and closing shots of the U.S. Capitol in
Washington (which contains a statue of Junipero Serra in the Rotunda),
modern-day San Diego, Los Angeles (including a separate view of Holly-
wood), and San Francisco, and the California missions themselves, such
as San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and San Juan de Capistrano. Car-
los Robles Piquer followed up the production with a trip to the U.S. to
gain the participation of prominent Americans in the film’s premiere
on Mallorca, Junipero Serra’s birthplace (the film pointedly displayed
the island’s beaches and main hotel being enjoyed by tourists). He per-
suaded Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty as well as the mayors of San Fran-
cisco and Carmel (where Junipero Serra is buried), and his greatest coup,
Earl Warren, former California governor and current Chief Justice of
the U.S. Supreme Court, to attend the gala celebrations in Spain. “[W]e
had a budget, so we could invite in first class planes, first class hotels—
everything was well-organized. And we celebrated two or three days in
Mallorca.”38
Sinfonia Español was, on the face of it, a travelogue designed primarily
to entice visitors to Spain. The anodyne description of the film project
by the Spanish authorities was “Documental sobre España moderna,
turística e industriel.” But there was of course far more to the project
than met the eye. As Carlos Robles Piquer, who came up with the idea
for the project, testified, the goal was for the film to “portray the truth
about Spanish present life, and that of course the film be presented
not only in Spain but everywhere as much, as broadly, as possible.”
Bronston’s response to Robles Piquer’s request was that he “was very
eager about this idea of helping to make Spain well known by Spanish
and other countries.” At a party at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, Bronston
approached Angel Sagaz, who was then the Director General of United
States Affairs in the Spanish Foreign Ministry (and who, several years
later would serve as Spain’s ambassador to the U.S.), “and said that he
was ready to get all possible elements, equipment, cameramen, anything

38 El Camino Real (), Filmoteca Espanola, Madrid; film script in “Camino Real”

file, Ministry of Information and Tourism-Culture Ministry files (alphabetized film title
listings), General Archives Alcala; Robles Piquer, interview by author, Madrid, Spain,
July ; Invitation letter from Manuel Fraga Iribarne, Spanish Minister of Informa-
tion and Tourism, to U.S. Supreme court Chief Justice Earl Warren,  March ,
box , “Spain—Mallorca—–,” Papers of Earl Warren, Manuscript Division,
U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, DC (my thanks to Paul G. Nagle for obtaining
and providing to me a copy of this document).
 neal m. rosendorf

that could help him to make the best possible film about Spain, its art,
its folklore, its possibilities for tourism and offer that film to the Spanish
Government for the public relations and propaganda of Spain.”39
While Bronston bore the costs of production himself, the government
provided him with unrestricted access to any location in Spain he wished.
Still, the film remained technically Bronston’s, on the logic recently set
forth in Operación PE: when asked what advantages there were for
the Spanish government for the film to be owned in Bronston’s name,
Robles Piquer replied, “Well, in my own opinion, as I was in charge of
Spanish propaganda, is that we needed that the film remained into the
hands—to the ownership of Mr. Bronston—because an officially made
film should never be accepted by the public as a film produced by the
private enterprise. [It was] much better for us not only that the film be
made by a well known producer as Mr. Bronston but also that the film
remained forever into his hands from a legal point of view.”40
The Ministry of Information and Tourism was sufficiently anxious to
get the project under way and sufficiently trusting of Bronston and his
organization that it gave special permission to begin filming a full two
months before the script went through the usual formal approval pro-
cess. The regime’s trust in Bronston was well-placed. He produced the
nearly two-hour long film in the expensive widescreen Cinemascope
process, lovingly portraying the natural and architectural wonders of
Spain, documenting Flamenco dancers, bullfights, local pageants, and
the like, while working in humming modern factories, schools, hydro-
electric dams, and other evidence of Spain’s great material and cultural
progress, including slow camera pans across bookstore shelves laden with
contemporary books, magazines and newspapers from across Europe
and the U.S. that seemingly (and misleadingly) demonstrated a society
devoid of censorship. His cameras lingered as well over the recently com-
pleted, gargantuan Catholic cathedral-cum-memorial to the Nationalist
Civil War dead, the Valle de los Caidos (more on this below). Bronston
also included a sequence showing the grand sets for his latest super-epic
in production, The Fall of the Roman Empire, underlining his unique rela-

39 “Documentary about modern Spain, touristic and industrial.” Samuel Bronston

films proposal to the Spanish MIT for the production of Sinfonia Espanola, May ,
“Sinfonia Espanola file,” Ministry of Information and Tourism-Culture Ministry files
(alphabetized film title listings), General Archives Alcala; Robles Piquer deposition, –;
Deposition of Angel Sagaz,  January , , in United States v. Samuel Bronston,  Cr
, U.S. District Court, Southern District NY, files stored in NARA-LS.
40 Robles Piquer deposition, .
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

tionship with the Franco regime and his high economic value to Spain,
while providing an advertisement for other international producers to
follow in his footsteps.41
Hundreds of prints of the resulting film were supplied gratis to the
Franco regime’s official agencies for showing both in Spain and abroad.
Domestically, it was screened in no fewer than  cities and towns.
Internationally, it was shown in  cities in Europe, North, Central and
South America, and the Philippines. Sinfonia Espanola received a high-
profile premiere in Madrid “in a very important . . . cinema . . . .where it
was officially presented with the attendance of Ministers and many high
ranking officials of the Government. It was part of the commemoration
of the th Anniversary itself.” Fraga was ecstatic about the resulting film:
in a memorandum he waxed on about “the gorgeous cinematography
. . . .its positive approach of respect for eternal and contemporary Spain
and . . . .intended to be the greatest full-length documentary that has
photographed Spain with a serious and transcendent content.” Fraga
personally shipped a copy to Francisco Franco for El Candillo’s private
viewing. The regime emphasized the domestic propaganda value of the
film “to present to the thousands of spectators of the Festivals [of Spain]
the extremely beautiful vision of eternal Spain and to commemorate the
XXV Years of Peace.”42
Bronston’s documentary was shown around the world by the Spanish
government, “for instance, during the celebration of the Spanish exposi-
tion called ‘Expo Tour’ in different countries abroad and also during the
official visits made by Spanish ministers, or Spanish high ranking officials

41 Samuel Bronston Productions proposal to the Spanish MIT for the production

of Sinfonia Espanola, May , “Sinfonia Espanola” file, Ministry of Information and
Tourism-Culture Ministry files (alphabetized film title listings), General Archives Alcala;
Sinfonia Espanola, , Filmoteca Espanola, Madrid.
42 Sinfonia Espanola lists of domestic and foreign exhibition venues, n.d.; see as well

letter from Carlos Robles Piquer to Jaime Prades of Samuel Bronston Productions (and
director of the film) concerning international exhibition plans,  February ; letter
from Manuel Fraga Iribarne to Fernando Fuertes de Villavicencio,  April : “The
documentary . . . is to be presented at the end of the month at a cinema in Madrid, with
the maximum solemnity . . . a program that will be widely exhibited in the Festivals of
Spain to demonstrate the current panorama of our Country and of the progress reached
during the XXV Years of Peace.”; “Note by His Excellency the Minister concerning the
film ‘Sinfonia Española,’ ”  April ; Letter from Manuel Fraga Iribarne to Fernando
Fuertes de Villavicencio,  April ; memorandum from Carlos Robles Piquer to
the Director general of Cinema and Theater,  April —all documents in “Sinfonia
Española” file, Ministry of Information and Tourism-Culture Ministry files (alphabetized
film title listings), General Archives Alcala; Robles Piquer deposition, .
 neal m. rosendorf

to foreign countries,” as well as at the Spanish Pavilion at the –

New York World’s Fair. Spanish diplomat Enrique Llovet, who worked for
months on producing Sinfonia Española, “took the film to Latin Amer-
ica where I showed it with my personal presence . . . . I went personally
to seven or eight countries of Latin America just to [speak to the audi-
ence and] present the film.” Moreover, Fraga and Robles Piquer followed
the progress of the film as it was shown throughout the region. Robles
Piquer was especially exercised over the damaging image of the Franco
regime and its conduct during the Spanish civil war portrayed in the con-
temporaneous high-profile documentary, To Die in Madrid (“Mourir a
Madrid”), directed by the respected French filmmaker Frédéric Rossif
and co-narrated by the noted actor John Gielgud, which was being shown
in Latin America. The Spanish propaganda official reported to the Direc-
tor General of Cinema and Theater that he expected the forthcoming
showing of Sinfonia Española in Uruguay “will be resisting the effects that
are being produced by the exhibition of ‘To Die in Madrid,’ which will
simultaneously be presented in Montevideo.” Unsurprisingly, the Franco
regime classified Sinfonia Española, like El Cid before it, as a film in the
Spanish National Interest.43
There is little extant documentation on Valley of the Fallen / Valle de
los Caidos (), a film aimed primarily at a Spanish domestic audience
(although an English-language version was intended for American televi-
sion). Alone of the four Bronston propaganda films it cannot currently be
viewed because of the fragility of the film stock. This is most unfortunate,
as the film clearly had a very high priority for both the Ministry of Infor-
mation and Tourism and Samuel Bronston. Manuel Fraga Iribarne has
stated that the film was a “was a very important work” for the “ Years
of Peace” program. He stressed in a recent interview that “there are peo-
ple from both sides buried there,” and this was a central part of the film’s
importance to the Spanish government: Fraga and Robles Piquer sought
through their propaganda effort to defuse long-simmering resentment
by the approximately half the Spanish population who identified with

43 Robles Piquer deposition, ; Llovet deposition, ; see e.g. memorandum from Fraga

to Fernando Maria Castiella, Minister of Foreign Affairs,  September , which

discusses the “great success” of the presentation of Sinfonia Española in Mexico City;
Letter from Robles Piquer to the Director General of Cinema and Theater,  October
; letter from the Director General of Cinema and Theater to Manuel Fraga Iribarne,
 April —all documents in “Sinfonia Española” file, Ministry of Information and
Tourism-Culture Ministry files (alphabetized film title listings), General Archives Alcala.
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

the defeated Republican cause.44 Samuel Bronston devoted considerable

resources to the production of the documentary-drama hybrid, includ-
ing American director Andrew Marton, who worked on Bronston’s epic
 Days at Peking, and the conservative American writer and syndicated
columnist Jim Bishop. Bronston exclaimed to his production aide Pan-
cho Kohner at the time, “Valley of the Fallen must be the greatest docu-
mentary film ever made or we are just going to trash it [throw it away],
because this is my gift to Franco.”45 In any event, both Bronston and the
Ministry of Information and Tourism had taken on a devilishly difficult
subject, as the massive cathedral, bored into the side of a mountain which
is capped by a huge cross and monumental statuary that rivals the scale
of Mount Rushmore, was built over  years primarily with slave labor
drawn from Republican political prisoners (they were given one day of
sentence commutation for each day of grueling effort on the project).
Finally, Objetivo  was the most nakedly propagandistic of Bron-
ston’s films on the regime’s behalf. Written by Spanish diplomatic official
Enrique Llovet, the script touted the advances in technology, produc-
tivity, and worker satisfaction under the Franco regime and laid down
a challenge to the public to redouble their efforts in aid of the regime’s
official plan for continued economic development (“Plan de Desarrollo
Económico y Social de España”). The documentary short subject, while
filmed in color and Cinemascope, contains obviously contrived inter-
views and comments from a cross-section of government officials, busi-
ness people, and laborers. Government censors who usually avoided
criticizing government-sanctioned offerings were sufficiently concerned
about the blatant nature of the film to excoriate it in their reports to
the MIT: “Naturally, it is partisan and the script constitutes a typical
example—a bad example—of the propaganda short subject, with images
accompanied by abundant text, adorned [in turn] with a large amount
of figures . . . .and the script is a good illustration of the existing proce-
dures by which cinema verité will be a diminished ‘verité’ that agrees
with the intentions of the filmmaker.” Nonetheless, the Spanish govern-
ment was obviously satisfied with the film. The MIT pushed ahead with
plans to show Objetivo  at all cinemas throughout Spain; and the Min-
istry of the Economy screened Bronston’s production for numerous visit-
ing foreign dignitaries, including King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi

44 Fraga and Robles Piquer, interviews by author, Madrid, Spain, July .
45 Samuel Bronston, quoted by his former production aide Pancho Kohner, in an
interview with Paul G. Nagle, . My thanks to Mr. Nagle for providing me with a
copy of this interview.
 neal m. rosendorf

monarch extolled the documentary’s depiction of “the prodigious efforts

of the Spaniards on the road to progress and development.”46

Torpedoed by du Pont, Kept Afloat by Franco

Bronston’s Byzantine and legally questionable financial practices caught

up with him dramatically in early . A demand for payment on a one
million dollar loan caused a cascade of similar demands. The unwary
Pierre du Pont, who had been blithely signing unconditional promissory
notes on Bronston’s behalf for over five years, found himself to his hor-
ror holding much of the responsibility for debts originally valued at some
  million dollars (around one billion  dollars). Bronston’s debt
load was eventually reduced down to the still huge figure of   million,
much of which was owed by du Pont. The estranged benefactor imme-
diately ceased backing Bronston’s projects, which caused the two men to
barrage each other with a series of lawsuits over the next decade. Du Pont,
humiliated before his family, precipitously “retired” from his positions at
DuPont and Christiana Securities; he never worked again.47 The various
suits paralyzed Bronston financially and ultimately made it impossible
for him to resume major film production.
Despite his difficulties, between  and  it looked at various
points as though Bronston was going to re-emerge in the Phoenix-like
fashion that had been his career trademark. He received no small assis-
tance in this regard from the Franco regime. Grateful for the singular
contribution that “Don Samuel” had made to the dictatorship’s goals
and hoping for more of the same, the Spanish government continued
to extend aid to the American producer in meeting his financial obliga-

46 Objectivo  (), Filmoteca Espanola, Madrid; film script and censor’s report on

Objectivo , both in “Objectivo ” file, Ministry of Information and Tourism-Culture
Ministry files (alphabetized film title listings), General Archives Alcala; “ ‘Todos Los
Pueblos Arabes No Ignoran, ni Olvidaran Jamas, las Gallardas Posturas de Espana al
Colocarse a su Lado en los dias Mas Sombrios para Defender Su Causa como Se Hace
Entre Hermanos’ ” [“The Arab Peoples do not Ignore, Nor do They Ever Forget, Spain’s
Valiant Position Standing at Their Side in the Darkest days in Order to Defend Their
Cause as Brothers Would”], La Vanguardia (Barcelona), //, p. , online at the La
Vanguardia Hemeroteca, !http://www.lavanguardia.es/hemeroteca/".
47 “Memorandum for the Files” by Richard Simmons of the Principal Creditors Group

of his conversation with Judge Simon Rifkind, Pierre du Pont III’s attorney, dated 
October , in private papers of Philip Yordan (private collection; my deep thanks to
Philip’s widow Faith Yordan for giving me full access to these papers).
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

tions. The regime’s aid included a moratorium on Bronston’s debts and a

series of generous crude oil import licenses. This crude oil scheme gener-
ated some  . million in profit to be applied toward Bronston’s debts. At
a later juncture, Bronston explained to creditors, with crystal-clear self-
awareness, “that he was a pioneer in the motion picture business in Spain
which is today a flourishing industry and a tourist attraction and that this
was a consideration for oil allocations being made to him.”48
The principal creditors to whom both du Pont and Bronston owed
huge sums of money strongly supported Bronston’s returning to active
film production as a means of raising revenue. But du Pont, embarking
on what can only be described as a vendetta, vehemently opposed such
efforts—indeed, du Pont was seeking possession of the Samuel Bronston
studios in Spain, which the creditors’ group summarily rejected as “sheer
nonsense.” A distinguished group of Spanish lawyers advising the credi-
tors explained, more temperately, that
Bronston is the key figure in the resolution of the Spanish situation . . . .
[T]he Spanish government has gone out of its way to help Bronston
through oil ventures even over the opposition of some government minis-
ters and influential businessmen. The government’s desire to help is based
on the fact that Bronston started a new and expanding industry that cre-
ated substantial employment and liquidated substantial blocked currency
by utilizing it within the country. Bronston heretofore produced motion
pictures at his expense for the Spanish government that advanced tourism.
The cooperation and assistance afforded Bronston would definitely not be
available to du Pont or any third party since the government would feel no
obligation to foreigners other than Bronston.49

But while the emphasis here was on tourism, the film industry, and Bron-
ston’s purely economic contributions to Spain, the solution proposed in
 by the Franco regime to aid Bronston was squarely in the mold of
political propaganda straight out of Operación PE and Bronston’s pro-
posal for foreign ownership of Samuel Bronston Española, S.A., right
down to the emphasis on Hispanidad, as well as U.S. and European audi-
ences:

48 Memorandum of conference held today at the office of Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby,

Palmer & Wood, attorneys for Pierre S. DuPont,  December , ; Minutes of
conference held this day at the offices of Cahill, Gordon, Reindel and Ohl,  /  / , ,
both documents in papers of Philip Yordan.
49 Minutes of a meeting of Principal Creditors held at the offices of Cahill, Gordon,

Reindel and Ohl,  July , –; “Memorandum: Conference held in Madrid, Spain
from January ,  through February , ,”  February ,  and passim, both
documents in papers of Philip Yordan.
 neal m. rosendorf

The companies will concentrate on the production of documentaries for

various ministries to promote industry—other ministries to promote tour-
ism. During this period, the company will diversify in an effort to realize
. . . .the potential of the Spanish economy. The Spanish economy has grown
from a   billion gross national product to a   billion gross national
product in the last five years. Documentaries, industrial and educational
films will be produced and directed to Latin American governments . . . .
In addition, the Bronston enterprises are seeking television contacts with
United States and European television chains so that production of films
for television can be undertaken. The possibility exists that a television
channel may be assigned by the Spanish government to the Bronston
enterprises.50
And so it was that Bronston continued to keep in the regime’s good
graces, despite the lack of actual film making. He was able to raise a
million dollars to put “Isabella of Spain” into an advanced state of pre-
production in –, including hiring Glenda Jackson to play the
title role and Ronald Neame to direct. The script, according to Jackson,
was notable for omitting any mention of Isabella’s expulsion of the Jews
from Spain in , even as it emphasized, in the manner of El Cid, Spain’s
pivotal role in defeating the Moorish menace to Europe. But the pro-
ducer, hobbled by the  . million dollar judgment du Pont won against
him, could not raise the funds needed to move “Isabella of Spain” into
production, despite herculean promotional efforts that included gaining
the backing of an associate of the notorious mobster Meyer Lansky.51
Bronston’s reputation and capacity to function in the film industry
took a further hit in  when he was convicted in U.S. Federal Court
of perjury. Although he successfully appealed the decision before the
Supreme Court in , he was financially exhausted and still facing
the du Pont judgment. In the meantime the Spanish government had
gone through a series of upheavals that denuded him of political support
within the Franco regime. In the summer of  the Spanish author-
ities issued an arrest warrant against Bronston over an unpaid debt to
Air Algiers, while the local press began to refer to him derisively as a
“Rumanian Jew.”52 In an all-too-familiar replay of his flight from the

50 “Memorandum: Conference held in Madrid, Spain from January ,  through

February , ,”  February , , in papers of Philip Yordan.

51 Samuel Bronston deposition,  October , p. , in Pierre du Pont v. Samuel

Bronston, U.S. District Court-Northern District Texas-Dallas, CA---E; stored at

NARA’s Fort Worth facility; Bronston was evidently oblivious to the organized crime
connections of his backer, Edward Jules Markus, which are set out in “Pizza Parlous,”
Private Eye (UK),  March , pp. –.
52 “The Reign of Spain,”  February , Time !http://www.time.com/time/
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

French authorities a generation earlier, Bronston slipped out of Spain and

moved with his family to Dallas, Texas. He paid off the  , debt
to Air Algiers that had put him in the Spanish dock, while leaving mil-
lions of dollars in other debts unpaid. He declared that he would soon
return to Madrid to resume his production of “Isabella of Spain.” But
in fact the days of “Don Samuel” and his dreams of leading Hollywood
in Madrid were over. Bronston would return to Spain occasionally over
the next decade, but he would never again produce a film there, or any-
where else. Pierre du Pont continued his unrelenting efforts to squeeze his
erstwhile partner dry throughout the s. The battery of lawsuits ulti-
mately resulted in Bronston’s loss of his few remaining assets through per-
sonal bankruptcy in . After enduring a decade of grinding, anony-
mous poverty in Houston, Bronston died in a Sacramento, California
hospital in .53

Conclusion

Samuel Bronston met the end of the line in Franco Spain a mere two years
before the Franco regime itself. The two players had wrung the maximum
value out of each other by the end of their relationship. Some years
later, in a last ditch effort to re-enter film production, Bronston traveled
to Manila in an attempt to forge with Ferdinand Marcos a relationship
similar to the one he had had with El Caudillo. But despite his announced
plan to make a biographical movie about the life of Filipino hero Dr.
Jose Rizal, Bronston could not get his hands on any of the billions of
dollars that the Marcoses had illicitly amassed. Imelda Marcos took a
shine to Bronston and gave him a very expensive suit as a present. He
left Manila more snappily attired than when he arrived, but no better
off.54

magazine/article/,,,.html" ( May ); Peter Besas, “Samuel Bron-

ston, Who Pulled Spanish Pic Industry Out of Doldrums, Now Facing Arrest,” Variety, 
August , “Samuel Bronston” clipping file, Variety Editorial Offices.
53 “Bronston: Madrid Debt paid, Will Continue There,” Variety,  August , “Sam-

uel Bronston” clipping file, Variety Editorial Offices; see as well files within Pierre du Pont
v. Samuel Bronston, U.S. District Court-Northern District Texas-Dallas, case number CA-
--E; Samuel Bronston, Debtor, case number BK----F, United States District
Court—Northern District of Texas-Dallas Division [Bankruptcy]; Dorothea Bronston,
interview with author, London, July ; William Bronston, interviews by author,
Carmichael, CA, January .
54 “Bronston Plans Jose Rizal Biopic,” Variety,  March , “Samuel Bronston”
 neal m. rosendorf

Still, Bronston demonstrated the possibility of using his own template

under roughly analogous circumstances: an independent American film
producer identifies and approaches an authoritarian regime, distaste-
ful but not commonly perceived as beyond the pale, with elements of
corruption, a self-perceived international image issue and related desire
to utilize American soft power for its own purposes, and whose coun-
try has a motion picture industry not yet broadly or deeply penetrated
by Hollywood production. By this modus operandi Bronston hoped to
approximate the collaborative relationship he and the Franco regime had
forged, the closest partnership achieved at any time between an Ameri-
can motion picture enterprise and a foreign government.
Bronston’s partnership with Franco was unique, but not entirely so.
One possible contemporary corollary is the Peoples Republic of China,
which has been the beneficiary of a number of U.S.-PRC co-productions
like Crouching Tiger / Hidden Dragon and American-distributed films
like In the Mood for Love, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers. There
have also been U.S.-made productions filmed partly in China like the
highly successful action comedy Shanghai Noon and its sequel Shanghai
Knights. These films in the aggregate have portrayed for American (and
global) audiences an exciting, romantic, attractive, culturally rich and
non-threatening China—and in the case of the last two films mentioned,
a China with significant historical ties to the United States.55 China
is, quite simply, benefiting from an element of American soft power—
Hollywood—and seeing this power of persuasion converted into its own,
including in relation to the United States.56 The Chinese government has
been demanding script review and approval as a condition of U.S. filming
there, and Hollywood producers have been sanguine about complying, in
the manner of the relationship between the Franco regime and American

clipping file, Variety Editorial Offices; William Bronston, interview by author, Carmi-
chael, CA, .
55 Chinese premier Jiang Zemin, urging the PRC Politburo to view Titanic, averred

to his party comrades, “You should not imagine that there is no ideological education
in capitalist countries. ‘Titanic’ speaks of wealth and love, the relationship between rich
and poor, and vividly describes how people react to disaster.” Charles Trueheart, “With
Popularity Come Pitfalls,” Washington Post,  October .
56 As the Chinese political analyst Li Yong Yan has put it, [I]t is imperative to under-

stand that to the Chinese government, entertainment is not entertainment alone. It is an

education to the people on nationalist patriotism. Moreover, media is not just a vehi-
cle for information, but a battleground that is to be occupied, either by ‘us’, or by ‘them’.
See “In Beijing, Porn’s Cool but Hollywood Sucks,”  June , Asia Times Online,
!http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FFAd.html" (May , ).
 hollywood, dictatorship and propaganda 

producers in Spain a half-century ago.57 Moreover, China is making ever

increasing efforts to gain international tourists, including Americans,
and there is an awareness of the relationship between movies made in
China and tourism benefits—for example, the historic town featured in
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is now a Mecca for travelers from the
U.S. and elsewhere.58 But all of the films that have involved American
production have been “one-off ” affairs. China is arguably waiting for
another Samuel Bronston: a well-funded producer bold enough, skilled
enough, and apolitically instrumental enough, to collaborate with the
Communist dictatorship and establish a new American motion picture
empire in Hollywood in Beijing.59

57 Vivienne Chow, East Meets West,  December , Film Journal International,

!http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/esearch/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id
=" (May , ).
58 “Residents Left out of China’s Tourism Boom,”  December , UPI, http://www

.upi.com/Business_News////Residents_left_out_of_Chinas_tourism_boom/
UPI-/" (May , ).
59 For a more detailed comparative discussion of the Franco regime’s and the People’s

Republic of China’s Hollywood policies, see Neal M. Rosendorf, “Popaganda: What

Hollywood Can Do For (and To) China,” The American Interest, March – April .