'The House of Rothschild' tells the story of the famous German Jewish banking family, the great financers of 19th century Europe. George Arliss plays several generations of Rothschild patriarchs. Loretta Young and Robert Young have a Jew/Gentile romance. The screenplay is by Nunnally Johnson, who would later adapt 'The Grapes of Wrath', among other fine films.
It is notable that this movie, which directly addresses anti Semitism on screen even as Hitler was in ascendency in Europe, was made by 20th Century Fox, the only major Hollywood studio at the time without a Jewish studio head. Darryl F. Zanuck was a protestant of Swiss extraction from Wahoo Nebraska, however his name and position no doubt caused many people to assume he was Jewish. So Zanuck would have been familiar with anti-Semitism but also at a certain distance from it, that may have been what emboldened him to address the issue on screen so early and so openly.
This is a handsomely mounted film and Arliss is great it in it. He really was an odd looking man, yet a consistent money maker for 20th Century and they used him well. George's wife Florence also appears in the film and it's fun to see the easy chemistry the two have with each other. ***
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