As Herbert Hoover's oft-quoted aphorism states, the business of America is business. But what this truism fails to take into account is the powerful urge for respect, for status, that accompanies the simple aim of making a buck. Though there is no aristocracy in America, not so far as recognized by law, no one who has ever thirsted after power and influence with only money as a weapon, and then come face to face with the invisible blue-bloods arrayed before the gate, can have any faith in this homily to America's virtuous democracy. So it was with the founders of the major Hollywood studios. Immigrants or the sons of immigrants, Eastern Europeans, and Jews, of slight education and deprived backgrounds, they knew from bitter experience to what extent they would be allowed within the provinces of power: not at all. So they created an empire of...