Budapest / Hollywood – Hungarians Who Built the Dream Factory

Dr. Tamás Kollarik – Dr. Sándor Takó: BUDAPEST / HOLLYWOOD

Few cultural narratives exist that speak, at once, of identity, emigration, and global impact — yet the Hungarian presence in Hollywood is precisely such a story. Budapest / Hollywood is not merely a striking survey of film history, but the result of more than a decade of international research: for ten years, the authors traveled the world, exploring family estates, libraries, and archives to uncover this extraordinary, often hidden web of connections.

Dr. Tamás Kollarik, associate professor at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, an acclaimed filmmaker honored with the Balázs Béla Prize and the Miklós Bánffy Prize, together with Dr. Sándor Takó, lecturer at Pázmány Péter Catholic University and recipient of the Sándor Sára Prize, have done far more than gather documents. Through lectures delivered at dozens of universities, they shaped and tested the narrative that now, for the first time, comes together as a unified whole.

The volume is therefore not simply a collection of stories, but a comprehensive cultural map: proof of how the intellectual milieu of Hungary — and of Budapest — became, indirectly, one of Hollywood’s defining sources. The present study, drawing on texts from their book, briefly unfolds this complex legacy through stories and anecdotes.

Antal Kiss, Editor-in-Chief

If it is not too presumptuous, we ask the kind reader to allow us one suggestion: first read our essay offering a nutshell history of Hungary, and only then turn to this study on film; perhaps in this way the origins and trajectory of Hungarian creativity may become easier to understand and interpret.

“Being Hungarian is not enough — you must be talented as well!” According to legend, this warning was posted on the office door of Adolph Zukor, the Hungary-born former New York furrier who became a Hollywood mogul and founding head of Paramount Pictures. Anecdotes add that Zukor would quietly tell the many Hungarians seeking work from him: “…though it does help a little.”

Whether the legend is true or not, one fact is beyond dispute: the relationship between Hollywood and the Hungarians reaches back more than a century. And Hungarian creators have helped shape Hollywood ever since the first camera tripods were planted in the California desert. The dream factory — as its very name suggests — has, from its birth, been a world of contradictions, where dreams roll off an assembly line, where film strives to be both art and industry, and where success walks hand in hand with glamour and intrigue. Hollywood is the place where, for over a hundred years, the most gifted artists from every corner of the world have trodden on one another’s heels, even accepting that a celebrated creator might, in an instant, become merely a component in an industrial machine.

Hollywood is at once a term of reproach and the embodiment of the American Dream, undeniably playing a defining role in shaping American identity. For more than a century it has molded and dominated global film culture, and, in the words of Wim Wenders, it “colonizes our subconscious.” The moving image — born as a fairground spectacle and later elevated into the seventh art — proved capable overseas of something even its inventors themselves had scarcely imagined.

Film, as a common language, under the guidance of a handful of pioneers who dreamed boldly and leapt into the unknown, was able to organize itself into an industry and, regardless of native tongue, origin, or social station, unite the restless, multiethnic United States — still searching for its identity in the early twentieth century — with an unprecedented force. Thus was born the myth of the Hollywood film, the audience for American cinema, and a conquering campaign began that today unfolds, as a kind of “cultural invasion,” across nations and across the world.

But where did Hollywood cinema begin, and where is it headed? Through what human achievements, trade secrets, and intrigues was the dream factory built? And what, in truth, do the Hungarians have to do with all this? Far more than one might first imagine…

It may be said that we Hungarians, relative to our numbers and our place on the map, participated in shaping Hollywood to an almost astonishing degree. One of the world’s earliest major film companies — Famous Players in Famous Plays, later the iconic Paramount Pictures, which he himself would lead — was founded in the early 1910s by Adolph Zukor, who came from the village of Ricse in Zemplén County. Film history credits him as well with developing both the studio system and the star system.

At the presentation of his honorary Academy Awards in 1949, Adolph Zukor was tellingly hailed as the father of the American feature film industry. “Mr. Movie” — as Alfred Hitchcock and his peers called the barely 160-centimeter mogul — never ceased supporting his homeland and tiny native village of Ricse, even at the height of his success. As a Hollywood studio chief, he financed the renovation of the village school and the Reformed church, and sent a forty-dollar wedding gift to every newly married couple from his birthplace — precisely the sum he himself had sewn into his inner pocket when he arrived in America. A magical story, made more wondrous still by the fact that one of his principal Hollywood rivals, Fried Vilmos — anglicized as William Fox, founder of the legendary 20th Century Fox — was also born in Hungary, scarcely fifty kilometers from Zukor, in the famed Tokaj wine region, in the small village of Tolcsva.

It is difficult not only to fully recount, but even to list, how many émigré Hungarian filmmakers set out for California in their wake. Many built dazzling careers and became immortal stars, their names known from Sydney to London, from Moscow to Cape Town. One need only think of Michael Curtiz, the Oscar-winning director of Casablanca; Bela Lugosi, who introduced the Dracula myth to the world; George Cukor, considered one of cinema’s greatest directors; Tony Curtis, who helped shape a masculine ideal; or Zsa Zsa Gabor, the first scandal-haunted sex diva.

Yet beyond them, countless other Hungarians left a profound mark on the dream factory — and through it, on universal film history. It is little known that one of Hollywood’s earliest women producers was also Hungarian: Margaret J. Winkler discovered a young Walt Disney just as he was spreading his wings. And Miklos Rozsa — composer of Ben-Hur, nominated for seventeen Oscars and winner of three — reinvented the Hollywood film score, drawing in part on Hungarian folk motifs, while working on nearly one hundred films.

There was even a time when Hollywood did not come to Budapest — though today Budapest is itself one of Hollywood’s production hubs, where films such as Dune, Blade Runner 2049, and Live Free or Die Hard have been made — but rather Budapest was reconstructed as a set in Hollywood. So it was in the adaptation of Miklos Laszlo’s play Parfumerie, which later served, among other things, as the basis for the 1998 Warner Bros. remake You've Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Hungarian stories were transplanted and brought to the screen in America. Lajos Egri wrote one of the foundational works on screenwriting, of whom Woody Allen said: “I learned more from this charismatic Hungarian than from anyone.” And there was a time when the Hungarian-language plays of Melchior Lengyel and Ferenc Molnar were among Hollywood’s most sought-after sources for film.

It is less widely known, too, that one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite directors is none other than the Hungarian Andre de Toth (Endre Tóth), whom Martin Scorsese called, quite simply, “the director’s director,” even financing the restoration of several of his films from his own pocket. Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond were among the foremost cinematographers of the Hollywood New Wave — associated with names such as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Mike Nichols, Robert Altman and Steven Spielberg — and fled together to America during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Another émigré of ’56, Andrew G. Vajna, became one of the defining figures of the American independent film movement, producing such franchise landmarks as Rambo, Die Hard and The Terminator. Still living, and active to this day, are Hollywood icons such as Joe Eszterhas, who wrote the first million-dollar screenplay, Basic Instinct, and the multiple Emmy-winning Gabor Csupo, who helped reinvent animation and, through The Simpsons, brought it into the world of adults and popular culture.

Even this handful of arbitrarily chosen names illustrates how many Hungarian creators shaped American cinema from the far side of the Atlantic. The numbers tell the story as well: by 2025 — though different methods may yield different totals — one may count 51 Hungarian Oscars and 23 Hungarian-related stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Hollywood’s history is usually told as though it were the triumph of a single nation: as if everything began there, among California’s sunlit hills, where the Dream Factory — the world’s most powerful film industry — arose out of nothing.

The reality, however, is far more compelling.

Hollywood is not a purely American invention: behind its success stand the cultural inheritance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as the creativity and vitality of European immigrants. And if we look more closely at the organizers and creators of the film industry, among — and behind — surnames suggestive of Polish, Jewish, German, Romanian, Slovak, and countless other European origins, we strikingly often find ties to Hungarian culture.

Behind the enchanted films, and those who dreamed them into being, there emerges a strange patchwork woven from interlocking fates: boys departing from villages in Zemplén County, writers debating in Budapest cafés, dreamers standing on emigrant ships, and entrepreneurs rising from New York slums — their stories become entwined. The first stitches were sewn at Ellis Island and in New York, but the fabric found its final pattern in Hollywood.

New York film historians often say that the Hollywood film did more to spread the American way of life — raised the star-spangled banner in more places — than the armed forces of the United States. How striking to consider that its foundations and workings were built by two Hungarian immigrants from tiny villages: Adolph Zukor and William Fox.

 
Emigration as Creative Explosion

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, America — though already past revolution and civil war — was still a society like a vast experiment in formation. Industry was developing explosively, cities were rising from the ground, and the economy was expanding at such speed that it constantly demanded new people.

Between 1890 and 1910, nearly fifteen million immigrants arrived in the United States. Among them were hundreds of thousands from the lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — Slovaks, Croats, Ruthenians, Roma, Jews, and hundreds of thousands of Hungarians, often leaving everything behind.

Many spoke no English, had no trade, and often could neither read nor write. They set out because they believed — hoped — in a freer, happier future, and because they possessed the courage, and the willingness, to take risks.

At the turn of the century, precisely in this era, cinema was born — arriving almost hand in hand with the immigrants.

At first, moving pictures were dismissed as cheap spectacle. The “respectable” classes ignored them, considering them beneath their rank. And for that very reason, they became an opportunity for those outside the social hierarchy — including Hungarian immigrants.

The nickelodeons — the first movie houses — offered short films for five cents. These places were meeting grounds: not elite amusements reserved for descendants of those who came on the Mayflower voyage, but spaces where workers, immigrants, and street children sat side by side. Origin did not matter, nor wealth; one did not even need to know the language, because the image spoke to everyone.

This was Hollywood’s true revolution.

 
A Beginning Sewn into a Coat

One of the best-known — and perhaps most telling — stories is bound to Adolph Zukor.

Zukor came from the small Hungarian village of Ricse. As a boy, he first came to know America through letters — letters sent home by emigrants. In them he heard of wonders, of a magical new world where freedom and opportunity offered everyone the promise of a better life.

At fourteen, he decided to leave.

When he arrived in America, he had almost nothing. According to legend, the forty dollars with which he began the journey was sewn into his coat. The image — a boy carrying his entire fortune, quite literally, in his pocket — perfectly captures the spirit of an age.

Zukor did not merely arrive and find a place in the United States: he transformed it.

He built Paramount Pictures and helped create the foundations of the modern film industry: the studio system, the star system. The film and audiovisual entertainment world as we know it grew from Adolph Zukor’s mantle — or rather, was born in his waistcoat pocket.

And Zukor never forgot his roots. With his wife, Kaufmann Lotti, he spoke Hungarian at home, and when he longed for peace, they cooked Hungarian dishes together. He neither forgot nor denied where he came from.

When he had become one of Hollywood’s most powerful men, he sent forty dollars as a wedding gift to every young couple from Ricse. Exactly the amount with which he himself had arrived.

Two Neighboring Villages, Two Film Giants

The story of Adolph Zukor is extraordinary in itself, but set beside the career of William Fox, founder of 20th Century Fox, it enters the realm of the almost unbelievable.

Fox, in the very same decade, was born scarcely fifty kilometers from Zukor’s native village, in another small Hungarian village, Tolcsva.

Two boys from the same region. Two emigrants who would make history, building modern film production — and with it, the American dream factory itself, Hollywood.

Fox was not only a workaholic, but an unusually perceptive observer: he noticed, and recorded, how cinema was changing social habits.

Before that, poor immigrants and workers could not afford the theater, but the movies were accessible and understandable; more than that, families and communities could go together, sharing a common experience.

Film became not merely an industry, but a force that shaped communities — even society itself.

 
Hollywood as a Wild-West Enterprise

Early Hollywood resembled a gold rush more than a mature industry.

Scandals, sabotage, swift fortunes and sudden collapses defined it. There were no rules — or if there were, they were quickly rewritten.

It was a hard and ruthless world: many fell, few endured, yet the Hungarians adapted to it with particular skill — they fought, and they survived.

Many among them combined creativity with pragmatism. They understood both storytelling and business. That dual gift is rare — and in Hollywood, invaluable. In the end, they helped write the rules of a new world.

 
The Woman Producer Who Discovered Disney

One of the most fascinating Hungarian stories in Hollywood belongs to Margaret J. Winkler.

She began as a secretary; in her correspondence she long concealed that she was a woman, then made history by becoming the first woman admitted to the American producers’ association.

Margaret Winkler made history in another way as well: she was the one who gave Walt Disney his chance — Disney having sold his last possession, his camera, to buy a train ticket from Kansas to Los Angeles at the producer’s invitation.

Geniuses do not make history alone, without those who recognize them and give them opportunity. Winkler’s decision helped animation evolve from children’s amusement into a global cultural force — one that has shaped the visual imagination of humanity itself.

Zsa Zsa: When Fame Takes on a Life of Its Own

The Gábor sisters — those three remarkable women, and especially Zsa Zsa Gabor — were decades ahead of their time, generations in advance of the motifs of the entertainment industry.

Zsa Zsa was not merely a film star: she was the first influencer; she herself was the story.

She understood perfectly that Hollywood was not only about films, but about attention. Her interviews, marriages, scandals — all formed part of a consciously constructed persona.

She was among the first to grasp what we would now call a personal brand, though she still belonged to another world, where knowledge, accomplishment, and the elegance brought from Budapest were inseparable from it.

Lugosi and the Price of Immortality

Bela Lugosi was one of the great stars of his era, already an established actor when he sought his fortune in the United States.

Without English, using lines learned phonetically, he conquered the Broadway stage, and then Hollywood discovered him.

He was the one who made Dracula immortal. His accent, his gestures, his presence — all helped make the character iconic.

But Lugosi’s career also reveals the darker side of Hollywood success: all his life he struggled to escape the role of Dracula, yet that very iconization became a trap.

He became a legend in his own lifetime — and that legend became his prison. For Hollywood does not only raise men up; it can imprison them as well.

Tony Curtis, Hollywood’s Prince with a Hungarian Voice

Tony Curtis was born in Brooklyn, the son of Hungarian immigrants. As a child he did not speak English; he often recalled that until the age of six he believed they lived in Hungary, not in New York’s Hungarian quarter.

He achieved everything, conquered everything — and everyone. His masculine good looks and boyish charm captivated on screen — and beyond it.

He often said that when he became an actor, one of his greatest challenges was shedding his accent; yet he always added that he never entirely lost it — and perhaps never wished to.

The question of belonging and identity lies hidden in every immigrant life, and in almost every Hungarian story in Hollywood.

Budapest: The Invisible Inspiration

Hungarian filmmakers did not arrive in the United States empty-handed: they carried Hungary in their hearts and language, and many — very many — brought Budapest with them as well.

The Hungarian capital, pearl of the Danube and center of the Carpathian Basin, Budapest at the turn of the century was a singular place: a world of cafés where writers, artists, and scholars debated. A space where ideas moved freely.

That milieu taught Budapest’s sons and daughters how to think, how to feel, and how to tell stories.

One of the world’s most famous films, the Oscar-winning Casablanca, reveals this clearly: Michael Curtiz — Mihály Kertész to Budapest — was still building from Budapest even in Hollywood. The café in Casablanca evokes the world of Pest coffeehouses — not merely as décor, but as memory: the recreation of a beloved and admired Budapest world.

An Invisible Network

They say of Hungarians that two will go in three directions, and three divide into four — yet in Hollywood they did not work in isolation.

There were ties among them, strengthened not only by language and the heart, but by the Hungarian stomach as well. One can live without sausage, stuffed cabbage, and goulash — but whether one should is another matter.

Bela Lugosi organized pig slaughters; Emeric Pressburger kept a “sausage room” in London where delicacies matured — provisions without which he would never travel to New York.

Shared suppers, the singular Hungarian tongue, perhaps even homesickness for the Carpathian Basin — all may have played a part, but they truly did help one another: they recommended one another, and when needed, gave one another work.

This network never took formal, organized shape; no common association was founded. Yet it functioned — and functioned well. Perhaps this was one of the chief reasons so many succeeded.

A Story Larger Than Itself

The Hungarian story in Hollywood is not merely film history.

It is an example of how the cultural inheritance of a small nation can attain global force.

How a conversation in a Budapest café becomes a Hollywood scene.

How an emigrant boy becomes the founder of an industry.

And how all this endures — invisibly, yet demonstrably and palpably — within one of the world’s most powerful cultural systems.

Thus Hollywood is not only America’s story.

If we look more closely, it is, in some small measure, Hungary’s story too — and Budapest’s as well.