Hollywood and American foreign policy

THE official architect of foreign policy in the United States is the State Department. But it is not the only one. There is an entire contingent of independent policymakers. And then there is "the Little State Department".

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) referred to itself as "the Little State Department" because the major Hollywood studios that it represented produced movies to promote US foreign policy abroad in the 1940s.

The real State Department, headquartered in Washington, DC, had requested the MPAA to sell the American way of life overseas, and to avoid negative cinematic portrayals of countries with which the US had good relations.