When a young Mexican man fleeing American Nazis determined to remove Mexicans and Jews from America crashes through his door, a grizzled Spanish-American War veteran must decide — in the time it takes to open or close that door — whether to grant the asylum his country just denied a ship full of Jewish refugees.

BOYLE HEIGHTS 1939 is a powerful and emotional historical fiction feature film screenplay, a Political Noir story for today. Brilliantly using fictional characters to involve facts about NAZIs in America and their Silver Shirt vigilantes before World War II — which reflects the experience of I.C.E. raids in America today — helps Americans deal with the collective trauma and sense of powerlessness being experienced while enduring the violent I.C.E. raids in Blue cities.

The Boyle Heights community of Los Angeles in 1939 was a vibrant diversified area because of the worst red-lining by the real estate industry in Los Angeles, forcing Mexicans, Jews, Japanese, and other cultural and ethnic communities into the vibrant area across the river from downtown Los Angeles.

That diversity attracted the hate and ire of the large American Nazi presence in Los Angeles, especially the Nazi Silver Shirt vigilantes who violently enforced the national repatriation drives to remove Mexicans, whether citizens or not, from the USA because they were blamed then, as now again, for taking jobs from deserving white Americans. They were blamed for worsening the Great Depression. 

Further, the American Nazi Silver Legion's Silver Shirt vigilantes, inspired and motivated by the success of Hitler's Brown Shirts in Nazi Germany with Crystal Night at the beginning of the Holocaust. They were passionate about also attacking Jews to remove them from America (antisemitism was prevalent alongside Jim Crow in pre-World War II America).

Nazis held a huge rally in November 1938 to celebrate Hitler’s Crystal Night attack on German Jews. The rally leader Hermann Schwinn publicly declared, “Within five years, we will see Jews dangling from telephone posts and trees!”

That was in Los Angeles, California.

THE STORY: 20-year-old Mexican Juan Ignacio Herrera Martínez, working at a Jewish market delivering food to earn money to send to his widowed mother and younger siblings in Jalisco MX, was chased by the Silver Shirt vigilantes during their surge into Boyle Heights. Terrified and desperate, he dives into an unlocked door to hide. It is the dingy small one-room apartment of 65-year-old Michael Scott Whitney, a white man, a lonely widower, and a veteran of the Spanish American War.

Michael, armed with his old rifle, forces Juan to leave his apartment but he hears breaking news on the radio that Jewish refugees were refused asylum in America after also being refused by Cuba, the country he fought to free. He is offended by the news, and recognizes that Juan, too, is a refugee seeking shelter.

He chooses to protect Juan.

The two spend the few days of the Nazi surge together in the that cramped apartment, bonding ... very unusual for a time when Mexicans and whites did not mix.

Originally, Michael sits watch, protecting Juan.

However, tragedy turns the tables. When Michael has a vicious heart attack, it becomes Juan's turn to protect Michael. Choosing to face possible discovery by the Silver Shirts, Juan seeks help for Michael to keep him alive.

In the end, the heavily-armed Silver Shirts and the lightly-armed Michael and Juan face tragedy.

BOYLE HEIGHTS 1939 is a uniquely told story, an emotional rollercoaster, immensely entertaining and also thought provoking.

BOYLE HEIGHTS 1939 is  crafted for one primary audience:   the Politically Aware & Politically Horrified.

In showbiz terms:

BOYLE HEIGHTS 1939 is not "Four Quadrant," it is "ONE Quadrant."

BOYLE HEIGHTS 1939 is not "Save the Cat," it is "KILL the cat."

BOYLE HEIGHTS 1939 is a story that takes the audience through tremendous emotional upheavals between two very different people forced by Nazis to spend a week together in one small room. It's a very contained story shot in one room, like Hitchcock's "ROPE," Louis Malle's "MY DINNER WITH ANDRE," and other successful stories told in contained settings. 

BOYLE HEIGHTS 1939 is an historically accurate reflection of how today's violent, racist I.C.E. raids came to be.