Gambling and conspiracy in Hollywood: the Portugal that never was

Abstract

World War II was a turning point in the construction of discourse about Portugal disseminated by North-American audiovisual fiction and, by extension, in the way mass culture inscribed this country in international imagination during the Estado Novo regime. This article analyses the screenplays of two Warner Brothers projects – The Gamblers (scripted in 1942, unproduced) and The Conspirators (scripted and produced in 1943/1944). It concludes that Washington’s efforts to align cinema with war propaganda and, above all, the logic of production of Hollywood fiction contributed to obscure from the image of Portugal shaped at the time (and subsequently replicated) more critical views of Portuguese neutrality, of the Salazar dictatorship and of the country’s history.