SACRAMENTO.- The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts presents the exhibit Driven into Paradise: L.A.'s European Jewish Émigrés of the 1930s and 1940s through August 27, 2006. The first exhibition to focus exclusively on the major contributions Jewish exiles made to the cultural foundation of Los Angeles, "Driven into Paradise" traces the dramatic and highly personal journeys of eleven talented men and women as they escaped from Nazi-dominated Europe and became leading figures in the burgeoning cultural landscape of Los Angeles.

On display will be informative and interactive graphic panels exhibiting musical scores, manuscripts, ceramics, novels, letters and photographs, along with film and music clips. Together, these materials convey a profound sense of the personal and artistic freedom possible in California.

The émigrés whose lives and careers are highlighted in the exhibition are filmmakers Michael Curtiz and Billy Wilder, composers Arnold Schoenberg and Ernst Toch, artists Otto and Gertrud Natzler, art collector Galka Scheyer, and writers Vicki Baum, Lion Feuchtwanger, Salka Viertel and Franz Werfel.

"Driven into Paradise: L.A.'s European Jewish Émigrés of the 1930s and 1940s" is organized and circulated by the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles. Photo of Emigre Billy Wilder on the set of Sunset Boulevard, 1949. Courtesy of Marc/Wanmaker/Bison Archives.