A Review of the film Where I Stand, the Hank Greenspun Story

by Daniel E. Levenson, ALM

April 18, 2010

In the film, Where I Stand, the Hank Greenspun Story, Director Scott Goldstein presents the dramatic and engaging story of Hank Greenspun, a man who wore many hats in his lifetime, from gunrunner for the Haganah, to Las Vegas casino and publisher, to social activist.

The film is strongest when it highlights the various challenges that Greenspun faced and how he overcame them, often, it would appear, through sheer fearlessness and unbending devotion to a deeply held personal sense of justice. His interactions and conflicts with some of the major figures of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, ranging from Bugsy Siegel to Richard Nixon to Anwar Sadat are also well-chronicled in this film. The only real flaw in this otherwise well-made film can be found in the first ten to fifteen minutes of the movie in which the audience is introduced to Greenspun’s early years in a somewhat confused series of overlapping images and fragments of texts. Also, the choice of actor Anthony Hopkins to give first-person voice to some of Greenspun’s writings seems an odd choice.

Goldstein has documented some of the Greenspun’s most notorious public battles, from his clash with Senator Joseph McCarthy after the latter called him a Communist, to his efforts to end racial discrimination and segregation in Las Vegas, fight back against unfair practices by the IRS and put an end to government storage of nuclear waste in Nevada. Although Greenspun says in the film that he was not particularly observant as a young man when it came to Judaism, he makes it clear that the Talmud, his own pious father, and his experiences fighting in Europe during World War Two inspired within him a deep love of justice as well as enthusiasm for Zionist efforts to establish a Jewish state in Palestine after the war. As an operative for the Haganah he repeatedly risked his own life and freedom to acquire and ship weapons and other vital supplies to the Middle East, of which the nascent state was desperately in need.  Later he become personally involved in efforts to broker peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors, helping to connect Israeli, Egyptian and Saudi officials through his own connections.

Speaking to a full house before the screening of the film at the 13th Annual Film Festival of the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, director Scott Goldstein gave a brief overview of how he came to make this documentary and said to the audience of the film it was about to see, “What you’re looking back at is the inner voice of a great man.” Happily, his words turned out to be quite true.