It's detestable, but that's the way it is. It's even worse in New Canaan. There, nobody can sell or rent to a Jew. And even in Darien where Jane's house is and my house is, there's a sort of a gentlemen's agreement when you... Gentleman's Agreement

Troubled by America's self-righteous assumption that "the Holocaust couldn't happen here," Moss Hart in 1947 wrote a provocative screenplay based on Laura Z. Hobson's novel, Gentleman's Agreement. The film tells the story of a journalist, played by Gregory Peck, who for six weeks pretends to be Jewish in order to write an article about anti-Semitism in America. To his amazement, he encounters many expressions of prejudice, ranging from exclusion from restricted communities like Darien, Connecticut, to his blue-blooded girlfriend's (temporary) rejection of him, to the measures taken by his secretary, a self-hating Jew, to conceal her identity and to denounce her coreligionists. When he completes his experiment, the journalist concludes that well-meaning liberals, who outwardly deplore bigotry, actually promote anti-Semitism by their social inaction.

Enjoying tremendous critical acclaim, Gentleman's Agreement was heralded by Time as "an almost overpowering polemical film" (November 17, 1947), while being praised by the New York Times as "courageous" and "sizzling" (November 12, 1947). Nominated in 1947 for seven Academy Awards, including best screenplay, it won the Oscar for best picture. Perhaps the most enduring legacy of Moss Hart's work on Gentleman's Agreement, however, was the tradition of social-message films it initiated. To this day, such movies help to raise America's awareness of injustice.