German theatre director Max Reinhardt received his American naturalisation papers punctually upon the expiry of the five-year waiting period on 29 November 1940. He had made a corresponding application in 1935 when he was working on the Hollywood film adaptation of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Two years later, Reinhardt left his home in Austria for the United States as a result of the increasing international tensions in Europe. The decision to emigrate permanently was not one he took lightly. Upon fleeing in 1933, he wrote to the Nazi government: “The decision to separate permanently from German theatre, is of course a difficult one for me. I am not only losing the fruit of over 37 years of my professional life, I am also losing the ground on which I worked so hard and in which I have grown myself. I am losing my home.”

Even before 1933, the director had worked on many productions in New York – the city where he had hoped to move all of his activities permanently. However, for financial reasons, he settled in California, as he already had contacts in Hollywood. His place of residence in his naturalisation papers is listed as Pacific Palisades, where other German-speaking exiles such as Thomas Mann and Lion Feuchtwanger had lived for a while. In June 1938, Max Reinhardt founded an acting school in Los Angeles that ran until 1942. It was only then that he moved to the east coast, where he died shortly after his 70th birthday.