Motion Picture Commission : hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, second session, on bills to establish a Federal Motion Picture Commission (1978)

MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. 65 i!()w secrotiiry to the b()ri)U<.th i)iesident of Manliiittan: Dr. J. P. AVarbasse, who is at the head of a hirge hospital in Brooiilyn and who is consulting physician of the New York Civil Service Commis- sion: Dr. Henry JNIoskowitz, who is tlie head of the New York CiyiT Service Connnission; J. K. lauding; Albert Shiels, who is at the head of the bureau of research and education in New York: and three or four women. So that the general committee, the court of appeals, represents religious organizations, educational organizations, and pretty largely the medical profession. When a film conies before that general committee en appeal the film is viewed again and the action of that committee is final. It takes the same sort of acti(m that the censoring committee does; it condems the film in toto, it passes it, or it makes eliminations. That is, it says to the manufacturer, "We Avill pass this film provided certain things are cut out or cer- tain things are put in."" For instance, a film may be an ordinary dramatic film which will result in, let us say, vice triumphing rather than virtue triumphing. Now, the committee has on many occasions said, '' We think the general effect of that film in making vice tri- umphant or. at least, not having vice punished, is bad, and we want you to change the end of that." A variety of changes of that sort, which atfect the film in a thousand different ways, are made under the elimination clauses or amendment clauses. Now, in addition to that the board has what might be called an educational agency, and through the establishment of standards and the insistence upon standards and talking with the various producers, it tries to change and modify and improve all lines of the motion- picture business. In connection with the national board there is an educational department, for the board very clearly recognized that here was an industry whose bigness, whose possibilities, were just be- ginning. It realized that here Avas an agency second only to the press in its magnitude, and when it was known that from seven to nine million people every day view motion pictures, that a twelfth or fifteenth of our population goes to the motion pictu.re shows every day, that the cities are filled with them, and that it is an agency of great possibilities for educational purposes, the board said, "' It is necessary for us to do something, if we can. to promote the use of the motion pictures in the schools, churches, and other organizations." So it took the matter up Avith Mr. Edison and other promoters, and organized an edricational department for the promotion (f the educational motion picture. Now, as indicative of the work of the board last year, the year that closed January 1, 1014, the board inspected 7,000 reels; that repre- sented 5,700 stories or film subjects; it inspected 8,500.000 feet of films: out of 7,000 inspected, 53 subjects were condemned in toto. The board said, '' We will not ]jass those, no matter what changes you make in them."' Then in addition to the 53 that were condemned in toto the board said that there were 400 films that could be saved with certain changes made, and the board provided for the elimina- tion or changing of something like 77,000 feet. Assuming that nega- tives cost $1.50 per foot, the manufacturers or board destroyed $116,000 worth of negatives. That was the net and absolute loss on films destroyed: they were scrapped, throw^n away. Sample films to the value of $3,000 were also destroyed. The sales value to manufacturers of films kept off the market was $460,000, and the