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)

150 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. D. C. Hibbard, of Mason City, Iowa; and a fourth. Miss Nellie M. Smith, a social worker in New York City. All of these persons ob- jected to the views of the Outlook upon sex films and two of them to the moral and psychological influence of this particular film, say- ing, in substance, this: That while at first view the picture might seem unobjectionable and might do what its makers claimed for it—that is, aid in breaking up commercialized prostitution—that its real effect as to men was to emphasize and suggest strongly to them an easy way of making money; that its effect would be to produce cadets and keepers of houses of prostitution. Certainly the body of men that I saw in the theater that day when I went to view that film would substantiate that claim. It was a body of men that you would be ashamed to be with. I looked upon the faces of those men and was convinced that they did not go there for the purpose of breaking up prostitution in my opinion, they went there simply to get points. At any rate, take an impressionable young man, and I believe the in- fluence of that film upon him would be very vicious. Then, not only that, but it would have a bad effect upon 3'oung girls. While it might, as some claimed, to a girl coming into New York from the country be a warning of the fate that was ahead of her if she followed such a life, yet the real psychological influence of that picture would be to increase the number of girls Avho would be willing—for the money that was in it—to sell their virtue. At any rate, that was the o]:)inion of those people. That picture, when it was submitted for exhibition here in Washington, was rejected. The picture was rejected b.y the Censorship Board of Chicago. It was rejected, to my knowledge, by one of the mayors in Westchester County, N, Y., and I do not know in how many other places. This instance makes it clear that neither the average audience nor even an audience of any 10 or 12 very good men or women can cor- rectly judge of the moral effect of a picture. It takes trained experts. I ani not saying that motion pictures should not deal with sex prob- lems, because I advocate such a play, for instance, as '' Damaged Goods." I do not know how many of you have seen that play, but it is a play that deals with sexual vice, venereal disease, and the awful punishment that God brings upon (hose who viohite sex laws. That is a good tiling, and there can be i)]ioto plays like that—such magnifi- cent plays as Hawthorne's Scarlet T^iCtter, if that were put upon the film. T am not saying that the pictures should not deal Avith this subject, but what I am contending it that they should deal with it in such a way as to meet the aiiju-oval of trained experts. In her letter, published in the Outlook of February U, ^Mrs. P>arclay Hazard, the head of the Florence Crittenton Mission in New York City, wrote as follows: The question before the country in re^.-ird to the fihns dainiing to .«;how the inside history of the white-slave tralhc and kindred evils is not. as it is the fashion to say, a question of policy as to the method of dealing with the evil itself. Those' wlio advocate this view of the situation say. with considerable I)lausibility. that for centuries we have been trying' to hold in check the social evil by supi'ression. We have };one on the theory that with a certain kind of fire to" admit light and air was only to quicken the tlame, and, while smothering might not altogether subdue it. the danger of this method was considerably the less. They also claim that we have outgrown this theory, and that we now realize that publicity is a great weapon against dark and devious ways; that a free and open discussion of this subject not only tends to keep people from entering the life, but enlightens good people who have no temptations in such