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. 161 that to allow these notorious gamblers aud gansters to he displayed as heroes would suggest and increase crime among the young. B. They knew that the chief attraction and commercial value of the picture was that it was a section of the Nation's Rogues' Gallery, which a certain part of the business would like to see, yet they consent to the showing of these gamblers, and attempt to evade responsibility by claiming that the kind of advertising which the exhibitor may use concerning the picture is outside the board's jurisdiction. C. This is a clear case of ducking by the board of its responsibility, by attempting to throw it upon the police to suppress the advertising of the names of these notorious gamblers. The absurdity of expecting the police to suppress the advertising of the names of these gangsters in connection with a picture, which the board has declared to be innocent, though the actors were known to them and notorious, is ai>parent. D. The statement that the board is concerned with the moral effect of motion pictures and not with the moral character of the people who act in them, and that these notorious characters had not been convicted of any crime may be true but is puerile. They are confessed lawbreakers and one an accomplice in a notorious crime of murder, and the showing of their pictures must have a bad moral effect entirely apart from the story of the pictui-e drama. E. The story in which these gangsters act pretends to show that the wages of sin is death. Rut this moral is so ineffectively shown as to be practically absent, and the picture could not fail to increase crime among young men. It advertises race-track gambling and, familiarizing one with roulette, suggests gambling as a way in which a person in need of funds may get money without labor. F. This film illustrates what is called the working of the third degree. The Italian commits murder in the film and is later made to confess the murder by luridly showing him the body of the murdered man. The wages of the mur- derer's sin is death, because he was so foolish as to be terrorized by the police. G. The three gangsters are not represented in the picture as suffering for any sin, although the mother of Schepps dies when she is sick and sends for her son, and he is too much occupied at a roulette wheel to answer her call. Death of the mother is hastened by the son's sin. The three gangsters, how- ever, are imprisoned for three years for a crime which they did not commit. They were convicted upon framed-up evidence. The picture is thoroughly immoral entirely apart from the fact that it contains the notorious gamblers, and makes it plain that persons who have no talent for real acting may acquire commercial value as actors for unscrupulous motion-picture proprietors by becoming sufficiently notorious as criminals or otherwise. H. The need of an official censorship is emphasized by the fact that some of the changes which the censor board oi-dered in The Wages of Sin, because immoral, have not been made. Those are the facts Avith reference to that ])<nticnlar fihn. I want to call your attention to the reason why they can not do effective work. T read from their owni book a statement with reference to the action of these three secretaries—four I believe they said the other day. The Chairman. What page? Dr. Chase. This was the one published, I think, year before last; there is no date on it, but it is on ])'.\iie 7. The paragraph from which I shall read is headed, "The difficulty of maintaining absolute con- sistency.*" T do not believe it is on the same page you have there; T think it is the year previous, but I think you will find it in your copy, because T do not think it is changed. It says: 3. Three secretaries spend their entire time at the various committee meet- ings, and as they see the pictures and hear all discus^sions and are always con- sulted when a picture is being discussed, their influence makes for consistent action on the part of the committees. The secretaries, however, have no vote on the pictures and are thus not represented in the final action taken. I made the statement that the secretaries did some of the censor- ing. My basis iov it was information gotten from one of the mem-