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)

168 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. for the (iisseminatiou of kiiowlefljre to many who could not acquire it otherwise the teaching of lessons by means of the screen that will bring home the truth where other means fail, as well as affording recreation and amusement to the underpaid workers, of whom there are so many; to divert their minds for an hour by means of some educative, instructive, or amusing play is to my mind one of the charities of the coming generation. It means so much to the laborer, whose life is simply one of work, work, work. It has been a great satisfaction to me to have again and again patrons express, often in words but more often l)y looks, the pleasure that the nominal fees of admission has given them. Since entering this business I have seen drunkards reform, meu with habitual grouches learn to smile, selfish men and women recognize their character as portrayed on the screen and learn a lesson that no amount of talking or lecturing t-ould possibly teach them. I have seen the close-fisted man become a contrii)Utor to charity because his pity had been excited by the depicted suffering of some child or woman 'n the pictui'e play, and I am fully convinced that every man has a heart that can be reached, and when once open it never closes again as before. I will just cite here a showing made during a few days in August of a picture of a child asking to be sent to the country which brought the Camp Good Will fund the sura of $33, the largest contributioti of which was 25 cents. I am therefore glad and willing to con- tinue the services imposed upon me by circumstances and feel that I am offer- ing good to the many. Of course, the pictures do not please everyone, but in nearly all in.stances I find that it is the selfishness of the individual where the exception occurs. To cite a few cases, when we put on the picture play The Evils of Intemperance, several men asked me to take it off. and ui)on investigjition I found that these men were either saloonkeepers or friends of saloonkeepers. When the Edison picture on the prevention of tuberculosis was placed at the Pickwick Theater there was only one man who criticized it unfairly, and he, upon investigation, proved to be a dairyman. You can not help treading upon the toes of some classes of people in almost every picture. If we tried to please everybody, it would only be a repetition of tlie old fable of the " Farmer, his Son, and the Ass." Your request to undertake the censoring of these pictures is a ponderous task. The present output of the manufacturers in existence now, and there are new ones coming almost weekly, is over 80 films. To see each one only once would means four hours of labor every day. assuming that they were in one theater and would be .shown one after another. The first exhibition of a picture, how- ever, unless it was radically wrong, would be very unlikely to disclose a possible objection, and to see it over again would mean almost an entire day's work. If a question about a certain portion of it should arise, it would mean a third exhibition in order to render an honest and fair decision. It would be an im- position to submit this task to the worthy ladies and gentlemen, as T know that all of them are pretty well occupied in their charitable work outside of their regular duties At the same lime I want to say here that from a personal acquaintance with the majority of them I know one who would object to tragedies simply beciuse he brings his children every week and does not want them to see such plays. Now, it would be almost imiwssible to show a French or English historical play or some of the stories of Shakespeare and other writers without tragedy in some form. Another dislikes comedies, while another thinks the publi<.- should see only educational films, and one can readily see that between them there would be no show at all. The majority of the present manufacturers recognize the necessity of making pictures that are clean, instructive, and amusing. The reason for such action is because the real censors—the picture patrons—insist upon good decent pic- tures and refuse to patronize those houses who do not furnish them. No house of any standing can exist except they i)rovide that character of pictures, and the few manufacturers who formerly existed on questionable pictures are elimi- nated from the business. Occasionally one may enter the field. Init it is not long before the exhibitors and the i)eople find him out. Ninety per cent of the films manufactured are controlled by three distributing (renters—the General Film Co.. the Mutual Film Association, and the TTniversal Program Co. The General Film Co. are now releasing 42 reels a week, all of which are approved by the National Board of Censors of New York and are fhown the first time in Washington by us, where the house manager looks at them, find if there is any part that is or might be considered objectionable It