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)

170 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. place where they are shown. As stated before, since my entrance into the business in 1909 the American producer has improved the char- acter of his products year by year, elevating the tone of the subjects •and selecting scenarios carefully with greatest regard to the moral and influence of each picture. The production of many temperance plays has done more to reduce intemperance than all the efforts of the temperance or prohibition advocates, and why ? When a minister preaches to his congregation, does he reach the drunkard ? No. But the picture play has done so and will forever prove a better deterrent by demonstrating the ill effects of drunkenness or crime than all sermons or books. For proof of this I submit an inspection of police records of any city for the past five years against any previous five years since records were kept. Now, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, when a class of people voluntarily seek the highest and best they should be en- couraged by letting them alone and not saddling them with a com- mission of men who might desire positions on account of the pay ■attached to it. The national board now in existence is composed of men and women who do the work for the love of helping their fellow men and not for pay. They have done noble work and are willing to continue it. Why, then, in view of the great benefits and progress made by them, should powers be given to five men who could play politics with censorship ? The Chairman. I understand, then, that you really favor censor- ship, but voluntary censorship? Mr. Bryl,awski. Voluntary censorship, such as we have at present, or if we can get anything better, which I very much doubt. The censors, as provided by the bill, would have absolute powers from which there would be no relief, or until the courts had deter- mined the matter; but by that time the picture would be so old that we would not want to show it any more. The censor has always been arbitrary. There is no example of any censor in Russia, Spain, or elsewhere that has not used his position in an arbitrary manner. The national board is a purely voluntary civic federation, seeking only that which in their opinion will help mankind by assisting an industry whose benefits extend much further than we can concoive, and from such a source the best only could be expected, which has been realized. Every man or association should be judged by what it has accom- plished. Some of the large makers, the Biograph, Vitagraph, and Edison, 1 believe, accepted a proposal from Mr. Collier, of the People's Institute of New York, another social organization, to in- spect their pictures and pass judgment. They were not bound by their decision, but finding the connnittee fair, honest, and well in- tentioned, composed of self-sacrificing men and women who had only the interests of the people at heart, they gladly accepted their deci- sions, and from time to time others joined, until every regular manu- facturer in the country has come to the national board with their products, not as an authoritative cen.'^orial body, but as asking their approval of the pictures and accepting any elimination they suggest. Let us go into the production of a picture from its beginning. First, scenarios are submitted to the manufacturers, who inspect and accept or reject them. Those accepted are studied and given to the director who stages them, and then the camera man comes in and