The Moving Picture Weekly (1920-1921)

2& •THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY CENSORSHIP SIGN OF INTOLERANCE •THE National Board of Review oJ Motion Pictures held its annual luncheon on Saturday, Januaiy 31, "at the Hotel McAlpin. This has become a notable event by reason, for one thing, of the prominent persons who address these luncheons. Those who spoke at this last gathering, consisting of approximately 150 members of the National Board and a few invited guests, weie Miss Mary Shaw, stage artist, and Miss Mary Gray Peck, lecturer and club woman, both members of the National Board's Advisory Committee; William A. Brady, president of the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry; Major Raymond Pullman, secretary of the Americanization committee appointed by Secretary of the Interior Lane; Rupert Hughes, from the Authors' League, and George Middleton, playwright. Miss Shaw won applause when she put in a plea for special performances for children, and indeed for special theatres for children. The old and middle-aged people, she thought, might shift for themselves, and if they sometimes saw motion pictures they didn't care, for it was their own fault for not being more critical and making their desires known. "Wherever the "theatre has failed," she said, "it is because you have failed the theatre. You do not take the theatre seriously enough and ask it for what you want. The same applies to motion pictures. But young people and adolescents should be provided with special films." This report of the annual meeting of the National Board of Review can be used to excellent advantage by every exhibitor who has a censorship problem. — Editor. was fairly under way, told in general terms of the aims ot the movement it was designed to foster and emphasized that the pictures produced under the auspices of the committee "will not anti-Bolshevist or anti-anything, but pro-American, bringing out the best in America." RUPERT HUGHES CITES EXAMPLES SCREEN SHOULD BE FREE riLLIAM A. BRADY, in his characteristically stirring fashion, declared to the National Board that he was there "to boost the motion picture." He said that the motion picture had made such a record during the war period with regard to loyalty, news achievement as well as ■general improvement of quality, as to demonstrate that it did not need the interference of legalized censorship. "Now of all times the screen should be left free. If, for instance, a motion picture photographer should catch a Bolshevist planting a bomb, the screen should be free to show this picture. Let us face such things. Let us not permit a gag to be placed upon the motion picture such as was exercised by the censor board in Ohio when it prohibited the showing of Villa's picture on the screen 'lest it incite to hatred,' when every newspaper in the state had published it. "The finest agency to expose the Red, to expose the corrupt politician, is the motion picture." Therefore, Mr. Brady plead that the motion picture be taken seriously; also that it be introduced in the schools and the facts of science, history, etc., be taught through this new medium which to the young makes of learning a joy instead of a drudgei-y. Mr. Everett Dean Martin, chairman of the National Boai'd of Review, and director of Cooper Union Forum, who presided at the luncheon, expressed his belief that the growing spirit of intolerance in this country was at the basis of any demand for legal censorship. He hoped that this spirit of intolerance would not enter into the use of the motion picture for Americanization purposes. This seemed to be guarded against, however, by the broad attitude towards the motion picture taken by Secretary Lane's committee on Americanization, of which Major Raymond Pullman was present as the representative. Major Pullman, after describing the rapidity with which the committee had been formed and started functioning once the idea J^UPERT HUGHES' interest in the subject of censorship and the work of the National Board of Review dated, he said, from the time when the picture based upon his book, "The Unpardonable Sin," ran foul of censorship in Pennsylvania. There is a state censor board there of three people, one of them being a middle-aged lady who, in connection with their action on the picture, backed up by her disclaimer of any pro-Germanism by telling Mr. Hughes that her son was in the Army of Occupation in Germany. It was simply a rule of the board that no mention should be made of approaching maternity. As Mr. Hughes pointed out to her, under this ruling the annunciation of the birth of Christ, if shown on the screen, would be censored by the Pennsylvania board not because sacrilegious, but because indecent. Mr. Hughes could see no object to such censorship unless it regarded maternity as a crime which it should help to prevent. Mr. Hughes suggested this as a test of the alleged evil influence of the moving picture : take a community, he said, that never has had a moving picture theatre — in Italy, Spain, or the heart of Africa—do girls go wrong there? Are none of the crimes and delinquencies to be found there which some people in the United States are fond of ascribing to the motion picture? Consider what Bradford said in his history of New England. After relating how pure and religious were the motives from which the colony was founded, by a group of people who left the shores of the Old World because too wicked for them and sought in the wilderness to establish a state free from corrupting influences, he plaintively confessed the result — that crimes had multiplied in this new haven to an extent so far exceeding their number in the places they had left, that this condition could be accounted for only by the extra overtime efforts of Satan. And the Pilgrims, as Mr. Hughes pointed out, were not subjected to modem temptations such as magazines, light evening gowns, fox trots — and motion pictures. "In China," said Mr. Hughes, "there are found erected in front of tne houses devil-screens. The theory is that the devils, approach the houses in a straight line, hit these big screens and bounce off." Now, censorship he considered was very much like these devil screens. It screens us from devils that do not exist. The National Board of Review, however, does not believe in devils, and that is why Mr. Hughes "loves it." The board simply recognizes that a certain amount of censorship is necessary to reflect public opinion to the producers before their product is released. Against the other kind of censorship which is founded on prejudices and prudery and would besmirch things which are perfectly decent by imputing indecency to them, he urged that every effort be exerted. "AS BAD AS THE DIVORCE LAWS" f HE warning uttered by Dr. Martin against the growing spirit of intolerance as applied to motion pictures was amplified in a stirring address by the playwright