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To Sweep the Stage?
plays, declared himself against the censor. He said he preferred informal regulation because politics inevitably crept into official censorship.
Dr. Young was one of those who, after investigation,* found nothing wrong with The Lullaby. Madelon, the heroine of the Florence Reed success, is ruined by her village sweetheart and turned out into Paris by a malicious stepmother. She
is unable to suppoit herself and for the sake of her child is forced into successive affairs with an American painter and a Count, who is a thief. She goes to jail in the discovery of one of his thefts. Twenty years later, a harlot living under the walls of Tunis, she kills a man and spends a long term in jail.
CJ The Ben Alt Haggin tableaux, so long a feature of the Ziegfeld Follies, have been liberal cuticle displays — but they somehow have escaped the censors.
A
The Lullabv a Moral Lesson
sound moral lesson," commented Dr. Young. He added that he thought perhaps objectionable portions had been removed by the time he joined the audience.
But what would the Pollyanna philosophers of the screen do to Madelon? And in their expurgated form would her story be as moral as it is on the stage?
Dr. Young also is against the Pollyanna creed when catricd to the lengths of unreality. He said:
"We ought to have a motion picture standard which will make it possible for films to be just as vigorous and fascinating and faithful to facts as we possibly can consistently with their most wholesome influence on the spectator.
"I have not made sufficient investigation of the sugar-coated films to justify a more decided opinion. However, I can heartily subsciibe to the opinion that the screen should be true to life, barring only those situations which stimulate immoral conduct on the part of members of the audience.
"Judges and others familiar with criminal court proceedings testify to the evil tendencies of certain plays that show up the details of crime. Many ministers and workers for better moral conditions believe that certain suggestive scenes encourage immorality along other lines.
Should Never Impair Facts
ensoring the movies is a very difficult task," Dr. Young concluded, "but their faithfulness to facts should not be impaired."
Even under the six eagle eyes of the New York State Commission motion pictures are not yet as pure as John S. Sumner, New York's most active vice crusader, would have them.
While thoroughly shocked at the nudity and naughtiness of such Broadway plays as Artists and Models, Rain and The Lullaby, Mr. Sumner admits that there hive been [Continued on page 88]
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(J Florence Reed and Harold FXliott in a scene of The Lullaby, one of the dramas which has aroused the ire of the metropolitan stage reformers.