The command is forward : selections from addresses on the motion picture industry in war and peace (1944)

12 THE COMMAND IS FORWARD story which was also a flaming attack upon the evils of human slavery. If you are prepared to object to the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin and its transfer to the stage and the screen, then, of course, you will doubtless register your objection to Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and the film portrayal based on this novel about the migratory worker. Unless you object to Gullivers Travels — a great satire on war — and its transference to the screen, you should not object to the publication of Willkie's travels and the production of a film based upon One World. At least half a dozen screen plays about Abraham Lincoln were produced before Raymond Massey's magnificent portrayal of Abe Lincoln in Illinois. I do not know how many biographies of Woodrow Wilson will be written in the next quarter of a century nor how many films dealing with his life and public service will be brought to the screen in the years ahead, but surely no citizen of a democracy who believes in freedom of expression can successfully challenge the right of a great popular art form to use Wilson's life or Lincoln's life or the life of any other great public figure to produce a work of art which is both entertaining and significant. No, my friends, the issue is not and never must be, over the right to produce such a work, but rather over the degree to which the artist has achieved perfection in the dramatic quality of the product and the fairness of the presentation. To date I doubt if there ever has been complete agreement as to the relative entertainment value of