Year book of motion pictures (1925)

Doubtful characters exalted to heroes. Maternity scenes, women in labor. Infidelity on part of husband justifying adul tery on part of wife. Sacrifice of woman's honor held as laudable. Justification of the deliberate adoption of a life of immorality. Disorderly houses. Use of opium and other habit-forming drugs (instructive details). Counterfeiting. White slave stories. Drugging and chlorforming victims for criminal purposes. Gruesome murders, actual stabbing and shooting of persons. Seductions and attempted seductions treated without due restraint. Burning and branding of persons. Profanity in titles. Salacious titles and captions. Advocacy of the doctrine of free love. Scenes indicating that a criminal assault has been perpetrated on a woman. Suicide compacts, suicide scenes. Executions, lynchings and burlesque of hangings. Deeds of violence, lighting and throwing bombs, arson, especially to conceal crimes, train wrecking. Modus operandi of criminals. Sirth control, malpractice. Suggestions of incest. Morbid presentations of insanity. Prolonged and harrowing death scenes. Venereal disease inherited or acquired. Irreverent treatment of religious observancei and beliefs. Inflammatory scenes and titles calculated to stir up racial hatred or antagonistic relations between labor anj capital. Rejected in 1924: Three Weeks (later passed in reconstructed form). Woman's Secret. Boston, Mass. John Casey, City Hall, Boston, approves any pictures passed by the National Board of Review. Col. Albert A. Foote, State House, Boston, censors pictures for use on Sunday for the State of Massachusetts, eliminates dancing, drinking, shooting and gambling scenes. Detroit, Mich. Detroit Police Department censors. Lieut. Royal A. Baker, Sergeant Stephen A. Geitz. Standards Their standards of censoring are principally against obscene and indecent scenes in pictures or in the theme of a picture. Ususally they will permit or suggest changes in pictures to meet their standards. They also are rather strict in censoring anything relating to criminology, such as scenes with unnecessary gun play, finger prints, burglaries and so forth. Their jurisdiction is only over pictures shown in the city of Detroit, but the eliminations and changes that they make are practically universally carried out by the film exchanges throughout the state. The censor board does not make public its rejections for the year, except in a report to the commissioner of police which may or may not reach the newspapers. Missouri Kansas City, Mo. L. G. Buford, 19th and Wyandotte Sts. New Jersey Bloomfield has a local board. New Brunswick as a local board; John B. Jones, chariman. Rutherford censoring done by the ParentTeacher's Asso. New York Standards Chief offices, Candler Bldg., W. 42nd St., New York City. Senator George H. Cobb, chairman ; Mrs. Helen May Hosmer (term expires Jan. 1, 1925) and Arthur Levy. Albany — Ansel W. Brown, the State Capitol. Buffalo— Mrs. Orpha Stucki, 83 Argyle Park. 350 A statement issued by the Motion Picture Commission of the State of New York says that it "has not established any fixed rules or standards for the judging of pictures except those prescribed by the statute creating the Commission. No motion picture will be licensed or a permit granted for its exhibition within the State of New York, which may be classified, or any part thereof, as obscene, indecent, immoral, inhuman, sacrilegious, or which is of such a character that its exhibition would tend to corrupt morals or incite to crime. "The Commission has deemed it wise not to attempt to formulate fixed standards or rules for the reviewing of pictures, but rather to examine each picture on its merits to determine whether the film, or any portion of it, violates any provisions of the statute." Ohio State Board of Standards 233 South High St., Columbus State Board : Vernon M. Riegel, Director of Education, Columbus. Assistants : Mrs. Mary Edith Leuthi, 847J4 Oakwood Ave.; Miss Susannah M. Warfield, 1184 Bryden Road. All scenes which are obscene, salacious, indecent, immoral, or teach false ethics, such as the following, should be eliminated: (a) SEX (1) Productions which emphasize and exaggerate sex appeal or depict scenes therein exploiting interest in sex in an immoral or suggestive form or manner. (2) Those based upon white slavery or commercialized vice or scenes showing the procurement of women or any of the activities attendant upon thia traffic. (3) Those thematically making prominent an illicit love affair which tends to make virtue odious and vice attractive. (4) Scenes which exhibit nakedness or persons scantily and suggestively dressed, particularly suggestive bedroom and oath room scenes and scenes of inciting dances. (5) Scenes which unnecessarily prolong expressions or demonstrations of passionate love. (6) Stcries or scenes which are vulgar and portray improper gestures, postures, and attitudes. (7) Scenes which tend to give the idea that sexual vice accompanied by luxury makes vice excusable. (b) VICE, CRIME AND VIOLENCE (1) Theme predominantly concerned with the underworld or vice or crime, and like scenes; unless the scenes are a part of an essential conflict between good and evil. (2) Stories which make crime, drunkenness and gambling, and like scenes which show the use of narcotics and other unnatural practices dangerous to social morality, attractive. (3) Stories and scenes which may instruct the immature and susceptible in methods zi committing crime or by cumulative processes emphasize crime and the commission of crime. (4) Stories or scenes which unduly emphasize bloodshed and violence without justification in the structure of the body. (5) Scenes which, tend to produce approval of business institutions or conditions, that naturally tend to degrade and deprave mankind. (6) Productions whose tendency is to incite sympathy for those engaged in parasitical or criminal activities. (7) Productions that teach fatalism or the futility of individual resistance of adversity. (8) Expiation of crime by some act of physical bravery. (9) Crime must no tbe made attractive and the punishment must be clearly and adequately portrayed.