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THE FIRST YEAR IN HOLLYWOOD, I922-I923 353
censorship." The General Federation of Women's Clubs had been trying for eight years to do something for better films. We considered such groups as partners in our program. In 1922 I invited more than a hundred representatives of civic, welfare, religious, and educational groups to New York to discuss "ways and means for public co-operation,,, and the response was enthusiastic and selfless. As soon as they were convinced that their counsel not only would be welcomed continually but would play a definite part in creating the kind of pictures they wanted, it became merely a question of "How?" We urged their active participation in "creating a demand for better pictures" through a permanent committee of their own. As a result, an Executive Committee of Twenty was formed among them to represent all such groups, with the capable Jason S. Joy as its executive secretary. The General Federation of Women's Clubs hailed the move as the "logical outcome" of the federation's eight-year work for better movies. One of the most continuous activities of the committee, carried on quietly by smaller units located in many towns and cities, was the encouragement of better pictures in their local theatres. This was education at the grass roots. To almost 100 per cent of these conscientious people, censorship was always an anathema, a bungling, destructive thing; it was no moral cure. They set about telling the producers in advance what they wanted, not afterward what they didn't want. I have always been proud of this method of creating new standards in a commercial industry through the quiet expression of enlightened, organized public opinion. The late C. C. Pettijohn, MPPDA counsel, said to the 1929 Public Relations Conference: "This industry has always been spoken of as a three-legged stool: production, distribution, exhibition. Mr. Hays made it a four-legged one, as it is now regarded. The fourth leg is the public."
By 1925 the committee felt that its work had grown beyond the original concept and needed a more permanent form of organization; its members considered a union with the MPPDA to be desirable, in order to make its requests an intrinsic part of the industry instead of an extrinsic influence. Thus the Association formed a Public Relations Department, into which the committee merged its activities, with Jason Joy as the department's director. In 1926, Joy moved to California as head of a Joint Department of Public Relations and Industrial Relations in the California Association, to bring these activities closer to the "source" of production. I must admit it took some effort to persuade the producers to accept a public relations representative in Hollywood, but this move was the forerunner of the subsequent Production Code Administration. We were then fairly embarked on the sea of self-regulation, before the wind of public good will, and we had avoided the wrecking storm of censorship.