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386 MOTION PICTURES I 922 I 945
Next to the evolution of the Production Code, I believe I am prouder of the Central Casting Bureau than of anything else that was accomplished in my quarter-century administration as director general, or democratic "czar," or "cat's whiskers" of the industry. While I helped to create it, however, I did not build it brick by brock, nor schematize its operations day by day; and the credit for this belongs to the men who devoted days and nights, labor and ingenuity, to doing so. To them, and to the studios which have maintained the Bureau, I doff my Sunday hat.
I am proud, too, that our industry entered this field so early, thus anticipating the national trend of putting security into occupations. Past the experimental stage— by a good two decades— the Central Casting Bureau is a Hollywood institution and a monument to the enlightened sentiments of the industry as a whole.
The many-phased expanding service of the films in the earlv years of the Association was of course due as much to improved quality as to greater recognition of possible uses. Aiding this quality improvement was the fact that much valuable European experience became ours through the importation of able directors, actors, and technicians. I always encouraged this trend, because it made our films still more international.
Although steady progress was being made, and although American films had already won the highest awards at the International Exhibition of Optical and Cinematographical Photography, complaints about the character of current pictures continued to bombard my office— and not all from reformers or crackpots. Though we had a long way to go, I thought that overemphasis on destructive criticism was doing no good. It seemed to me that we had had enough talk, for the moment, of the "who-put-the-sin-in-cinema" variety. So before press associations and chambers of commerce and women's clubs— wherever good opportunity offered— I began to take the theme, "What's RIGHT with the Movies?" I reported what I firmly believed to be true: that the movie industry was in splendid condition, with sound business methods prevailing, harmony in the ranks of the Association, and ever-increasing artistry in the pictures themselves. I assured my hearers that any really fine motion picture, no matter by whom produced, was bound to have proper distribution, exhibition, and appreciation. I argued for the freedom of the screen, censored only by the good taste of the American public, and I explained the methods that producers had begun to set up in recognition of standards of decency and good taste. In appealing for constructive co-operation rather than destructive criticism, I always said in effect, "This is not the job of one group, it is the multitude's job. In doing it, there is work for all— for you as definitely as for the producers." The response to this appeal was a big factor in getting better pictures.
Recognition of this progress on the part of outsiders again confirmed