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486 MOTION PICTURES I922-I945
opinion in the following headline: "Any New Censorial Measures Are Seen as Spite Work against Film Business Already Self-Purged at the Source." I am sure that's the way it looked to most people on the inside. Variety waxed a bit caustic in proclaiming "Censoring a Sweet Racket" and saying, "Solons ofttimes lured by revenue. Political patronage another angle, but costly to pix biz." The two sides of this matter looked completely different to different people!
Perhaps no piece about the movies better showed the importance of the subject in the public mind than the notable illustrated story in Fortune for December of 1938. In essence, it was the story of how our self-regulation had met the attacks of critics and had thus preserved the freedom of the films. This was its striking heading: "The Hays Office Cuts Cuss Words, Navels, Attractive Adultery, and Irrelevant Drunks. In so doing it has saved the screen for entertainment by warding off political censorship." Calling me a "mediator between the extremesBroadway and Main Street," the article rightly commented: "Will Hays has always tried to find the golden mean."
Two main problems were still with us: keeping the advertising of motion pictures in line with the principles of our Advertising Code, and guarding the entertainment screen from encroachments by commercial advertising— that is, the advertising of various commercial concerns or products in entertainment pictures.
Should our advertising policy be similar to that of radio? Was there room on the theatrical screen for "sponsored" films produced and paid for by industrial or commercial firms? We knew that they were welcome in schools. And how about subtle mention of commercial products in pure entertainment films? If an automobile appeared in a picture and the brand could be identified, had anyone paid to have his product shown? For years I had been telling chambers of commerce that American motion pictures were proving a marvelous international salesman, but was it fair to plug "Singers" or only "sewing machines"?
Those who favored commercial screen advertising on a national scale naturally included producers of industrial films, advertising companies, commercial and industrial firms, and small exhibitors who welcomed an occasional free film to cut down their budget and, as some claimed, "keep them out of the red." Those opposed included the large majority of major producers, distributors, and exhibitors— and, it appeared, most patrons of picture theatres. The general manager of one theatre circuit, for instance, told his sales convention that no commercially sponsored film would be shown in any theatre controlled by the company. The opposition also included newspapers, the great American advertising medium.
The whole question looked a good deal like getting a bear by the tail: if the industry took hold, where could it let go? Hollywood was