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of theaters in fort) states, next tui netl its attention to Firsl National and tlii n its exe< utive officei s was in the process of delivering it^cli ol a number of disagreeable comments when the picture world, abruptly, forgot all this familj bickering. ■i time the) had eyes and ears nothing save the Federal Trade Commission's bolt from the blur.
With a suddenness that startled Broadway, the newspapers printed tlu' Commission's charge that the Famous Players1. asky Corporation, Paramount, Kdolpli Zukor, ci >.-/.. bad been operating in restraint of trade and violating the Sherman AntiTmsl 1 aw 1 rearings on this charge took place this year, but at the time the effect of all this was in turn as nothing compared to the fear of censorship which grew slowly, but surely so surely that soon it over shadowed all other considerations.
More than any other business of like proportions the theater is dependent upon the whim, the caprice Of the public, and censorship threatened box-office revenues.
The impetus which had broughl it to such amazing and paralyzing proportions, of course, had its source in a real complaint. Fly-by-night producers had offered the public films with an indefensible moral tone. and. as a result, the whole industry had to Suffer, but the real object ion to censorship is not the obvious one.
\s has been made clear before, the obvious objections can be sustained and have been, times without number. Censorship is sectional and local. Its ridiculous whimsies, bowever, are practised on the finished film.
What the menace of it did to the film in the process of manufacture or conception — this is what kept the officials of famous. First National, Metro, Universal, Fox, Pathe, this is what kept Zukor, Laemmle, Rowland, De Mille. Brunet and Kane awake nights. This is what mattered.
Because of it. story writers, directors and actors were in the grip of a deadly fear. Tt bad them by the throat. It paralyzed their initiative. It kept them from doing new things, from attempting anything unusual, however innocent, for fear of what some wild duck of morality, in charge of some backwoods' board of censorship, might think. Naturally, they stuck to the old stand-bys.
But the public was wearying of the old stand-bys. It knew them by heart. It could guess what was coming. Uneducated, as yet, to the point of holding the censor ami censorship responsible, it began, more and more, to stay away from the theater.
(Eighty-five)