Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

Speech? It Is As Treated As MacCULLOCH land —cities outside the six States mentioned which liase I, censors. For example, tlie tightest censorship in the Lnited : States is maintained by the city of Chicago, where it has , been effectively functioning for fifteen years. The utmost J care has been exercised to keep off the screen all reference to crime, misdemeanors, moral turpitude or law violation of any kind. They won't even permit reference to a gangster or a crooked politician. The result speaks eloquently for itself. As everyone knows, Chicago is probably the most law-abiding, quiet, orderly, peaceable, honest and solvent community in the world. Yeah ! Censorship really began back in 1908 in New York City, when Mayor George B. McClellan issued an order closing every one of the five hundred picture houses in the city on December 24, of that year, on the ground that they were unclean and immoral. Three days later a court order reopened them. Then a volunteer organization, The People's Institute, offered to examine all films intended for exhibition, and approve or disapprove them. The producers agreed, and there began the argument. No one had tried to censor the press; books and paintings that at least hinted at immodesty were published in reasonably generous quantities; but the pictures looked like a wholesale assault on the morals of the nation. And the pastime of pictorial inhibition grew. Gosh, yes! Anna Became a Lady AND, now that the movies have found a voice, are they Ix on the same status as the stage? Now that they are using the same lines that have been spoken thousands of times from behind the footlights, are they exempt from censorship at last.? Those who have seen both the stage and the screen version of "Anna Christie" realize that, so far as the talkies are concerned, they still are merely movies to the censor. Instead of the mouth-filling w'aterfront phrases of the O'Neil drama, Anna murmurs, petulantly, "Oh, darn !" No doubt the censors felt they were straining their consciences to permit even that mild oath. The lines throughout were weakened to the point sometimes of absurdity, when the film was made, for fear of what the censors would do to "Anna" unless she talked like a lady. The producers have had experience with talking censorship. They have seen whole sentences, entire conversations ruthlessly cut out of a film and the jagged gap in the action covered with a written title by the guardians of public morals. In its stage form, "Anna Christie" was probably not seen by more than seven hundred thousand people in all. In its movie form, it will in all likelihood be seen by five or six million people. The reason for carrying the censor's rule into the field of the spoken word is vaguely based upon these figures. I don't know who first remembered that ancient Bill of Rights article, but I think he was a Pennsylvania theater{Continued on page go) Cheap Such He allows baby shirts: but Director James Wingkte of the New York State Board of Censors is not approving any political slams He doesn't allow baby shirts: Harry L. Knapp is chairman of the Pennsylvania Board, that frowns on mention of The Expected Event 25