Motion Picture Commission : hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, second session, on bills to establish a Federal Motion Picture Commission (1978)

MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. 121 There is a mistaken idea about the moving-picture business. We are not violators of the law. We do not indulge in indecencies or in- dulge in producing indecent pictures, and despite what one gentleman saidj we do not cater to the riffraff. The Chairman. You are referring to your own company ? Mr. Seligsberg. I am referring to all of them. One gentleman who supported the bill said the people who go to the moving pictures are the riffraff and most of them are poor and that they are a little below him. But the people who go to the motion-picture theaters are the majority of the voters in the district. They are the ordinary, average, common run of the American people who work on farms and in shops and offices, who have, perhaps, unpleasant work, work that does not appeal to them, and who like to spend their spare time at a place where they can procure some appeal to the imagination and some amusement. They like a laugh, a cowboy picture, because it is a little exciting; a love storyj because it appeals to everybody with a heart. That is what they go for. They do not go there to see smutty pictures, and they are not the riffraff. If you were dealing with something that appeals to the lowest elements; if you were dealing with Ioav dives your standard would have to be different. But you are dealing with something always under the broad light of publicity, something that is patronized by people in all walks of life, and they are people whose judgment is keen, who know what they want, and whose very demand is causing the change in the character of the pictures that are shown. I want to urge upon this committee the necessity for dealing with this problem very carefully, and as I know they will consider very carefully wdiat they do, I am sure we will have no reason to fear there will be injected any politics or narrowmindedne-s or bigotry into this industr}^ and amusement which is patronized by such a vast ma- jority of the American people—the people upon whom we are all dependent for the future of our country. STATEMENT OF MR. FULTON BRYLAWSKI. Mr. Brylaavski. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I appear before this committee in rather a different capacity than any person Avho has yet appeared before it, in that I appear for the motion-picture exhibitors. I am secretary of the Motion Picture Exhibitors' League of the District of Columbia and national vice president of the Motion Picture Exhibitors' League of America, an organization which includes among its membership practically about 80 per cent of all moving-picture theaters in the United States. It has a membershi]D now of between 12,000 and 13.000 moving-picture theaters scattered throughout all the States and Territories of the United States out of a total of about 16,000, the approximate number in the LInited States. As I say, I am the national vice president of that organization and the secretary of our local organization, and I appear before this committee in that capacity. I want to present—and this was my sole object in coming here—• a resolution which our local organization, composed of nearly all the moving-picture houses in Washington, and, indeed, in the District