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 PICTUEE COMMISSION. 123 panied by an adult. So that the averativ percentage of the attendance of children in the down-town theaters is about 1 per cent. In the residential neighborhoods it is considerably larger. From figures I prepared some time ago it appears the average per cent at the matinees in the residential neighborhood of children under the age of 18 years is about HO per cent; that is, prior to the hour of 8 o'clock at night, and after the hour of 8 o'clock the average per cent of children who attend unaccompanied by parents is 20 per cent. ]Mr. TowisKR. Is it a fact that some of the theaters become attrac- tive to childi'on, and they commence going there and find their asso- ciates there and make it a practice of going there? Mr. Brylawski. I do not think so. The children usually attend the theater m the neighborhood in which they live. They do not go down town. I have found in my experience that the children generally go to the theaters selected by their parents. Mr. Fess. Do you think that the conditions in Boston are a good indication of what exists in other cities? Mr. Brylawski. The figures are about right for the whole United States. In my connection with the national association I have heard these things discussed by exhibitors from Alabama to Maine to Call- lornia, and the figures are about the average and bear themselves out with a fair degree of accuracy. I want to say, so far as ^ve are concerned here in Washington, that we are in a somewhat ditferent position than any other city, with the exception of the Territories, in the United States, for the reason that the National Board of Censorship would be a local board of censorship, at least so far astthe District of Columbia and the various Territories are concerned, and I have heard the argument made that if this national board would automatically do away with ttie various local censorships, it might be a good thing. Therefore, under the same analogy of reasoning, as this nation.al board of censor- ship would automatically do away with all other censorship in Wash- ington, it might be a good thing, but the exhibitors of the District of Columbia oppose all kinds of censorship as such, because we know trom our own observation—and our powers of observation are far more closely related to the subject than those of any outsider—that the audience themselves and the exhibitors themselves are, when the last word is said, the best censors of moving pictures. In other words, an exhibitor has his money invested, and his busi- ness success is dependent upon pleasing his public. He knows that his income is derived from the attendance of men and women, their families and children, and that if he puts a picture on his screen, obscene or lewd or objectionable, he is going to lose the patronage of a considerable portion of his audience, not only for that perform- ance but for every other performance. They will not only stay away and prohibit their children from attending, but they will use their influence with their friends and their friends' children to stay away, and that loss to the exhibitor at the end of the year would be enormous. Therefore the exhibitors in the District of Columbia make it a personal point to themselves to see their films before their theaters are opened and before they are shown, so that they can see for themselves whether there might be anything objectionable in the films; and, I say, in the last three or four years, with one or tw^o ex-