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)

124 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. ceptions, there has not been any fihn rejected here by the exhibitors because of any immorality that it contained. Mr. Towner. You do not have a local board that passes on the film? Mr. Brylaavski. We have the worst kind of a local board. We have the police censorship, not an officially constituted censorship, but nevertheless a censorship. Our chief of police has time and again issued instructions to his various captains and subordinates to jDerson- ally see every moving picture exhibited in Washington, and these police feel it a duty incumbent upon them that if any moving picture does not come up to their rather esthetic sense of morality, the mat- ter is reported to the captain. I remember one or two amusing cases when the white-slave films were shown here, which will give you an idea of the police censorship. The police said they had to come off. They reported the matter to the captain and he agreed with the police, and the chief of police also agreed. The manager of the theater refused to take them off, however, and they sent for the cor- poration counsel and the assistant corporation counsel, and they did not know whether the films should come off or not; and finally the Commissioners of the District of Columbia went to see it. and they were unable to sa}^ whether or not they were objectionable, so they got a body of 12 business men to decide Avhether or not those pictures might be objectionable, with the final result that these men decided it was a moral picture and that it had a good moral lesson and allowed it to stay. The Chair3ian. Do you find such censorship you have here very annoying? Mr. Bryi.awski. We do not find it annoying, because we do not find the films that are being produced have contained anything, so far as immorality is concerned, that could be termed ''objectionable." The Chairman. Therefore, you do not object to the police censor- ship? Mr. Brylawski. On the contrary, we object to any censorship. The Chair:\ian. Let me say this: In the event that this bill is passed, and you had a national censorship, all of that would be avoided here in the District. Mr. Brylawski, The police censorship? The CirATR:MAN. Yes. Mr. Brylawski. Yes, I think it would: but we opi^ose the police censorship. We have a regulation tliat bars prize Hghts being shown. Tt is a specific i-egulation. We have another regulation barring bull- fights and cockfiglits being shown. That is also specific. Another 1 regulation prohibits anything obscene, imnu!! al. or suiigestive being |it shown. Xow. ui)()n that regulation some i)('lieeni:in might think that a certaiji film is suggestive, and it might suggest something to his mind that the fihn does not intend to suggest, and so it is reported to the captain and it finally goes the rounds as to whether it shculd be taken off or not. and T want to say where a film might contain anything snguestixe and the policenian points it out. as n rule, rather than to have anv arguinent about it. tlie exhibitor eliminates that part of it. Mr. TowM'R. You say your association is opposed to all censor- ship, yet in this resolution you seem to commend very highly the censorship of this national board and you even go so far and say IS