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. 185 other considered to be '"' iipliftinji""" by the iindfficial "National Bcmrd of Censorship," Avho say that they are not censoring pictures for chjhiren only, bnt for the whole country. I know that the people need this bill and want it. The people arc in favor of having motion ])ictures at their best, but they are vt-rj much troubled about motion pictures as they are. A great welcome was given by the people of the country to that prize- fight bill which Mr. Roddenbery, of Georgia, put through about the time of the Santa Fe champion fight. That bill accomplished the very thing which this National Board of Censorship could not accomplish in the case of the previous championship fight. The unofficial " Na- tional Board of Censorship " could not keep the Jeffries and Johnson prize-fight films out of the motion-picture exhibitions. Those films went all over the country. It was stopped only when the local authorities interfered. The Roddenbery law was welcomed by all good people, and we have not- seen a motion picture of a prize fight since it was adopted. Every- body I have come in contact Avith among all the better classes of people of this country feels that for the protection of the children and of the older people, too, an effective law for the censorship of motion pictures should be enacted. This bill meets with their hearty approval. I have just received a letter from Pittsburgh, from Bishop Canevin, of the Roman Catholic Church, who indorses this movement strongly, and I have received letters from leading churchmen alJ over the country who are taking a deep interest in it. I have a letter indorsing it from the president of the social service commission of the Episcopal Church of this city, and another letter from Dr, George J. Fisher, international secretary of the physical department of the y. M. C. A. Everywhere I find a deep interest among the better people in this proposed legislation. They want to use the motion pictures themeslves. They believe in them as an educational factor. LOCAL AND STATE CENSORSHIPS SHOW NEED OF THIS LAW. In many places there is local censorship. For instance, in DallaS; in Fort Worth, in San Francisco^ in Cleveland, in Chicago, and I do not know how many other cities. They have provided this local cen- sorship because there is no national board of censorship on which the people are willing to rely. It appears that 15 per cent of all the films that reach Chicago are turned down by the official Board of Protectors of Children's Morals. A considerable percentage of the films which get the approval of the National Board of Censorship are condenmecl by local censors in San Francisco and Cleveland. Permit me to give"^ one or two examples: I saw a motion picture that- had been approved by the National Board of Censorship representing a man who had just received a telegram stating that he could get a great bargain for $25,000. He took $25,000 from his safe in cash and started for the railway station. After he left the office two clerks disguised themselves and followed him. They got on the train and occupied the berth below the one in which their employer slept, and in due time put some chloroform in a handkerchief over his nose and stole the money. It was manifestly a lesson in crime. That film was condemned in San Francisco by tlie local censors, who told m"