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)

200 MOTIOISr PICTURE COMMISSION. these censorious persons. Only four films of all those that have been manufactured in these many years; that is, about 12,500 new film subjects a year for 8 or 10 years. Out of all those only four have been mentioned. So far as the particular film mentioned by Judge Towner is con- cerned. I think that was subsequently stopped. In regard to the film entitled " Traffic in Souls," that was ap- proved by the National Board of Censorship and it was approved by a great many educators of the country, by a hu'ge number of maga- zine editors and newspaper writers, and by the edit'^rs of the Outlook. Canon Chase makes reference to the fact that foui ibscribers to the Outlook wrote articles, stating that, in their opinion, that picture did not tend to serve a moral purpose. AVhat about the other one-quarter of a million people who read the Outlook and Avho made no objection? To these thousands the picture did tend to serve a moral purpose. Thousands of people say it is good, two (r three say it is not. I ask whemer we are to be judged by the standards of these two or three? As to another of the pictures mentioned entitled *' The Inside of the White SlaA-e Traffic." This was exhibited one day and stopped, and the people who exhibited it were immediately arrested and after- wards convicted. Mr. Tow:ner. Let me call your attention to this particu.lar instance. You will admit, of course, that the reason that these men to whom I refer were paid $500 to pose, these gamblers and thugs, was because of the fact that they Avere notorious representatives of that class of people ? Mr. SciiECHTER. I am not certain about that, but I will admit it for the sake of argument. Mr. Towner. And that the only possible benefit that could come from the exhibition to the exhibitors was because it was an appeal to the prurient desires and tastes of the people by a class that would be almost certain to be injured by it. Notwithstanding that fact, this particular picture was passed by this board, was it not—-that is, it was passed by the National Board of Censorship? Mr. ScHECHTER. I do not know that to be the fact, but will accept your word for it, if you say that it was so. Mr-. Towner. And was afterwards stopped by order of the police, as I understand it? Dr. Crafts. In some cases, yes. Mr. Towner. Would you not admit that that was wrong from every possible standpoint? Mr. Schechter. I did not see that picture exhibited, so that I can not truthfully answer that question. I can not say whether it tended to serve a moral lesson. Furthermore, it Mr. Towner (interposing). That does not make any difference. The i)()int I am making is that it does not make any difference what kind of a picture it was, even if it was a picture that would repre- sent the best moral lesson in the world; that was not the attraction. They could have gotten anybody to have posed for that sort of a pic- ture, but it was the fact that these men were to appear in the picture that made it attractive, and for that purpose they were paid $500 to pose, and it seems to me that was a direct response to the morbid demand that exists, as we know, and that, therefore, the pictures could not help to be deleterious.