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)

222 MOTIOX PICTURE COMMISSION, The Motion Picture World of May 9, 1914 (p. 824), gives the fol lowing statement as to the origin of the Chicago board of censors: Rigid censorship of nv lug pictures was declared imperative ou Friday, April 25, by judges of the municipal court. This was done to safeguard picture theaters in the interests of children, after the Judges had viewed 2,(X)0 feet of cut-outs made by the censor board. The Northwestern Christian Advocate of March 11, 1914 (p. 327), gives the following as the cut-outs of one day: " The Hopi Raiders": Killing soldier in fort and picket at gate. Shorten scene of dead bodies. " The Chest of Fortune " : Hitting man on head, taking records, and putting body in dredge scoop. " Pirates of the Plains ": I*osse shooting against sheriff and display of dead bodies. Shorten shooting scene to a flash. " Paradise Lost " : From point at which second man enters house to where he leaves woman in bedroom. "A Romance of the Northwest " : Two gambling scenes. Shorten time man's head Is held under water. "Mario": Stabbing man at wedding and struggle between man and girl. " His Faithful Passion": Kidnaping girl. Shorten showing of man with skull crushed and death-bed scene. " The Warning ": Holdup, taking gun, locking girl in closet, cutting I'ope, and tying man. " The Heart of Carita " : Flogging of girl. In the Continent of April 9, 1914 (p. 498), we read: The censorship procedure in Chicago is thorough. Films are brought to the city hall, or the censors go to the studios of the various film exchanges of the city and there view the reels which the companies desire to use in the city. The censors look at the pictures in silence, make notes and confer with each other at the end, and, without a hearing to the exchange, order excluded what- ever portions of the film seem to them detrimental to public morals. They aim to eliminate all scenes showing crime being actually committed, all scenes of dead animals or persons, or anything that borders on the suggestive or vulgar. They judge all the films from the standpoint of the effect on the morals of chil- dren in the audience. About 20 per cent of all reels shown are censored in some way. Fifteen per cent are wholly rejected we are informed elsewhere. The rejection of reels and the elimination of ]:)arts of scenes in Chi- cago raises a square issue with the national board of censorship of New York, which body has already passed practically all of the films which come under the disapproval of the Chicago board. The physical, mental, and moral character of the new generation is manifestly imperiled by the daily feast of crime now spread en- ticingly before it, which will destroy not only the taste for good literature but also the taste for good living. The Literary Digest of March 28, in a powerful article on motion-picture monstrosities, quotes one of the motion-picture manufacturers as saying: We producers will give the public all the educational films they'll take; but we aren't running a charity bazaar, exactly—aren't in this for our health—and we find that unless we shoot somebody or have a sentimental love scene, we have the films to annise ourselves with. It's the public taste; we've got to give them what they want. The article seems to assume that the interests of the children must be subordinated to commercialism, which Jesus called "covetous- ness" and condemned more severely than any other vice except the hypocrisy with which it is so commonly associated, and which ever seeks to hide behind fine phrases its ])assion for gold, even for muddy and bloody gold.