The Exhibitor (1966)

The Trade Paper Read by Choice— Not by Chance Founded in 1918. Published weekly except first issue in January and first issue in September by Jay Emanuel Publications, Incorporated. General offices at 317 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107. Publishing office at 10 McGovern Ave., Lancaster, Pa. 17604. New York field office: 1600 Broadway, Suite 604, New York 10019, West Coast field office: William M. Schary, 818 S. Curson Ave., Los Angeles, Calif., 90036, London Bureau: Jock MacGregor, 16 Leinster Mews, London, W. 2, England. Jay Emanuel, publisher and gen. mgr.: Albert Erlick, editor; George Frees Nonamaker, feature editor; Mel Konecoff, New York editor; Albert J. Martin, advertising manager; Max Cades, business manager. Subscriptions: $2 per year (50 issues); and outside of the United States, Canada and Pan-American countries, $5 per year (50 issues). Special rates for two and three years on application. Single copy 25^. Second class postage paid at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Ad¬ dress all official communications to the Philadelphia offices. Telephone: Area Code 215, WAInut 2-1860. CHANGING ADDRESS? Please send old and new address. If possible include address portion of old mailing wrapper. Volume 76 • No. 3 August 24, 1966 Our 48th Year “THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE” The Motion Picture Association of America, led by Jack Valenti and attorney Lou Nizer, is currently hammering out a revised Production Code hopefully designed to bring the motion picture industry closer to the realities with which we live. There are hints that some kind of film classification will be included in the new draft. Specific injunctions, it is assumed, will be avoided and replaced by an emphasis on the taste with which delicate themes are handled. This is all to the good, as the present Code, more ignored than observed, results in exception after exception for exceptional films like “The Pawn¬ broker,” “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?” and “Alfie,” to name the most recent examples. While violating the letter of the present Code, they reflect a new and welcome maturity in the film medium. Any effective self-regulation must liberate creative talents rather than stifle them. Of course, any relaxation of Code verbiage will be viewed with alarm by many who see the screen as a short-cut to per¬ dition. Pressures for local, state, or national film censorship will surely be felt. For this reason, the dialogue concerning the problem of censorship in all its aspects is highly important to the industry and the public alike. Responsible film makers, concerned theatremen, critics of the movie scene — all have an obligation to join in this dialogue. For some time, we have enjoyed an enlightening correspon¬ dence with several members of the influential Catholic press. One of the most readable and knowledgeable representatives of this medium is columnist Joseph Larose of the New Orleans Clarion Herald. In a recent column, he discussed movie cen¬ sorship and censorship generally. We believe his views merit wider circulation and are reprinting that column in its entirety. Make no mistake about it — the problem of censorship will loom larger, not smaller, in the foreseeable future. Mr. Larose writes : Two weeks ago WDSU radio’s “ Close-up ” took up the sub¬ ject of movies and censorship. At the outset, moderators Bill Slatter and Bruce Miller asked their three guests — Al Shea, movie critic for WDSU-TV and radio; Miss Barbara Scott, who joined in via long distance telephone from New York, where she is legal representative of Motion Picture Assn.; and me — to state their views on censorship. I will not hesitate to acknowledge that there are lewd, pat¬ ently obscene books that cater only to the debased and the per¬ verted. It is common knowledge that there are vulgar, cheap nudie movies that should not be permitted a showing in any theatre. Every right-thinking person would like to see such as these outlawed. It should be such a simple matter. But censorship often poses more problems than it solves. Unfortunately, when well-meaning individuals whose quali¬ fications to judge literature and films are questionable begin to let their laudable zeal outrun prudence and common sense, they give ammunition to the purveyors of filth, who raise out¬ raged cries about deprivation of “ freedom of expression .” They wind up abetting the very evil they are striving so desperately to extirpate. Some will say that it’s better to deprive people of something that may not be really bad, providing you do get rid of what’s truly dangerous and evil. Rubbish! This is a negative, timorous attitude that equates sanctity with security, that ignores the words of the Great Teacher: “The truth shall make you free.” Innocence is not synonymous with ignorance. Just as chil¬ dren who have been too sheltered and protected during child¬ hood are more susceptible to physical disease, so those whose parents fearfully try to shield them from all contact with the real world of good and evil are the ones who grow up with a warped idea of reality and of true goodness. They don’t know what true goodness is because it is based on man’s coming to grips with a world of sinners as well as saints and the multi¬ tudinous in-betweens. Irving Sussman, in the current issue of Way, the Franciscan Fathers’ bi-monthly magazine, speaks of the misguided, if sin¬ cere, parents who would outlaw their version of dangerous books, from “The Scarlet Letted’ to “Catcher in the Rye.” “It is their lack of understanding or regard for truth and knowl¬ edge which deprives young people of the health which would enable them to pass through the germs of the dirty words as a healthy child breathes all kinds of air and goes on living. They are like the parents who demanded that Dante be taken off the school reading lists because they did not believe in punishment for sin and did not want their children reading the kind of literature that portrayed hell as a truth.” For them, “hell was a dirty word.” What’s really needed is the kind of education and develop¬ ment of taste that will produce adults who can recognize the profound vision of mortal sin in “The Heart of the Matter” ; who can fathom the hopelessness of George and Martha in “Virginia Woolf,” a despair that is a natural product of their world without God; who can discern the conflicting evils in the selfish world of the rich and the unfeeling and the ruthless world of the communists in “Dr. Zhivago” ; who can see the beauty of the redeeming, liberating love of man for his fellow man in “A Patch of Blue.” Arthur Cavanaugh, theatre critic for The Sign, says: “No ( Continued on page 10)