Motography (Oct-Dec 1916)

December 16, 1916. MOTOGRAPHY 1.U5 Children's Programs Kill Censorship SHOWING WHAT THE SPECIAL MATINEES ARE ACCOMPLISHING By Mary Gray Peck MISS Mary Gray Peck has been making a two months' tour through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Kentucky as a member of the Motion Pictures Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs and a representative of the National Committee on Films for Young People (affiliated with the National Board of Review). On this tour she talked with exhibitors, with club women, and with individuals such as Governor Capper and members of the Censorship Board of Kansas. Through the investigations made Miss Peck undoubtedly has a very thorough understanding of the question of special programs for children and the effect and scope of such entertainments. In speaking of her findings she says: "My eight weeks' tour of the east central states has demonstrated beyond doubt the contention of the National Board of Review that the great first cause of the repeated demands for state and federal censorship is that children all over the country are going to adult shows. Popular discontent with this state of affairs has reached a pitch and volume that command attention from the film industry. Exhibitor and exchange man realize that the young folks have got to be attended to. The really discerning exhibitor and exchange man realize a good deal more — namely that in providing for these clamorous young spirits, they are opening up for themselves a hitherto untouched audience, the audience that up to now has gathered its robes about it and said grimly, T never go to moving pictures !' "Pictures can't be respecters of persons. Because they began with the roughnecks is no reason why they should not top off with the Puritans. The Puritans have just as much right to Puritan pictures as the 'tired business man' has to a vampire picture. The Puritan is a human being, as well as a father or a mother, and he is easily pleased. All he wants is a show guaranteed not to offend the sensibilities to too great an extent. He says he doesn't watch people bathing in real life and he doesn't want to do it in the theater ! "Men and brethren of the film industry, we who would have friends must show ourselves friendly. The reason there is a hue and cry for censorship is because a very large and powerful element of the public unaware of the efforts being made to present films entertaining to all, feels that it has been left out of the calculations of the moving picture industry. It is not that good clean plays are not produced — but that the Puritans never know beforehand when they go into the theater whether the actors are going to offend the canons of good taste or not ! That is what rouses their animosity. It turns their minds toward the young people. "The obvious remedy for this quite unnecessary mutual distrust and dislike is special performances on regular days of selected films about whose character there is no doubt. In providing a regular program, and arranging central exchange facilities, whereby all good features of this character are available to all theaters which would like to offer a young people's program you are providing a comfortable grave for the legal censorship idea. And it is the only grave you ever will succeed in burying that idea in, despite the fact that legalized censorship where established has not made pictures any better in quality than those seen elsewhere. Cleveland, the hot bed of censorship agitation, has found it necessary, notwithstanding legal censorship in Ohio, in order to secure the desired results, to take up the Better Films movement in co-operation with the exhibitors. "There is a nation-wide desire for the young people's program. I have not found a single town where the leaders of the community were not eager for it, and taking steps to secure it. Usually it is frankly regarded as the alternative of some form of censorship. Where an enlightened exhibitor is trying to meet the wishes of his community, friendly co-operation is established. There is mutual regard and understanding. "But in every instance where children's plays had been running for a year, there was the same complaint that the supply of films was exhausted. Some were out of print, some were not available on account of closed booking, some had been promised and something else substituted, some couldn't be located, etc. "It is nothing less than a calamity that at the very time the general federation of Women's Clubs in co-operation with the national committee on films for young people is organizing a nation-wide movement in support of the standardized Young People's Program, there should be this paralysis of exchange facilities. It is analogous to the car shortage on the railroads. "But in Chicago, Kansas City and St. Louis, I heard golden rumors of a better time coming. Women were organizing circuits of theaters, not only city circuits, but state circuits, film men were cogitating over the exchange problem — and meantime the children and the Puritans are waiting — not very patiently. "What kind of a bomb would it take in each community to wake the film men up to the adoption of a remedy that lies in their own hands?" Chicago Manager Instructs Children It is too bad that every child — and every grown person as well — who has seen or is going to see Universal's adaptation of Jules Verne's story "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," could not enjoy the same treat which Manager J. J. Lodge of the Studebaker Theater, Chicago, a Jones, Linick & Schaefer house, gave to the children at the special Saturday morning matinee. During the intermission Mr. Lodge came upon the stage accompanied by a man dressed in the full diver's paraphernalia. In a very scientific manner, but at the same time in words which the little folks could fully understand, he explained the mechanism of the various parts of the diving suit and how the men in the picture could live and breath under water while the picture was being taken. He introduced his talk by illustrating the meaning of the title "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," and thereby answering at the outset a question which a great number of thinking children have asked — "How could anyone go down 20,000 leagues ?" Mr. Lodge explained the title did not mean that the Nautilus went down to a depth of 20,000 leagues, for we know that is impossible, but that