The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Jun 1931)

The MORALS of Hollywood Motion Pictures Must Justify Themselves Artistically and Socially — and Discard the Fear of Truth By JUDGE BEN B. LINDSEY JUDGE BEN BARR LINDSEY is a notable figure ** in our national life. For over twenty-five years he attracted wide attention for his handling of the juvenile court of Denver. Through him our methods of correcting juvenile delinquency took a step forward. He was a candidate for governor of Colorado and he is knoivn from coast to coast as a writer and lecturer. Recently, Judge Lindsey has been a storm center, due to his advocacy of companionate marriage. Judge Lindsey has spent much time in Hollywood and he knoivs and understands movieland and motion pictures. UNQUESTIONABLY Hollywood is influencing the ideals, customs, standards — that is, the "morality"— of the country to the remotest cross-roads community. I am not here concerned with the private lives of the actors, actresses and other artists who form the most picturesque part of the world's greatest movie colony. If that subject were under discussion I should say, as I have often said before, that the private living of Hollywood is on as high a plane as that of lawyers, doctors, writers, or any other professional group. There are variations in the moral code among the picture people as elsewhere, but it is my opinion, from rather close contacts with their domestic life, that their behavior is no less wholesome than the behavior of other social minorities with the same unlimited opportunity to do about as they please. In this article I am dealing with the morality of Hollywood as reflected on the screen and with the effect of that reflection on the lives of the millions of movie patrons in the nation. What is Hollywood telling the people about life? Is Hollywood giving them the facts Judge Ben B. Lindsey Underwood "I protest against the success propaganda of the movies — the never-ending dangling of the bit of wealth and social prestige before aspiring youth. As the movies see it, the full life is the life of entanglement with limousines, costly establishments, gorgeous raiment, dazzling banquets." —JUDGE BEN B. LINDSEY. so that they may arrive at valid conclusions as to the full life, the more desirable life? Is it telling them the truth about "success" and "failure" ? Is it giving them an accurate view of the turbulent world in which they find themselves in 1931? Is it a stimulating, educative force, deepening individual and social consciousness ? Is it an encouragement to honesty and courage or to evasion and cowardice? Do the movies stand for reality or for escape from reality? TT OLLYWOOD'S influence on the more superficial *■*■ phases of living are obvious. Skirt lengths fluctuate to the dictates of the reigning queens of stardom. The make-up of the studio lot is a commonplace in Middletown. Carmine lips, purplish eyelids, beaded lashes, plucked eyebrows, hair sleeked close to the cranium or bobbed with frizzly ends — these are but parts of the movies' conquests. A new animation lights the eyes of the flappers of Main Street. Puritan America, stolid, repressed, runs a whole new gamut of facial expression. Gestures, dazzlingly adroit, punctuate the witticisms of Yankee repartee. There is a new boldness and freedom in the walk of our girls; in their dress a franker revelation of physical charms. These changes I do not lay entirely at the door of the movies, but I am convinced they have been sped up by the movies and their spread is far wider than it would have been if the klieg lights had not been born. A keen young observer tells me she is satisfied that the technique of love making is taking on a new finesse in America due to the influence of the screen. She insists the late Valentino was the "great lover" in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of girls, that he set new standards in romance which alert youths everywhere copied or sought to improve upon! She was referring, no doubt, to deftness and flair of manner, to deference of approach, to nicety of address and caress, which rural America of the North and West, at least, had, down to the twentieth century, neglected. (Continued on page 107) 35