To prohibit and to prevent the trade practices known as "compulsory block-booking" and "blind selling" of motion-picture films in interstate and foreign commerce (1939)

Record Details:

Title:
To prohibit and to prevent the trade practices known as "compulsory block-booking" and "blind selling" of motion-picture films in interstate and foreign commerce
Date:
1939
Publisher:
Washington D.C. : United States. Government Printing Office
Volume:
To prohibit and to prevent the trade practices known as "compulsory block-booking" and "blind selling" of motion-picture films in interstate and foreign commerce (1939)
Leaf #:
00023
Language:
English
Subjects:
motion pictures, Motion pictures","Motion pictures -- Censorship","Motion pictures -- Moral and ethical aspects
Collection:
Government & Law
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Library of Congress, MBRS, Moving Image Section
Sponsor:
Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
December 28, 2023
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TRADE PRACTICES IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY }9 served that the part of the pending bill now under discussion — i. e., section 4 — prohibits nothing whatsoever in respect of the transportation of films. It is not censorship. It requires only that the contents of a film be disclosed in advance of its leasing. If the synopsis is furnished (and no other law, either Federal or State, is violated) the industry is free to produce, transport, and lease any kind of film for which it can find a market. Disclosure of information is a well recognized and increasingly employed device for securing the protection of the public interest. Compare the Securities Act (15 U. S. C, sec. 77a); the Securities Exchange Act (15 U. S. C, sec. 78a); and the Pure Food and Drug Act (21 U. S. C). Just as the Pure Food and Drug Act, in an effort to protect individual health, requires disclosure of the presence of morphine, opium, cocaine, and certain other potentially harmful ingredients in foods and drugs, so the present bill, in an effort to protect community morals, requires "a statement describing the manner of treatment of dialogs concerning and scenes depicting vice, crime, or suggestive of sexual passion." Whether the disclosure is required in advance and how far in advance must depend on when the public needs the disclosed information. In the case of foods and drugs labeling may be sufficient, but in the case of films something quite different may be required to give an equivalent opportunity for protection. The synopsis requirement of the present bill seeks to remedy a situation in which a community remains ignorant of the nature of its entertainment until revealed on the screen; it seeks to lay the foundation for making articulate the moral judgment of the community before the harm has been done. Noel T. Dowling. Francis X. Fallon, Jr. Delmar Karlen. o