Would it not be equally consistent with the so-called open-door policy of the industry to give over to the public the task which the industry has found so difficult to solve the responsibility of the choice of pictures.

Gentlemen, this is not a meddlesome interference with the highly technical machinery of a vast industry, but rather a simple request that we, the mothers and fathers, accept the responsibilities which are rightfully ours.

A subsequent speaker will show you the enormous social implications of the movies. She will indicate to you how they have started a new school of human behavior; that they are a new feature of our educational system. We pay for our schools; we pay for our movies; must we continue to allow Hollywood to dictate to us what our children shall see and hear, when so much of it seems in direct conflict with what we are trying to teach them in home, school, and Sunday school.

Promises and performance of the Big Eight-the past experiences in the last 20 years are not reassuring. If the vigilance of the American public is relaxed, to what all-low new level must we sink?

Indications of what is most likely to occur are found in the following article, the work of a writer on the Warner Bros. staff.

BACK TO SMUT

If the development of the movies is to be on the Elsie Dinsmore or back to smut, then I say by all means let's get back to smut, and be quick about it. It might be a good idea for producers to hold a round robin and begin the retreat together because I have a sinking suspicion that if one of them jumps the gun and beats the rest back to green pastures, he'll make money enough to buy his brothers out by Friday week.

(Written 1936-2 years after industry had been driven from greener pastures.)

And again from the New York Times column by Hollywood correspondent Churchill.

While any hint of a changed attitude on the part of the censorship boys is vigorously almost bitterly denied at the Hays office there are indications that the purity seal battalion has relaxed. Many pictures this season contain enjoyable dialog passages which seem at variance with past standards.

Once again may I make an earnest plea for the favorable consideration of this bill as the only sure method of community freedom in the choice of films, for around the corner from almost everyone is a movie-picture theater-the place where dreams are for sale; a sanctuary for the rich, the poor, the haughty, the humble, the old and the young, all seeking escape from the reality of living in the enchanted palace; peopled by spectered figures on the silver screen, doing incredibly thrilling, romantic things that never could happen in real life. Now, I would like, if I have your permission, to submit a statement of Mr. Stephen P. Cabot, that it may follow along with mine. Mr. Cabot is honorary vice president of the Motion Picture Research Council and treasurer of the local Boston chapter of the Motion Picture Research Council, and I would like to submit that for the record, if I may.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well.

(The statement referred to is as follows:)

MOTION PICTURE RESEARCH COUNCIL, BOSTON CHAPTER, 3 JOY STREET, BOSTON

HISTORY OF PUBLIC GROUP EFFORTS FROM 1920 TO 1939 TO IMPROVE THE MOVIES 1. EARLY RECOGNITION, WHICH HAS NOW BECOME UNANIMOUS, OF THE POWER OF THE SCREEN ON YOUTH

The phenomenal development of motion pictures from the early beginnings before the turn of this century to the present time has been coincident with the growing conviction, long since become an indisputable fact, that the screen is one of the greatest media ever discovered for molding the habits, attitudes, and character of youth. Its influence for good or for harm is almost unlimited. As far back as 1916 the British National Council of Public Morals, after an investigation inquiring into the physical, social, moral, and educational influence of the cinema, with special reference to young people, reported:

"We have been much impressed with the evidence brought before us that moving pictures are having a profound influence upon the mental and moral outlook of millions of our young people-an influence the more subtle in that it is subconsciously exercised and we leave our labours with the deep conviction that no social problem of the day demands more earnest attention. The cinema, under wise guidance, may be made a poweful influence for good; if neglected, if its abuse is unchecked, its potentialities for evil are manifold (The Cinema in Education, London. George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1925, pp. 10-11)."

In an address before the National Education Association in 1922, Mr. Wil Hays said:

"Obviously it is true that the influence of the motion picture on our national life is indeed absolutely limitless-its influence on our taste, its influence on our conduct, its influence on our aspirations, its influence on our youth, and its consequent immeasurable influence on our future. Above everything else perhaps is our duty to youth." (National Education Association proceedings, 1922, LX, 252.)

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The Payne Fund Study on Motion Pictures, sponsored by the Motion Picture Research Council and published by Mac Millan & Co. in 1933 in 9 volumes, furnishes conclusive evidence of the influence of motion pictures on youth. A group of 18 educators, psychologists, and sociologists were selected from 7 leading universities of the East and Middle West to conduct this study. They were headed by W. W. Charters, director, bureau of educational research, Ohio State University.

The nine volumes were reduced to one volume in Our Movie Made Children, by Henry J. Forman.

In addition to the Payne fund studies, there is a vast amount of evidence by scientists, sociologists, educators, judges, prison wardens, and others, as well as by groups of the powerful influence of motion pictures on children.

2. BEGINNINGS OF A STATE AND LOCAL CENSORSHIP MOVEMENT

Very early in this country outstanding individuals, private and public groups became aware of the "potentialities for evil" in the screen. The almost complete freedom from any sort of restraint with which pictures in those early days were exhibited led to the showing of many which appealed to the lowest tastes of the onlookers and were a very grave danger to our youth. This aroused citizens in different parts of the country to protest to municipal and State authorities demanding that such pictures be banned. Protests were also made to the producers but with little or no censorship success. Finally some sort of control was demanded and several cities passed censorship ordinances. In 1907 Chicago passed such an ordinance. The next year, after vociferous protests, New York City made a general clean-up of New York theater houses and passed restrictive laws. There followed the National Board of Censorship which, later, became the National Board of Review. This, however, contrary to general belief, did not censor pictures but passed and suggested only. Furthermore, its freedom from bias in favor of the motion-picture industry was gravely questioned. In his letter of resignation as a member of the board in 1936, Dr. Louis I. Harris, former New York City Health Commissioner, stated:

"It was of questionable propriety for the board to accept for its principal source of maintenance and support money paid to it by the motion-picture industry for the review of pictures. How could the board, beholden as it has been to the

industry for the money thus received, feel free and with good grace criticize the program, achievement, and activities of those in control of the motion-picture industry?" (New York Times, July 5, 1936.)

Censorship was set up in many cities before the twenties, but this for the most part proved ineffective, and salacious and immoral pictures continued to be shown. During this period, before and in the early twenties, some six States created State boards of censorship: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, Maryland, New York, and Virginia; while Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Florida have laws exercising some form of control over theaters. Agitation was carried on in several other States, but it gradually met with strong opposition, especially from both the production and exhibition branches of the motion-picture industry. There were also attempts to have Federal censorship.

3. SELF-REGULATION

By the twenties there was such a flood of indecent pictures that in 1920 William Brady, then president of the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry, is reported to have pleaded with the Chicago Motion Picture Commission, which was considering a bill for stricter city censorship, "to consider the motion pictures as they would be 10 years from that date," and the industry would promise to clean them up the first of the famous promises of the industry that was never kept.

The next 10 years in the efforts to improve the movies was characterized by waves of protest from indignant citizens and new promises and codes within the industry to clean its own house. Each promise succeeded in temporarily abating the indignation only to rise again until finally patience was exhausted and all confidence in the industry to clean up its own house was lost. Thus, in 1921, an article appeared in the Pictorial Review entitled "Too Much Sex Stuff in the Movies.' This led to a meeting of a number of leading producers at which they pledged themselves to eliminate 13 varieties of scenes, including those emphasizing sex appeal, bedrooms, dealing with underworld vice; those bearing salacious titles or subtitles; and to cease using salacious material in advertising.

In 1922, when the public was outraged by a steady stream of pernicious pictures, censorship was again threatened in many States. It was then that Mr. Will Hays became the leader of the newly formed Motion Picture Producers of America, and assumed responsibility for the moral quality of the pictures from Hollywood. Censorship was called off and public wrath was temporarily stilled. But in 1924 the Chicago censorship board eliminated about 4,000 scenes from 788 pictures, including 757 immoral scenes. In the same year the New York State Motion Picture Commission made 3,780 eliminations (Senate hearings, April 3-17, 1939, p. 54 of report). In 1925 the motion-picture section of the Commonwealth Club of California charged the films with doing great harm to the children, and Frederick W. Beetson, secretary-treasurer of the Motion Picture Producers' Association, is reported to have replied: "We plead guilty on many counts. Much of the publicity is rank, much of the advertising is rank. This is admitted by us." Again a promise to reform followed, but nothing came of it. During the years 1924-27, New York censors eliminated 4,825 scenes tending to incite to crime and 3,763 as indecent, or immoral, or tending to corrupt morals.

In 1927 public wrath was again rising and the industry once more decided that something must be done.

In 1928 a national committee, representing jointly the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, reviewed 216 films released between November 1927 and April 1928 and found only 18 percent fit for children under 15, only 40 percent suitable for youths, and approved only 40 percent for the entire lot. In March 1930 the head of the Chicago Board of Censors stated: "Pictures, the last year, have been more objectionable from the standpoint of immorality and criminality than ever before." In 1930 the National Film Service found 71 percent of the pictures produced wholly unsuitable for children. In 1931 the number was increased to 76 percent. In the autumn of 1931 a committee of 20 women from the First Presbyterian Church of Lancaster, Pa., analyzed pictures shown in that city for 1 month, after the 1930 code had been in effect for more than 1 year. Cut of 67 pictures, 29, or 43 percent were listed definitely as morally bad (Christian Century, April 13, 1932). This was the "10 years from now" which Mr. Brady asked us to think of in judging the pictures in 1920.

Then followed the code in 1930, of which the Rev. Daniel A. Lord, S. J., was the actual author, again to reassure the publie that if it would leave the industry alone it would clean things up. But the period following 1930 stands out as one in

which pictures reached a very low level. Between January 1, 1932, and March 31, 1933, eliminations were ordered in 711 reels, and 13 films were rejected in toto by the New York Department of Education, division of motion pictures (What Shocked the Censors, published by the National Council of Freedom from Censorship, 1933).

In 1931, the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Denver registered its conviction that Federal supervision was necessary for the motionpicture industry.

By the close of 1932 nearly 40 national religious and education groups had adopted resolutions calling for some form of Federal regulation of the motion picture industry. It was generally agreed that there was little hope of improving the situation if this depended upon the industry itself. In February, 1933, Howard T. Lewis, professor at the graduate school of business administration, Harvard University, himself opposed to censorship, writes as follows:

"Producers are, after all, responsible fundamentally for the condition of the censorship problem. Unless the industry takes drastic steps, there seems to be little reason to doubt that those actively interested in obtaining governmental regulation will succeed in convincing the public. The industry cannot and does not intend to do anything for itself. It is difficult for the public to harmonize the offerings on the screen with the assertion of the spokesmen of the industry in the press and at public functions to the effect that 'We must voluntarily agree upon and enforce common bases of standards in relation to good taste and wholesomeness.' People are more likely to judge the industry by its pictures than by its formulation of principles" (the Motion Picture Industry, page 391).

Although the 1933 code for the motion picture producers and distributors had inserted a clause for maintaining right moral standards in the production of motion pictures as a form of entertainment, a long list of pictures released by seven of the big producers in the 1933-34 season was classified by the Chicago Council of the Legion of Decency in the November 9 list as C, that is "indecent, immoral, and unfit for public entertainment" (report on House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 74th Cong., March 9-26, 1936, p. 27).

During 1933 and 1934, P. S. Harrison, editor of Harrison's Reports, in a review of pictures produced then, finds that 66 percent or 2 out of every 3 were classed as for adults only or wholly unsuitable for showing to anyone; only 1 out of 3 suitable for children, and more than 1 out of 6 unfit for anyone (Harrison's Reports, December 29, 1934, XVI, No. 52). The New York censors rejected 16 pictures outright for the year ending June 30, 1934, making 2,195 eliminations, of which 838 were classified as indecent, and 511 leading to crime (Motion Picture Herald, November 3, 1934, p. 24.)

During these years repeated efforts were made by many national organizations to cooperate with the industry. Mr. Hays encouraged this cooperative attitude, urging the formation of better films groups to support good pictures and have them reflected in box office receipts, and for this purpose to get in touch with their local exhibitors.

It was the inability of these and other groups, under the compulsory blockbooking and blind selling system, to obtain from independent exhibitors the pictures they wanted to have shown on the local screens of the country and to eliminate the bad ones that led to new waves of organized protest culminating in the Pettengill bill (practically the same as the Neely bill) to abolish once and for all these pernicious trade practices. For all groups that were not favored by producer-owned or affiliated theaters now clearly recognized that these practices were at the root of the trouble.

In 1934 the situation became so serious and the demand for action so strong that the Motion Picture Research Council, incorporated under the State of New York in 1934, called a conference of some 38 national organizations at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, September 28 and 29, 1934, to take some definite action. Out of that conference the Pettengill bill emerged.

4. A NATIONAL BOYCOTT OF INDECENT PICTURES

In 1934, Daniel A. Lord, S. J., made an analysis of 133 pictures offered by leading producers from January to May 1934. Twenty-six plots or episodes were built on illicit love, i. e. love outside of marriage. Thirteen plots or main episodes were based on seduction accomplished. Twelve plots or episodes presented seduction as attempted or planned. Two had episodes based on rape. Eighteen characters lived in open adultery. Three presented prostitutes as leading characters. And, in addition, to these, 25 presented scenes and situations and dances and dialogs of indecent or obscene or antimoral character (hearings on H. R. 6742, 74th Cong., 1936, p. 24).

And yet the motion-picture code, signed by all the major companies, states: "The sanctity of the institution of marriage and of the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted and common thing."

It was then that the Catholic Church, thoroughly disillusioned and exasperated, launched a great campaign to clean up the movies. Within a relatively short period the church, numbering some 22,000,000 followers in the United States, was ready for action. In April 1934, the Legion of Decency was launched. Invitations were sent to Protestant and Jewish forces to join the campaign. Immediately the bishops joined in the fray and the movement became a crusade. By the end of the year it was estimated that between 6,000,000 and 10,000,000 had signed the pledge. Protestant churches joined in; the Presbytery of Cleveland endorsed the campaign; the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the Federal Council of Churches prepared a pledge for Protestants, pledging cooperation with Catholics and Jews in condemning vile and unwholesome pictures, calling attention to the grave menace to youth, country, and religion of current films that "are corrupting public morals and promoting sex mania in our midst." The Christian Century pressed the crusade, the Living Church (Episcopal) printed the pledge; the Presbyterian Synod of Texas in its seventy-ninth annual session endorsed the movement; the board of education of the Methodist Episcopal Church organized a national committee to conduct a campaign of decency of the movies; the National Lutheran Council urged Lutherans to join the boycott of degrading films. Jewish groups also pledged support. Headquarters were set up in New York City.

After at first making light of the whole matter, at last the Hays organization was thoroughly frightened. And when box office receipts began to drop, the industry called for peace, offered to reorganize the machinery for carrying out the code and made Mr. Joe Breen, himself a good Catholic, censor for the industry. Clippings and rejections at once began. It is reported that 160 scripts were rejected during the first few weeks of Mr. Breen's regime. As a further concession, the Hays office permitted exhibitors to cancel all pictures released prior to July 15, 1934, if they were "in any community in which there is genuine concerted objection to the showing of a particular picture on moral grounds." Since that date, judging from the censoring activities of the New York Board of Education and from the Maryland Board of Censors there has been a significant drop in the number of eliminations of indecent, immoral, and criminal scenes. The same improvement is shown in the legion's classified lists. It is generally agreed that, under the tremendous pressure of the Legion of Decency supported by the disclosures of the Payne Fund Studies, the quality of pictures has improved.

But the movies are far from being free of objectionable features. In the prevalence of gangster pictures, even though the G-men come out on top in the end, the damage to the child is often done before the final outcome is reached. In 1935, Charles H. Tuttle, former United States Attorney, charged the screen with inspiring hero worship of the child attending the films, asserting that this worship is being extended to certain characters on the screen whom we, as parents, would not allow in our homes (Motion Picture Herald, January 26, 1935, 118: 17). In the same year Harrison's Reports has this to say:

"The gangster pictures are with us again. Only that this time they are more vicious and more deadly to youthful minds. Under the guise of glorifying the Department of Justice operatives called G-men, the producers have turned the screen into a school of crime * They seem to have embraced many different kinds of crimes and have presented the gangsters as brave and fearless and resourceful (Harrison's Reports, July 13, 1935, p. 109).

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Jimmie Fidler, well-known Hollywood commentator, is reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, July 25, 1939, to have said that James Cagney had done more to glorify the gangster killer than any other star, and that his latest picture, Each Dawn I Die, released in the summer of 1939, more than any other picture in screen history portrays law enforcement officers as despicable thugs, and criminals as sympathetic characters.

That the Legion of Decency is not content to rest on its laurels is shown in the statement, quoted from Dr. Joseph A. Daly, executive secretary for the permanent league organization, by the San Francisco Examiner, March 10, 1936, page 3:

"The appearance currently in motion-picture theaters of a subject of a character to which the Legion of Decency repeatedly has raised emphatic exception, focuses attention upon the necessity for continuing vigilance on the part of all persons interested in the maintenance of a wholesome screen."