above suspicion ran through the entire film. Simpler was the change of
the famous curtain line which was familiar to all theatergoers of New
York ten or twelve seasons ago when "The Witching Hour" was one of the
hits of the season. It may be remembered that at the end of the third
act Frank Hardmuth, then a district attorney and not yet reduced to a
prosperous attorney, ran into the library of the hero to kill him. The
hero's name we have forgotten, but he was a professional gambler, of a
high type, who later turned hypnotist. Hardmuth thrust a pistol into his
stomach, and we can still see the picture and hear the line as John
Mason turned and said: "You can't shoot that gun [and then after a long
pause]: You can't even hold it." Hardmuth, played by George Nash,
staggered back and exclaimed, just before the curtain came down: "I'd
like to know how in Hell you did that to me." It can hardly have been
equally effective in moving pictures after the censor made the caption
read: "I'd like to know how you did that to me." The original version
fell under the ban against profanity.
In Ohio a more recent picture called "The Gilded Lily" had not a little
trouble. Here the Board of Censors curtly ordered: "First Reel--Cut out
girl smoking cigarette which she takes from man." Seemingly they did not
even stop to consider whether or not she smoked it suggestively. And
again in the third reel came the order: "Cut out all scenes of girl's
smoking cigarette at table." Most curious of all was the order: "Cut out
verse with words: 'I'm a little prairie flower growing wilder every
hour.'"
William Vaughn Moody's "The Faith Healer" was considered a singularly
dignified and moving play in its dramatic form, but the picture ran into
difficulties, as usual, in Pennsylvania. "Eliminate subtitle," came the
order: "'Your power is not gone because you love--but because your love
has fallen on one unworthy.'" As this is a fair statement of the idea
upon which Mr. Moody built his play, it cannot be said that anything
which the moving-picture producers brought in was responsible.
Throughout the rest of the world one may thumb his nose as a gesture of
scorn and contempt, but in Pennsylvania this becomes a public menace not
to be tolerated. "Reel Two"--we find in the records of the Board of
Censors--"eliminate view of man thumbing his nose at lion."
As a matter of fact, no rule of censorship of any sort may be framed so
wisely that by and by some circumstance will not arise under which it
may be turned to an absurd use. Any censors must have rules. No man can
continue to make decisions all day long. He must eventually fall back
upon the bulwark of printed instructions. I observed an instance of this
sort during the war. A rule was passed forbidding the mention of any
arrivals from America in France. An American captain who had brought his
wife to France ran into this regulation when he attempted to cable home
to his parents the news that he had become the proud parent of a son.
"Charles Jr. arrived to-day. Weight eight pounds. Everything fine," he
wrote on the cable blank, only to have it turned back to him with the
information: "We're not allowed to pass any messages about arrivals."
It is almost as difficult for babies to arrive in motion-picture
stories. Any suggestion which would tend to weaken the faith of any one
in storks or cabbage leaves is generally frowned upon. For a time
picture producers felt that they had discovered a safe device which
would inform adults and create no impression in the minds of younger
patrons, and pictures were filled with mothers knitting baby clothes.
This has now been ruled out as quite too shocking. "Eliminate scene
showing Bobby holding up baby's sock," the Pennsylvania body has ruled,
"and scene showing Bobby standing with wife kissing baby's sock." In
fact, there is nothing at all to be done except to make all screen
babies so many Topsies who never were born at all. Even such a simple
sentence as "And Julia Duane faced the most sacred duties of a woman's
life alone" was barred.
Like poor Julia Duane, the moving-picture producers have one problem
which they must face alone. They are confronted with difficulties
unknown to the publisher of books and the producer of plays. The movie
man must frame a story which will interest grown-ups and at the same
time contain nothing which will disturb the innocence of the youngest
child in the audience. At any rate, that is the task to which he is held
by most censorship boards. The publisher of a novel knows that there are
certain things which he may not permit to reach print without being
liable to prosecution, but at the same time he knows that he is
perfectly safe in allowing many things in his book which are not
suitable for a four-year-old-child. There is no prospect that the
four-year-old child will read it. Just so when a manager undertakes a
production of Ibsen's "Ghosts" it never enters into his head just what
its effect will be on little boys of three. But these same youngsters
will be at the picture house, and the standards of what is suitable for
them must be standards of all the others. There should, of course, be
some way of grading movie houses. There should be theaters for children
under fourteen, others with subjects suitable for spectators from
fourteen to sixty, and then small select theaters for those more than
sixty in which caution might be thrown to the winds.
Another of the difficulties of the unfortunate moving-picture producer
is the fact that censorship bodies in various parts of the country have
a faculty of seldom hitting on the same thing as objectionable. There
is, of course, a National Association of the Motion Picture Industry
which maintains its own censorship through which 92 per cent of all the
pictures exhibited in America are passed, but in addition to that
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, and Maryland have State censorship boards,
and there are numerous local bodies as well. Cecil B. De Mille
complained, shortly after his version of Geraldine Farrar in "Carmen"
was launched, that at that time there were approximately thirty-five
censorship organizations in the United States. These included various
State and municipal boards. Every one of these thirty-odd organizations
censored "Carmen." No two boards censored the same thing. In other
words, what was morally acceptable to New York was highly immoral in
Pennsylvania. What Pennsylvania might see with impunity was considered
dangerous to the citizens of an adjoining State.
Of course the question at issue is whether the potential immoral picture
shall first be shown at the producer's or the exhibitor's risk, or
whether censorship shall come first before there has been any public
showing. The contention is made by some of the moving-picture people
that they should have the same freedom given to people who deal in print
to publish first and take the consequences later if any statute has been
violated. The right to free speech, in fact, has been invoked in favor
of the motion picture as a medium of expression. This view had the
support of the late Mayor Gaynor, an excellent jurist, but apparently it
is not the view held by various State courts which have passed upon the
constitutionality of censorship laws. When the aldermen of New York City
passed an ordinance providing for the censorship of movies Mayor Gaynor
wrote: "If this ordinance is legal, then a similar ordinance in respect
of the newspapers and the theaters generally would be legal. Once revive
the censorship and there is no telling how far we may carry it."
No matter what the law, the real basis of censorship is the public
itself. Persons who feel that tighter lines of censorship must be drawn
and new bodies established go on the theory that there is a great demand
for the salacious moving-picture show. But there is no continuing appeal
in dirt in the theater. It does not permanently sell the biggest of the
magazines or the newspapers. And naturally it is not a paying commodity
to the moving-picture men. The best that the censor can do is to guess
what will be offensive to the general public. The general public can be
much more accurate in its reactions. It knows. And it is prepared to
stay away from the dirty show in droves.
XLII
CENSORING THE CENSOR
Mice and canaries were sometimes employed in France to detect the
presence of gas. When these little things began to die in their cages
the soldiers knew that the air had become dangerous. Some such system
should be devised for censorship to make it practical. Even with the
weight of authority behind him no bland person, with virtue obviously
unruffled, is altogether convincing when he announces that the book he
has just read or the moving picture he has seen is so hideously immoral
that it constitutes a danger to the community. For my part I always feel
that if he can stand it so can I. To the best of my knowledge and
belief, Mr. Sumner was not swayed from his usual course of life by so
much as a single peccadillo for all of _Jurgen_. His indignation was
altogether altruistic. He feared for the fate of weaker men and women.
Every theatrical manager, every motion picture producer, and every
publisher knows, to his sorrow, that the business of estimating the
effect of any piece of imaginative work upon others is precarious and
uncertain. Genius would be required to predict accurately the reaction
of the general public to any set piece which seems immoral to the
censor. For instance, why was Mr. Sumner so certain that _Jurgen_,
which inspired him with horror and loathing, would prove a persuasive
temptation to all the rest of the world? Censorship is serious and
drastic business; it should never rest merely upon guesswork and more
particularly not upon the guesses of men so staunch in morals that they
are obviously of distant kin to the rest of humanity.
The censor should be a person of a type capable of being blasted for the
sins of the people. His job can be elevated to dignity only when the
world realizes that he runs horrid risks. If we should choose our
censors from fallible folk we might have proof instead of opinions.
Suppose the censor of Jurgen had been some one other than Mr. Sumner,
some one so unlike the head of the vice society that after reading Mr.
Cabell's book he had come out of his room, not quivering with rage, but
leering and wearing vine leaves. In such case the rest would be easy. It
would merely be necessary to shadow the censor until he met his first
dryad. His wink would be sufficient evidence and might serve as a cue
for the rescuers to rush forward and save him. Of course there would
then be no necessity for legal proceedings in regard to the book. Expert
testimony as to its possible effects would be irrelevant. We would know
and we could all join cheerfully in the bonfire.
To my mind there are three possible positions which may logically be
taken concerning censorship. It might be entrusted to the wisest man in
the world, to a series of average men,--or be abolished. Unfortunately
it has been our experience that there is a distinct affinity between
fools and censorship. It seems to be one of those treading grounds where
they rush in. To be sure, we ought to admit a prejudice at the outset
and acknowledge that we were a reporter in France during the war at a
time when censors seemed a little more ridiculous than usual. We still
remember the young American lieutenant who held up a story of a boxing
match in Saint-Nazaire because the reporter wrote, "In the fourth round
MacBeth landed a nice right on the Irishman's nose and the claret began
to flow." "I'm sorry," said the censor, "but we have strict orders from
Major Palmer that no mention of wine or liquor is to be allowed in any
story about the American army."
Nor have we forgotten the story of General Petain's mustache. "Why,"
asked Junius Wood of the _Globe_, "have you held up my story? All the
rest have gone."
"Unfortunately," answered the courteous Frenchman, "you have twice used
the expression General Petain's 'white mustache.' I might stretch a
point and let you say 'gray mustache,' but I should much prefer to have
you say 'blond mustache.'"
"Oh, make it green with purple spots," said Junius.
The use of average men in censorship would necessitate sacrifices to the
persuasive seduction of immorality, as I have suggested, and moreover
there are very few average men. Accordingly, I am prepared to abandon
that plan of censorship. The wisest man in the world is too old and too
busy with his plays and has announced that he will never come to
America. Accordingly we venture to suggest that in time of peace we try
to get along without any censorship of plays or books or moving
pictures. I have no desire, of course, to leave Mr. Sumner
unemployed--it would perhaps be only fair to allow him to slosh around
among the picture post cards.
Once official censorship had been officially abolished, a strong and
able censorship would immediately arise consisting of the playgoing and
reading public. It is a rather offensive error to assume that the vast
majority of folk in America are rarin' to get to dirty books and dirty
plays. It is the experience of New York managers that the run of the
merely salacious play is generally short. The success which a few nasty
books have had has been largely because of the fact that they came close
to the line of things which are forbidden. Without the prohibition there
would be little popularity.
To save myself from the charge of hypocrisy I should add that personally
I believe there ought to be a certain amount of what we now know as
immoral writing. It would do no harm in a community brought up to take
it or let it alone. It is well enough for the reading public and the
critic to use terms such as moral or immoral, but they hardly belong in
the vocabulary of an artist. I have heard it said that before Lucifer
left Heaven there were no such things as virtues and vices. The world
was equipped with a certain number of traits which were qualities
without distinction or shame. But when Lucifer and the heavenly hosts
drifted into their eternal warfare it was agreed that each side should
recruit an equal number of these human, and at that time unclassified,
qualities. A coin was tossed and, whether by fair chance or sharp
miracle, Heaven won.
"I choose Blessedness," said the Captain of the Angels. It should be
explained that the selection was made without previous medical
examination, and Blessedness seemed at that time a much more robust
recruit than he has since turned out to be. A tendency to flat foot is
always hard to detect.
"Give me Beauty," said Lucifer, and from that day to this the artists of
the world have been divided into two camps--those who wished to achieve
beauty and those who wished to achieve blessedness, those who wanted to
make the world better and those who were indifferent to its salvation if
they could only succeed in making it a little more personable.
However, the conflict is not quite so simple as that. Late in the
afternoon when the Captain of the Angels had picked Unselfishness and
Moderation and Faith and Hope and Abstinence, and Lucifer had called to
his side Pride and Gluttony and Anger and Lust and Tactlessness, there
remained only two more qualities to be apportioned to the contending
sides. One of them was Sloth, who was obviously overweight, and the
other was a furtive little fellow with his cap down over his eyes.
"What's your name?" said the Captain of the Angels.
"Truth," stammered the little fellow.
"Speak up," said the Captain of the Angels so sharply that Lucifer
remonstrated, saying, "Hold on there; Anger's on my side."
"Truth," said the little fellow again but with the same somewhat
indistinct utterance which has always been so puzzling to the world.
"I don't understand you," said the Captain of the Angels, "but if it's
between you and Sloth I'll take a chance with you. Stop at the locker
room and get your harp and halo."
Now to-day even Lucifer will admit, if you get him in a corner, that
Truth is the mightiest warrior of them all. The only trouble is his
truancy. Sometimes he can't be found for centuries. Then he will bob up
unexpectedly, break a few heads, and skip away. Nothing can stand
against him. Lucifer's best ally, Beauty, is no match for him. Truth
holds every decision. But the trouble is that he still keeps his cap
down over his eyes, and he still mumbles his words, and nobody knows him
until he is at least fifty years away and moving fast. At that distance
he seems to grow bigger, and he invariably reaches into his back pocket
and puts on his halo so that people can recognize him. Still, when he
comes along the next time and is face to face with any man of this
world, the mortal is pretty sure to say, "Your face is familiar but I
can't seem to place you."
There is no denying that he isn't a good mixer. But for that he would be
an excellent censor.
* * * * *
Etext transcriber's note:
The following changes have been made from the original text:
Frudian=>Freudian
too old and two busy=>too old and too busy
Minnegerode=>Minnigerode [Meade Minnigerode (1887-1967)]