And even when crime and vice are presented, when it must be done, more
and more is it being done within the bounds of decency and with due
regard to well-established rules that most every one knows and accepts.
Few minds differ upon what is really obscenity and indecency. Nothing
is being more frowned upon today than the stories written for a mere
pornographic, sensual appeal, without any good purpose intended or
accomplished. For all of such cases, we have the laws against obscenity
and indecency which are not near as much used or enforced as they might
be and could be.
=And we ever have the appeal to public opinion.= I believe it is in the
end safe and sane in this country. And then there is being held out to
us by the producers themselves the open door invitation to join hands
with them to give the public the thing that it wants most and that is,
clean, decent, wholesome pictures. The children are being provided with
special films and opportunities to see them.
=Cooperation between public and producer and exhibitor is being
successfully accepted as one of the best methods of carrying on
propaganda in this country for better, bigger and cleaner pictures.=
And, as a result, we are getting more and more of them all the time.
From every standpoint in theme, story, purpose, photography, artistry,
amazing progress has been made in the last few years. We have never had
so many marvelous, unobjectionable pictures as now before the public.
One of the very latest of these, “The Big Parade,” is here. You have
seen “The Ten Commandments.” “Ben Hur” is being shown. Hundreds of
others could be mentioned. I hold here a list of several hundred such,
selected by Mrs. Virginia Palmer, State Chairman of the Motion Picture
Department of our Colorado Parent-Teacher Association.