The weekly motion-picture attendance in our country equals the entire population of the country, according to the claim of Hollywood statistician A. C. Martin. Independent investigators (Dr. Edgar Dale in Children's Attendance at Motion Pictures) present a more conservative estimate of 77,000,000. Half way between these calculations is the figure of Recent Social Trends, which placed the weekly attendance at 100,000,000. We can form some tangible conception of the winding queues at the cinema ticket offices when we realize that, even on the basis of the most conservative estimate, our weekly motion-picture attendance exceeds the total population of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Portugal, Persia, Mexico, Bolivia. Every six months American motion picture theaters attract a throng larger than the entire population of the globe.
With this tremendous following it is difficult to overestimate the influences that the screen exerts in molding popular opinion. The motion picture is the most decisive influence in the lives of many millions of Americans; it has become the matrix of their thoughts, words, and actions.
Since investigations have shown that at least 28,000,000 minors are found in this weekly attendance, screen performances must help shape young people's hopes and habits. Scientific research has established the fact that the plastic minds of adolescent youth are profoundly, and sometimes permanently, influenced by the suggestions which the cinema extends through the eye gate and ear gate. Because themes that center about love and marriage form most of the plots, the motion-picture theater with its adjuncts (the motion-picture magazines, the newspaper features of Hollywood and filmdom, and the radio publicity for screen stars) becomes for millions the greatest single molder of standards for courtship, marital morality, and home life.
This question, then, cannot be side-tracked: What are the influences which the motion-pictures exert on the central issues of young lives? Are they helpful, instructive, ennobling? Or have they furnished the design for that loose pattern of marriage and home life which we behold on all sides?
The ranks of the film champions have never been thin. Propaganda literature from Hollywood maintains that prison wardens, reform-school matrons, and social-service workers recognize the corrective influences of motion pictures and have found them conspicuous aids to purity and morality. Much of this could be true; for the screening of a clean, elevating plot with dramatic emphasis upon the elements of virtue can furnish greater incentive for good than the same story printed in book form. This remarkable invention, capable of almost immeasurable uplift, designed to provide enjoyable amusement and harmless entertainment, could be made to serve refining interests. That these high ends are not achieved, that even the instructive and correctional value of motion-pictures has been overemphasized, is clear from the summary of Herbert Blumer and Philip Hauser in Movies, Delinquency, and Crime, which says: "We have no instance in our materials where an individual was completely deterred from a delinquent or criminal career through the influences of motion-pictures."
To regain some of the confidence which its policies have sacrificed, the motion-picture industry (confronted by the attack on box-office receipts led by the Catholic Legion of Decency and similar Protestant protests) insists that it has featured films with the lesson that virtue is its own reward and that vice brings its own punishment. This, however, is often merely a sop. Several years ago the British Film Commission reported against pictures in which the temptation or "the description of the wrong takes five sixths of the time and the heroic triumph at the end is very short." "The temptation," the report continues, "leaves more impression on the mind than the short and speedy triumph at the end."
An analysis of popular films shatters the claim that the screen is a building factor in moral development. In forty typical pictures, featuring fifty-seven criminals and listing sixty-two specific crimes, only seven of these lawbreakers were arrested with the implication of punishment; four others were taken into the toils of the law, but subsequently released; four more, also apprehended, were permitted to escape; twenty-four were punished by without-the-law methods; fifteen of these so-called heroes went scot-free, their crimes ranging from house-breaking, through theft and embezzlement, to kidnapping and murder. In seventeen other cases the punishment was merely accidental.
In the face of this crime glorification it is difficult to understand the endorsement of the moral value in motion-pictures by Albert E. Wiggam, D. Sc., in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 27, 1933. Here he asks the question: "Have the movies tended to increase the seriousness of young people about marriage?" and answers: "I feel so, because never before did young people have a chance to study marriage except that of their own parents. Most people do not know that nearly all movies are tested on groups of average young people before being released and their suggestions are carefully considered. Young people see in the films the results of loyalty, sacrifice, and devotion." The combined talent of Hollywood's public-relations committees and publicity bureaus could not have spoken more enthusiastically than Dr. Wiggam — nor more completely misrepresented the tendency of the average motion picture.
If, then, we discount these exaggerations and agree that the cinema offers little incentive to a healthy appreciation of Christian marriage, this question presents itself: Is their moral influence negative, dangerous, destructive?
We are not left to find an answer in vague conjectures. During the last years film reactions have been tested and tabulated in a far-reaching investigation. Under the support of the Payne Fund and at the request of the Motion-picture Research Council a series of scientific studies were conducted from 1929 to 1933, the mere recording of which required nearly 3,000 printed pages. The contributors were well known educators, scientists, psychologists, sociologists, and the program, the first comprehensive survey of this kind ever undertaken, was inaugurated under the chairmanship of the late Dr. John Grier Hibben, then president of Princeton. Its findings are compiled with the cautious objectivity of scientific approach. As one reads the pages of the twelve studies, one cannot escape the conviction that the investigators are at pains to avoid any debatable conclusion.
Dr. Dale, examining 115 representative films, found that in 22 of the pictures illicit love was featured in the lives of 35 leading characters. In addition, he catalogued 54 murders, 71 deaths by violence, 59 cases of assault and battery, 30 hold-ups, and 21 kidnappings, together with other acts of violence, a total of 449 crimes committed or attempted in 115 pictures. He showed that in 49 of these pictures the bedroom is a prominent locale and that more than three quarters of all the pictures exhibit liquor situations. His study is but one of many parallel investigations which led to essentially the same findings. In spite of Mr. Hays's new code of morality, promulgated March 31, 1930, according to which the motion-pictures promised "to be good," the Churchman offers this record of 228 films released in the following year, which may be regarded as the first-fruits of this new moral code: 41 films with gangsters, racketeers, bandits, blackmailers, crooks, and gamblers; 27 films with prostitutes and mistresses; 65 films with illegal relations, marital infidelities, dishonorable proposals, suggestive talk and all kinds of immoral situations; 3 films in which the heroine gave up her virtue to "save" another.
THE MOTION PICTURE MASQUERADE OF MARRIAGE
The mosaic of marriage pieced together from America's feature films is often a hideous caricature. The premium which we have been accustomed to put on decency in social relations is often forgotten, and tribute is paid both to sophistication and to the evasion of time honored morality. The primary conception of marriage as a life-long union is laughed away. Divorce is frequent and facile. Transgressions of the moral code are pictured realistically when glorified sin parades in the luxury of its purple and gold while virtue limps in rags.
Even pagan conventions have been outraged. The New Life Association, a Chinese organization which seeks a moral rebirth for China's four hundred millions, has brought pressure to bear on the Nanking government in the effort to ban salacious American movies. Lo Kang, chief film censor, complains that Hollywood's scenario-writers present pictures of love and luxury that will damage the morals and the morale of his countrymen. And Sherwood Eddy (Russia Today, p. 172) summarizes the Soviet attitude toward pictures with the Hollywood trade-mark: "A few American films . . . are used in Russia for sheer amusement, but nine tenths of the American pictures would be excluded as too demoralizing or as inculcating false ideals regarding wealth, luxury, drinking, sex, and crime."
In spite of repeated promises to the contrary the film studios still cater too frequently to the morbid tastes of the American public and constantly whet the appetite of their audiences for presentations against which the common morality of men must rise up in protest. It is not accidental that in all the years of motion-picture history sex situations, sensual extravagances, and appeals to passion have been among the outstanding contributions of this industry, that the words "man," "love," and "woman" have been used more frequently in titles than any other. It is a deliberate pandering to immorality when the sales literature emanating from Hollywood and directed to the theater-owners throughout the country feature attacks on the intimate issues in marriage life like these:
Unmarried Wives. Here's a title that will probably bring in a good many without further exploitation.
Sackcloth and Scarlet. The woman who takes and the woman who gives.
Grounds for Divorce. Is "till death do us part" the bunk?
The Dark Swan. Has the woman the right to steal the intimate things the world denies her?
The Age of Innocence. A beautiful woman running amuck while all society suffers.
Mr. Paul G. Cressey, in Boys' Movies and City Streets, collaborating with Frederick M. Thrasher, discusses the catch-lines and illustrated posters that are flaunted in the foyers of typical motion-picture houses. I hesitate to print the details here. But Henry James Forman, in Our Movie-made Children, a book which I would put into every family with adolescents, concludes (p. 256): "The investigators believe that this type of advertising doubtless stimulates certain sexual and morbid interests. It is also a fact contributing to sexual precocity. They know whereof they speak, because they have cases on record of such positive mischief and unwholesome stimulation."
I submit one sample of a newspaper advertisement, the suggestions for which are furnished to the exhibitors by the publicity departments of the studios. Read the following bait and lure printed in the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald, advertising the film Divorce among Friends, and you have a sample, of the immorality that regulates the motion-picture industry. Against a background decorated by an undraped female figure we find these "rules" for "The New Marriage":
1. Don't let marriage interfere with pleasure.
2. Love and let love.
3. Fair exchange's no snobbery.
4. Marry in haste — divorce with pleasure.
5. Every man should take a wife—but be careful whose wife you take!
Below come these catch-phrase head-lines:
Wedding Bells. Off with the old love —
Teasing Bells. On with the new —
Divorce Bells. It's a Pleasure.
This smut has provoked a revolt even among notable figures in the film world. Welford Beaton, editor of the Hollywood Spectator (whose technical opinion is valued so highly that Cecil De Mille wrote the preface to his Know Your Movies), hurls this ultimatum at the producers: "The other day I was watching with keen appreciation of its many artistic qualities The Easiest Way, Constance Bennett's starring vehicle, produced by Metro. For the second time in my life there was an exact moment when the point of revulsion was reached. I had had enough of sex. I want no more of it in my screen entertainment. . . . The makers of our screen entertainment may continue to earn dividends by selling the immorality of women, but no longer can they sell it to me. I serve notice that every sex picture that I review from now on is going to be estimated for what it is — a filthy thing manufactured by business men."
Jurists and social workers among the delinquents have endorsed this indictment because of the sophistication of sin and the emotional debauches which many pictures show. Judge Frank Taylor of New York City charges: "At the movies the young see things they never should be allowed even to hear or think about. Under such conditions the downfall of young girls is not remote." Mrs. Margaret Eggleston, who has had more than twenty years' experience with adolescent girls in the city of Chicago, asserts: "One is almost staggered by what is seen when one looks into the movie, with its false ideas and its love-making of our young people. The thrilling pictures of scenes of love create an unwholesome atmosphere." Attorney Timothy D. Hurley, chairman of the Chicago Censorship Committee, told the aldermen of that city: "From the movies children of twelve years have learned more of birth, conception, and marriage than you and I knew when we were twenty. . . . Marriage is scoffed at and lampooned." Again, Dr. F. O. Holt, president of the Wisconsin Teachers' Association, warns: "The root of all present-day evil among younger people lies at the doorstep of the movie-house. Here begins, at too early an age, the 'love chase.'"
The most serious incrimination of the motion-pictures' attack on marriage and morality comes from the lips of a large group of young witnesses interrogated in the investigations of the Payne Committee. In Movies, Delinquency, and Crime Blumer and Hauser have reproduced the verbatim statements of young people in the various social strata from delinquency to campus life. The language is often such that it cannot be produced here; but the contents of these confessions show that in definite instances motion pictures are a stimulus to sex sins.
Altogether Dr. Blumer found that 50 per cent of the high-school students embraced in his investigation took their ideas of physical love from the picture theaters; that there was a widespread imitation of the screen stars, not only in dress and adornment, but also in what he calls "the love technique"; that, rightly or wrongly, inmates of corrective institutions attribute stimulated cravings to motion-picture performances; and that in general this "molding by movies" and the increase of movie-made criminals constitute one of the most acute problems in this generation.
In all fairness to the industry let it be clearly stated that particularly in the last two years noteworthy advances have been made. The work of the Better Films Councils in the larger cities has not been in vain, and the producers have learned that high artistry in clean pictures brings the richest returns. Yet P. S. Harrison, editor of the Harrison's Reports, reviewing the 410 feature plays released during the first eleven months of 1937, declared that "I have found that 154 of these were unsuitable for showing either to children or to adolescents or to both." Thus, 37 \A per cent of the films examined were "of the type that might put the wrong ideas into the minds of young folk."
The editor of the Bookman, commenting on screen morality, concludes an editorial with this pessimistic surrender: "The screen shows it all — all it dares — the shoddy and shabby habiliments of life as it is lived by the movie stars and directors. What is the answer? There is none."
This resignation to defeat is not altogether exaggerated. The newspapers, which should be the co guardians of public morality, have failed dismally in stemming the rush of immorality; for they have often sold their editorial independence for a pottage of motion picture advertisements. The State Legislatures and city councils, which are called upon to preserve the morals of their constituency, are sometimes so passive that no action hostile to the Hollywood interests is passed or even seriously contemplated. Churches have often assumed a close-the-eye, say-nothing policy. Many homes, where parents have the sacred charge of guarding the souls of their children, are altogether too indifferent to these vital issues.
There can be no hope of improvement without a real awakening to this assault on decency with its subsequent softening of American morals. This awakening must, first of all, be a matter of personal conviction and express itself in a rigid boycott-of every meretricious picture. The only argument that registers any effective force with the producers is a slump in box-office receipts. Motion Picture Herald, a trade paper devoted to the interests of theater-owners, stated that the national film attendance fell off about 12 per cent weekly during the first six weeks of the boycott which was waged by the Roman Catholic Church and the coordinated protest of Protestant groups. But a boycott will be only a flash in the pan unless it is systematized and perpetuated without compromise. Otherwise it will prove but a passing gesture, and the devil that has been banished will return with seven others, and we shall witness a more lurid reign of pornography than the worst we have yet beheld.
Young men and women of the Church whose lives have been deepened by religious training and spiritual conviction should have insight and discernment enough to remind themselves that they cannot expect any support for a clean, straightforward life from tainted contacts with the sins of the cinema. Because the responsibilities for tomorrow must be assumed largely by the rising generation in the Church of today, our appeal is directed particularly to the younger members of the Church and asks them, first of all, to pledge themselves with a high resolve never knowingly to attend any picture, which militates against Christian principle or character.
In order to give effectual power to this resolution, it may be necessary to spread information, so that young people are in a position to judge the character of the picture. Perhaps the time has come when the Church should consider establishing a board of appraisal where pictures could be previewed and classified and the resultant criticism made available in church-papers and special bulletins. The thoughtful supervision that we extend to printed material in our book reviews should certainly be extended to a form of entertainment which has a far wider scope and effect in the minds of the masses than the latest books. Unfortunately certain basic difficulties present themselves. A review of this kind may be interpreted as an official urge to attend; the supplementary pictures, usually not advertised, may be outrageous; and the cloak of a decent picture may be used to cover a hundred other indecencies. In the circles of my Church the Cresset has well blazed the trail with reviews of outstanding films.
The Church cannot escape its responsibilities in this respect. If we cry out against sins in general, we must specifically denounce unmoral pictures in particular; and to supplement these detailed warnings, church societies should adopt resolutions condemning all sex pictures and crime films. Copies of resolutions should be sent to the local press and to Mr. Hays's board. If it is objected that protests will be of no avail, we must remember that Christian character calls for protest regardless of consequences. Besides, an outright warning from 10,000, 50,000, or 100,000 organizations throughout the country could not remain unanswered.
Furthermore, we should not hesitate to join and endorse civic organizations dedicated to the removal of motion-picture filth. We have duties not only as Christians, but also as American citizens; and wherever organizations without objectionable features work for a sane, but effective censorship, the regulation of juvenile attendance, and other commendable objectives, Christians should lend the weight of their influence and cooperation. Our attitude must not be altogether negative. We ought to recognize the good films and register our approval, particularly through such organizations as the Better Films Bureaus. Through these agencies we can encourage the showing of better pictures and ban "bootleg" films, imported sex pictures, and other pernicious productions against which the industry itself protests.
It is a crucial issue, this commercialized immorality that sweeps almost unchallenged over the nation and that, even as these lines are written, is sowing the seeds of infidelity, marital inconstancy, and free love in the receptive soil of young American minds. To choke off its growth and to remove this menace from the very doors of the nation's homes, we need the cooperation and the support of our best minds, the watchful attitude of our legislatures, the enlisted zeal of Christian youth, and particularly the fervent prayers of Christian faith. Nothing short of this can check the rampant march to domestic debacle.