A
Who Is Responsible
for the
Evils of the Motion Picture ?
BY HIS EXCELLENCY
THE MOST REV. JAMES E. CASSIDY, D.D., LL.D.
APOSTOLIC
ADMINISTRATOR
DIOCESE OF FALL RIVER, MASS.
Being largely an affirmation and re-writing of
Bishop Cantwell's Report on the
Motion Picture Industry.
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LENT
H I S is Lent, the time set apart by Holy
Church for the consideration (1) of
what the Son of God has suffered for
us; (2) of the worth of the soul for
which Christ so suffered; (3) of the
necessity of saving the soul through the practice of
virtue and the doing of penance for offending God.
"Do penance or you shall all likewise perish"
(St. Luke: Chap. 13-3). Lent is therefore a time
for self-examination, for self-condemnation, for a
strengthening of ourselves in good and for resolving
to forsake and to fight against evil. In other words,
Lent is a cleansing time, is a correcting time, is a
time for seeking out what is good and discerning
what is evil, for embracing virtue and forsaking and
condemning vice.
What time, then, better than Lent for a study
of the things that are contradictory to the Cross,
that are condemnatory of Christ, t h a t destroy
Love of God and true love of neighbor, that lead
away from Heaven and lead directly toward Hell?
For the prudent ship-master not only desires to
know where are the deep waters and fair winds,
but he is even more anxious to chart out and thus
avoid the rocks, the shoals, the turbulent waters
that would destroy him and his bark and all things
for which he is responsible. And of the rocks and
shoals and turbulent waters that wreck, engulf and
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submerge souls today outstanding is the unmoral,
unclean and licentious moving "Talkie."
TALKIES
One of the momentous questions that confront
God's church and children at this Lenten time is:
"How shall we put an end to the production and
portraying of the filthy pictures that are today
literally debauching the old and young of our
country?"
The old non-talking motion-picture sinned
chiefly because of its vulgarity; frequently it offended by suggestiveness; some few were plainly vile.
But now comes the "Talkie" influencing the
onlooker — not only by sight but by animated
sound. As a result, in the hands of immoral producers and writers, the cinema has been made the
instrument for the telling of tales, the portraying
of scenes previously heard or seen only in barnyard,
bar-room or brothel.
Thus, in a large part, these "Talkies" have
become the school of immodesty, the college of
impurity, the university of sexual licentiousness.
They teach a philosophy of life which in most instances, is sinister, insidious, destructive, to every
fine instinct of the human mind and soul.
Ninety per cent of all motion pictures made in
the United States are made in Hollywood. And the
most competent authority in Hollywood today is
responsible for the statement that many of the
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talking pictures made there "teach the philosophy
that marriage, the purity of women, and the sanctity of the home, are old-fashioned sentimentalities,
unworthy of serious consideration by intelligent
'Americans.' " These "Talkies" discuss morals,
divorce, free-love, race-suicide, unborn children,
sexual relations outside marriage, the relation of
sex to religion, marriage and its effect upon "the
freedom of women". Is it necessary to argue the
effect of all this upon the witnessing and hearing
public? There are, indeed, some few good "Talkies"
But it would seem that a too large part of the
motion-picture industry has set itself to the task of
competing in the production of filth. Sin is
condoned, virtue sneered and scoffed at; immorality is preached, by photography and dialogue and
salacious details; smutty talk, obscene wit and
suggestion, offensive situations, are the order of the
day and of the night. Judge America's life from
these american screen presentations and one would
be obliged to believe that uncleanliness is a common
custom, that seduction, rape, prostitution, fornication, adultery, are the common furnishings of american homes; that a large part of american woman
is "on sale"—"on call"—"fancy women", whenever
or wherever lust replaces love.
Twenty-five per cent of all pictures made in
Hollywood, when they are not glorifying the harlot
are heroeizing her gangster "boy friend" or bringing them both on the screen at once in unholy
union. Out of this infamous junction comes lecher5
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ousness, licentiousness, violence and crime. The
female libertine, the public prostitute, the loungelizard, the panderer, the gangster, and the gunman,—such are the heroes of the cinema's "Hall of
Fame".
WHO IS
RESPONSIBLE?
In this Lenten time of intro-spection let us ask,
and try to answer the question:—"Who is responsible for this murky torrent of vileness, this portrayal of mental and moral and social and civic depravity, that in its wholesale debauchery is slushed,
like the lava stream of an erupting volcano, daily
and nightly, over the souls of the youthful and
aged of the land?" One might easily believe it to
be an all-world attempt to overthrow and destroy
the ideals and standards of Christ and Christianity.
Who is responsible?
Let us put the blame where it belongs. The
Jews? Yes and No. It is true that of the eight large
companies in Hollywood which produce ninety per
cent of all the pictures made in the United States,
only one company is definitely free in its management and direction from Jewish influence. Jewish
executives are the responsible men in ninety per
cent of all Hollywood studios and they are the ones
who have the final word in all scenarios before the
production is launched. Had they any desire to do
so, clearly, they could shut the flood-gates of this
turbid stream, they could cork the volcano which,
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with its immoral lava-flow, is morally suffocating
millions of God's children. But back of these Jewish executives or rather along side of them, is
grouped an assembly of so-called "writers" who
are the real creators of this new school of vice: The
executives who execute; the directors who direct;
the writers who write; and this latter class, the
writers, is largely the brood that like the assembled
starlings infesting public buildings and places, soil
the whole earth with their foulness. These are largely the authors of licentious sex-books, first sellers
amongst the salacious. Seventy-five per cent of
them are pagans. They are men and women who
care nothing for decency, good-taste, refinement,
morality, and inner-or outer-righteousness, who
are living lives of infidelity and worse, to whom
religion is a mockery and spiritual value an obscenity! It has been recently alleged that "All the
worth-while literary talent in the world hovers
near Hollywood". And this because the Hollywood
group are the masters and mistresses of literary
cynicism, obscenity and immoral slush! Our
motion-picture producers, then, be they what they
may, have gathered around them this sort of
panderers, have welcomed them, purchased their
vileness for production and justify themselves by
saying "That's what the public wants,—filth, unadulterated and unmasked".
Thus does the producer and writer answer the
question "Who is responsible?" by saying: "The
public is responsible." Is this the answer? If so,
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what a reflection upon the methods and results of
american life and training! After a hundred and
fifty years of education, free, untrammelled, unrestrained, 100,000,000 "Talkies" attendants a
week, and twenty-five per cent of them, 25,000,000,
crowding and jostling at the movie-doors to lap up
the slushings of the world's immoral sewerages—to
sniff in the stifling vapors of the stench-giving
pig-sty, to be thrilled and exalted with the violence
of the rapist and the strategy of the killer! For
twenty-five per cent, of all pictures made in
Hollywood in the course of a year are definitely
bad.
THE
AUDIENCE
Are you one of these twenty-five million whom
the immoral producers and pagan writers say will
be satisfied with nothing else than filth and evil?
When a lewd poster displayed at the door
proclaims that within is staged or screened a visual
and verbal House of Ill-fame, a school of immodesty, a college of impurity, a university of vice,
depravity and violence, are you seen standing or
sitting around awaiting your turn at this table of
Herods, at this feast of foulness?
And when your children clamor for the money
to buy a ticket to the "vestibule of perdition" do
you take the trouble to find out whether the
"Talkie" is clean or unclean? Or do you do as the
movie picture producers asserted last week at a
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New York hearing—do you take your children to
the harmless show on one side of the street and
then hurry across to feast on foulness in the
"Talkie" on the other side? If you so do, then you,
more than producers and writers, you Catholic
men and women, old and young, you more than
Jewish executives and pagan authors, you are
responsible!
If these doors of degradation are to be shut
then, hear ye well and heed! They must be shut
from the outside, they never will be locked from
the inside while the nickels and the dimes and the
quarters and the halves continue to roll in from the
outside. Don't depend on the "Hay's Moral Code".
It is as dead as the morality of the movie. Don't
depend on Federal or State censorship. The sifting screen will be too coarse or too often lifted,
the pruning knife will be too often dulled or safely
sheathed.
Don't depend on the aroused conscience of the
producer—you cannot expect men who have within themselves no appreciation of decency or cleanliness to be concerned with the cleanliness or
decency or wholesomeness of what they produce
for others, provided it be profitable.
Don't depend upon the writers. Their moral
antennae are attuned to the mouthings of the
beach-comber and the gutter-girl.
It is only when the pocket-books, the box-receipts
of the local theaters suffer that there will be some
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hope of putting an end to the filthy pictures that
are debauching, particularly, the youth of the
country. And it is you, the patrons, that hold the
pocket-books on the outside that fill the pocketbooks on the inside. Will you make it: "Clean-up
or shut-up?"
Certain it is that we face no easy task to kill
this hydra-headed thing that is injecting its poisonous venom into our country's blood-stream.
Some action, even though it be of heroic proportions must be taken if we are to save the youth of
America from a debauchery and pollution the like
of which the world has never seen before. In vain
shall we rear our great educational institutions,
if the basic character of our growing youth is prostituted and befouled by the cinema. One hour spent
by the youth in the darkness of a 'cinema palace',
intent on the unfolding of an evil act or narrative,
can nullify years of careful training on the part of
church, school and home. Drastic efforts must be
made at once if we are to avoid universal corruption and national disaster.
N . I . M.
An industrial crusade is on: It has as its insignia
a Blue Eagle and an N.R.A.
But for this moral crusade against the iniquities of the "Talkies" we need no Blue Eagle, significative of strength! We need something significative of holiness and of cleanliness and of chastity,
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lest these virtues perish from the land; something
significative of the Holy Spirit of God—a White
Dove and over it written N.I.M. (No Immoral
Movies) and subscribed by every Catholic in the
land—"We Do Our P a r t . "
Lifting aloft this emblem we will be joined,
shoulder to shoulder and soul to soul, by myriads
of other Christian men and women, yea, by multitudes of non-Christian pure-minded and cleanhearted people, who will gladly join us in this
crusade to dis-infect and purify and renovate the
Motion Picture Industry, and put an end to the
present-day productions of pornography and
putridity.
In the name of the Christ whose Crucifixion we
now commemorate, in the name of His earthly
Vicar whose unworthy Administrator I am, in
behalf of the sanctity and salvation of the souls of
the present and future generation, for the glory
of God and the safety of country, I beg you to
stand with me in this "No Immoral Movies" movement and write with me under the White Dove
"We Do Our P a r t . "
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