The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-04-24
JOHN COLLIER.

Member of Board of Censorship. Exclusive Service The Survey Press
 Bureau.)
 There are kinds and kinds of dra- matic censorship! If Mr. Frohman and MT. Belasco and Messrs. Klaw and Erlanger "got together and agreed on a minimum standard of dramatic pur- ity and proceeded to enforce their standard on the playrights who wrote their plays, this would not be called a censorship but a mutual protective society. Actually they don't need to do this, because Messrs. Frohman and Belasco and the other theatrical syn dicates have their plays written to or der in large measure, and so are Quate responsible for what is seen in their theatres
 New York has a censorship. It gov erns the 400 moving picture theatres of the Metropolis with a strong hand, yet it has no authority in law. It came about like the fanciful case of F'rohman and Belasco, and this is the story:
 Moving pictures are running riot through New York, as through the rest of America. In ten years they have grown from nothing to thousands. New York's moving picture theatres are crowded with 250,000 people on week days and half a million on Sun- days, and a third of these are children.
 
 -nent has proved able to compete with moving pictures in the crowded dis tricts, and the ''nickelodeon' has be- come a neighborhocd institution and is more good than bad already, at that. Social workers who have studied the conditions believe that the mechanical theatre has an immense future, and a great potentiality for good.
 But the 1ightning-express growth of moving pictures has brought varied evils in it's train. They thronged in to tenement houses and into any va cant store, and as they employ a high ly inflamible material in the celluloid film through which the picture is pro jected, there was obvious danger from fire. Sanitary requirements were dis regarded. police protection was 1gnor- pretty much a business of catch-as- catch-can.
 Then suddenly public opinion awoke; and this was not only true of New York but of all the country. Nom regulation became regulation rendered excessive through excessive zeal. The cheap theatres of the old type-the vaudeville and melodrama houses, and the syndicates that supply the one night stands-became aware that the moving picture, through competition, was threatening their very existence, and they reused themselves to a live ly opposition to the moving picture, in press and legislature. And almost S picture business, for years a "klon- dike'' of commercial profit. found it. self threatened with extinction. This is a matter of six months past; and in that time more than a hundred shows have been closed by the action of local authorities.
 So the ''nickelodeons'' learned what many bigger businesses have learned in late years, that public opinion is a dangerous thing when aroused. And they hurried to placate public opln- ion. Out of this came the censorship; but to explain the censorship other facts must be given.
 In the mushroom growth of the nov ing picture, not only in America but throughout the world, the emphasis has been laid rather on quantity than on quality of program. Great factor ies make the pictures, and they are scattered all the way from Chicago to Copenhagen, but all produce for the humblest 'nickelOdeOn" in the hum b1est quarters of the Ghetto. Far separated from the public demand, the factories have had merely to infer the demand, and they have fallen victims to a common if mistaken idea That idea. is,, that the public craveS low forms of entertainment; vulgarity and sensationalism.z All along. the factor ies have produced proportion of good pictures surprising in view of the gen. eral condition of the theatre, moral and artistic; but all along there has DSen d OI plCtuISS NuI5o>a bloody and offensive in various ways: and this sprinkling has given a bad odor to the business As for the nov ing picture shows themselves, they have been unorganized and have had to take what they could get; and to cap the climax, the manufacturers have formed a 'tcombine''. which has resulted in forcing the theatres to take virtually all that one or the other fac ton of manufacturers has seen fit to produce. These factions are the Mo ton Pictures Patent Company and the Independent Manufacturers" and they have split the trade into sections and each theatre must choose between one and the other. This circumstance has enslaved the theatres, and has en- slaved the public taste. It is the re- verse of Frohman's and Belasco's sit uation. The playrights dominate the theatrical managers completely
 So the theatres in New York have organized to defend themselves against the playrights. The result is the nov ing picture censorship.
 The organized exhibitors of the city