The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1921-05-06
Cleaner Pictures.

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the Lions Club the Sunday school and
the Young Peoples societies of Union
City, at each of the churches last
Sunday, Endorsed the movement for
cleaner moving pictures in Union
City and adopted resolutions asking
cooperation in the movement. A
general meeting of these bodies was
arranged to be held this week to
unite in the campaign for~better pic
lures.
In view of this movement no doubt
the press needs to render a more dis
eliminating and intelligent service.
No doubt also that the papers all over
the country have found it harder to
do their duty because of the fact that
the picture managers have been very
liberal advertising patrons. Still it
is very important matter.
Chief of the reasons why it is inn
portant to have clean pictures is that
the screen is a very much larger and
a more universal public educator
than any other medium outside of
the public school system. Another
reason is also very vital, and that is
the fact that young women are en-
gagged as screen stars almost exclu-
sively, the object being to capitalize
their physical charms as a revenue
producer equal or greater perhaps
than any real acting talent they may
display So. the producers, in the
scrimmage to Guido competitors, have
resorted to these questionable meth
DDS for patronage They have in
large measure seemingly regarded the
modesty and virtue of these young
women as a very insignificant mat
ter, and in this they have also shat
tered the confidence of the public and
fed the minds of millions of patrons,
especially the children, with the seed
or poison.
We have in the press reports last
week the latest sensation in film
dom. This is the deposition of an
actress at Fort Lee, N. j., who stated
that Girls were compelled to pose
in the nude and were handled in ia
miliar fashion by directors who were
curious about their physical charms"
The deposition told of a 17-year-
old girl who appeared for work at
the studio and was handed the pho
fograph of naked woman, mean
while being told that she could have
a place If she posed like that. The
complainant in the suit stated that
SIT was necessary some time to make
certain If woman had good form
where bold picture was to be
made"
1t is hard to believe that the state
ments are true, but they are records
as proof in a breach of contract suit.
IL they are true we want to offer
like this: First, the pic
ture service corporations who are re-
sponsible should be forcibly driven
out of the State; second the manager |
or director who demands the appli-
cants to undergo these tests should |
be treated by law as a criminal, and |
il there is no law to convict him he |
should be the victim of Judge Lynch. |
1t is dirty, rotten specimen of hui
mainly that will engage in this
work. He is moral leper, contami
mated with the blood of filth and her.
editary disease. He is impervious to
a single honest impulse He is in or
binary English a libertine, miser
able yellow cur, a thing utterly lack
ing in moral perception, loathsome
and despicable. AS one of the former
most notable writer's of Tennessee
)nce said of his like, he is creeping
)east from the mud stills of hell.
If vice and obscenity survive in
he universal service of moving pic
ures the whole fabric of human civ
lization will be endangered. We had
hese columns to say a few weeks
lgo that our women of to-day are as
,ure as ever before. We believe this,
nut the tendency to make common
display of the feminine form and to
rag sex into the quagmire will ulti-
nately dethrone the purity of the
ex, and when this comes about no I
tatesman nor league of statesmen
r nations can save the world Then
Till come fire and birthstone and the /,