Imperial Valley press., 1926-06-30
SPEAKING OF MOVIES

SPEAhfNG or MOVIES
Yesterday the Press quoted George Jean Nathan
of the countrys leading dramatic writer's to the
effect that the theater today is in rotten condition.
He says the theaters are getting dirter and dirter
and more popular time goes on
Opposed to Nathan is the writer of a chain Of
newspapers whose ucubrations reach millions daily
man who though clever styst is obviousyta s0Qphst
and opportunist, trucker to the mob. He always
inveighs against any kind of stage censorship The
fact that his master and associate has heavy interests
in fmdom and that the powers of the flicker drama
advertise heavily with the chain of papers naturally
has some influence with that writer.
To check up these two commentators let
listen to the testimony of artist who has superior
either the legitimate stage the silver screen
George Beban. who in beautiful depctions of
ton as The Sign OF the Rose has moved millions to
tears and laughter. Beban is Californian born at
North Beach, San Francisco despite the fact that
hordes of theater goers are convinced he is Italian
perfect is his understanding of that romantic
In 1920 Beban made tour Of the United States
appealing from the footlights for support of clean
drama He told of how two years earlier he and nine
other producers of Hollywood had entered solemn
agreement that the pictures produced by each
should be placed before the public purely upon their
tstie merits without any mint OF IL saaeousness AT
produced and all but two had been complete box office
failures.
"Ill never produce dirty picture" said Beban
Il good truck driver and if it should become
necessary to choose between making livelihood by ap
pealing to the tnclean side of human driving
that truck a,; 5fn, III go back to the truck.
The pictures shown in Ell Centre and like cOnlmun-
tiles nearly always clean because the public of such
communities clean and wholesome at heart-Amerl-
But in the great foreign city of New York whence
most the producers the bulk of the population is
not American 1t is semi-Orenal, from southeastern
Europe and Asia. 1t demands filth the stage and
the and influences the whole country's
put. The ''Word of Pleasure a show that had
qualified in New York in 1916 stopped by
the police before it had finished its second week in the
American city of Chicago
AS long as it pays in the big cities to produce
clean pictures they will be produced and it is
nonsense to say that censors should take hand at
regulating them. Will Hays, according to Doug Fair
banks, is only fiXer that is, who has sufficient
pull Washington to keep off the Job. Ger
tain it is that there has been dnution of dirt in
the movies at least in the large cities, since Hays be-
czar Of the motion picture realm. Recently
couple of Angelenos in spirit of idle curiosity check
ed up several bill boards and of eight pictures
advertised thereon six had suggestive titles and all had
allusion to immortality in their text.
If we don't need censorship for that of thing
that children nightly, then don't need traf
fc cops, pure food laws any other sort of Cen
sorshp.' By censorship is not necessarily meant
small bore bgotry and intolerance, but elimination of
only that which is unWholesome And Incidentally
any patron Of the films who attends dirty moving
picture is by ndirecon driving the really capable
pleasing from the business, for artist worth
patronZrg has to resort to suggestvenesS to get his
stuff over