The freedom of the screen

PARE LORENTZ

The journalistic traditions are called on to aid the newsreel in its struggle to show us honest news

A potentially vigorous agency for the dissemination of news and the formation of public opinion, the newsreel, for ten years has been under the severe control of the movie owners. Through recurring financial and political warfare and despite technical improvements, the content of the newsreel has remained static. State occasions, arriving and departing rulers, fires, trained animal acts, beauty contest winners and newly born humans have been for years the only subject matter allotted to this medium.

At the present time there is a theatre devoted to the newsreel in New York City, where for twenty-five cents you can see fifty minutes of international snapshots. The Newsreel Theatre is packed night and day, although the patrons are furnished with nothing but an elaboration of the usual newsreel. This season they have seen hundreds of babies, they have had pretty speeches from as many precocious children, they have been shown a number of well staged funerals. They have even had a cheering report from the Naval Conference (although Tardieu and Briand whispered and giggled during Secretary Stimson's speech, the bad boys). They have seen fashion parades in Florida and heard street hawkers in Manchuria. They have heard beauty talks, and seen international sport champions. They have seen and heard everything, in other words, but news.

This emasculation of the newsreel is not the result of sheer lethargy. The movie producers, supported by the political sagacity of Will Hays, have not allowed news and opinion on the screen simply because it would mean trouble for them. The newsreel is merely a by-product of the nation's third industry, and no matter how popular it might become, the feature movie still brings in millions of dollars to the producers and they are not foolish enough to hurt their major business by indulging the public with a newsreel that contains news. One of the first bulls issued by Will Hays after he took over the job of clothing Hollywood in white robes of chastity, carried the announcement that the newsreel would never stoop to the earthy level of the newspaper, and that it would never carry scandal, politics or crime. He did not add that he had no objection to a little army and navy propaganda or frequent speeches from members of the administration, since after all, that is no more than patriotism. His major rule has been obeyed, and in obeying it the producers, from a purely material point of view, have shown good sense.

Several years before the advent of the "talkie", a supreme court had already decided that "the movies are not concerned with the dissemination of news or opinion". Recently a Pennsylvania court casually decided that the state censors had the right to censor dialogue as well as film. There are six state censor boards empowered by law to destroy part, or all, of any movie produced. There are twelve clubwomen sitting out in Hollywood under the protection of the Hays office carefully reporting each day on the temptations and sins of the national art. There is a National Board of Review "passing" on every movie produced. Can you imagine the highly moral indignation that would sweep from Capitol Hill to Los Angeles the day anti-prohibition speeches reached the screen? (Last year Miss Viets of Kansas deleted every drinking scene, every reference to that vile drug, whiskey, from films that entered her state.) Therefore Will Hays has set up no foolish arbitrary law. He is only protecting his business as any other sensible corporation director would do.

There are two probabilities which might destroy the present discipline of the newsreel. One has to do with a rumour leaking out of the late Fox war to the effect that William Randolph Hearst. has more than a casual interest in the Newsreel Theatre, and that in a near future he intends to establish a chain of Newsreel tabloids. This may be idle office gossip, but the rumour seems to come from reliable sources. The other probability that would do much to shake the Hollywood industry is that some newspaper syndicate may go one step farther than the New York Evening World, with its Universal movie tie-up, and actually put its headlines on the screen. The day unemployment, murder and crime reach the screen, that day the vacuous, insipid counterfeits of life which now supply our movie fare will be relegated to the past. In this connection three news stories admirably adapted to visual presentation come immediately to mind. First the "Hex" murder, in York, Pennsylvania. If you were already familiar with that beautiful rolling countryside, the neat farms of the burly German gentry, the hearty Rotarian spirit of the town, that trial must have appeared incredible and fantastic to you. Nevertheless, out of that sturdy community came a story that might have been written by Poe, a story from the Black Forest. It was so weird that no city editor would give it credence until William Bolitho, with his column in the New York World, forced it on the front page. One cameraman could have caught the entire scene; the rolling hills, the bewildered citizenry, the courtroom. It would have been a stark and convincing drama of reality.

The Black Duck affair was also news. Three unarmed men shot down by the Coast Guard who, "suffering from the cold" got drunk on the confiscated rum. A protest meeting in Boston Commons, a resolution sent to Hoover. Newsreel reporters would have had ample time to get there. A sound truck would have caught it all; the funerals of the adventurers, the protest meeting. Then there was that comic opera, the Scopes trial in Tennessee, that certainly should have been filmed and stored away for future generations. I can imagine no more humiliating and enlightening document for posterity than a complete record of that affair, the open-air courtroom, the speeches and the verbal battle of those perspiring and gallused orators, Bryan and Darrow.

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Yet things being as they are it would be absurd to expect a movie corporation to have filmed any of these news stories. If the Black Duck affair had been shot, Censor Viets of Kansas not only would have banned the newsreel, she would have marked the producer for even more careful cutting inthe future.

News is obtainable, the cameramen can get it, an eager audience is at hand to see and hear it, but the producer intrepid enough to give it to them has not yet appeared. However, it does not seem possible that the newsreel can remain forever devoid of life. Already a judge has ruled that a "talkie" confession constitutes legal evidence. This is only one step removed from the decision that the microphone deserves a place beside the reporter. That decision will, of course, give birth to some amazing scenes. Judges and jurors will suddenly become camera shy, and innumerable ladies of the "Peaches" Browning variety will work themselves into a lather to put on an act for the movies.

But if every murder has its thousands of columns, if a limited and curious public is allowed by law in the court room, there is no reason why the general public should not also have a chance to see the show. How much more effective than a re-write journalist's version would be a talkie record of the Harding cabinet dissolving in tears, of Darrow goading District Attorney Crowe! And if a police reporter can even now occasionally throw the spotlight on an unjust decision, imagine how much more effective a sound report of the affair would be. Solemn jurists may well deplore it as the breakdown of the court's dignity and scorn the presence of the lowly camera.

Those who dislike the content of the present day tabloid will shudder with horror at the thought of a tabloid movie theatre. Yet no theatre could hope to have an attendance to equal the circulation of a newspaper, and I have never heard of the desire expressed to suppress the New York Times simply because some cheap newspaper distorts the city room's daily list of crimes and misfortunes.

If Mr. Hearst who owns the 'International Newsreel,' or any other newspaper owner makes the first move to take the political and social hurdles now standing in the way of newsreels, the rest of the news services can join in the game, and there will be as much variation in the quality and tone of screen news as there is in the printed word. You can pay your money and take your choice.

The screen always has been hampered in its development by good citizens who laboured under two erroneous impressions: first that the movies are art, and secondly that all art should teach a moral. The fanatics have been given censorship privileges because the movie magnate was too busy playing for big stakes to keep it away from them. After all, when a feature film makes a half-million in one week why should he care about the Bill of Rights? But if a newspaper syndicate should produce a newsreel of its own it could fight censorship with a weapon it long has used: the freedom of the press. Before the Civil War, Horace Greeley was informed by the Post Office Department that he would have to discontinue sending his newspaper into Lynchburg, Virginia, because it contained abolitionist propaganda. Mr. Greeley's reply was brief and to the point. He said: "I refuse to do anything of the kind." This tradition today protects even the lowly yellow crime sheet. The intimidating threat of an uncensored tabloid with shrieking headlines hawked at the doors of a triple-censored fnovie has never been used by the film producers. But if a newspaper once supported its screen news with the battlecry of "the freedom of the press," it could put the fear of God into political watchdogs and do away with movie censorship as it now exists.

The producer or newspaper owner who first injects news of any kind into the newsreel will need the support of the press and a heavy battery of lawyers. There will be pressure from political and corporation high places and unscrupulous promoters may follow in his wake. But he will find more than an eager audience. And he will reap the profit and the glory of all the Horace Greeleys who have defied politicians, clerics and corporations to keep them from putting news into their papers. And if this is not sufficient, there still remain the romantic traditions of journalism which have it that news for news' sake is enough.