A Censorship of Plays.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18921, 9 February 1927, Page 8

A Censorship of Plays.

It was announced yesterday in a cable from New York that the Police Commissioner has threatened not merely to prosecute the producers of salacious playß, but to "arrest members of tho " caste and managers outright" if they stage productions offensive to public taste. Tho message did not say, however, how the Commissioner is going to keep in touch with public taste, and if he is to depend wholly on the judgment of bis patrolmen the remedy may be as offensive as the original evil. Even if we could be sure that the stage has become such a pestilential placo in New York as the cable messago suggested—there have been many disturbing reports, but the Puritans must not be forgotten—wholesale arrests are a different matter from wholesale prosecutions. It had generally been supposed also that the- " play jury " system was working well. We had been told that the juries were composed of representative men and women " carefully selected in the gross "panel, but assigned to specific plays "by lot"; that they first witnessed the play, then heard what the management had to say in its defence, then voted on it secretly without discussion; that they could condemn scenes only, or vote the whole production off the stage; and that if the offence was flagrant they could still order a prosecution. It was a very unusual exercise of authority by private citizens, but was asked for, so we were told, by the stage itself (the Actors' Association, tho Authors' League, the American Dramatists' Association, and the Association of Producing Managers) in order to avert such a dangerous alternative as a censorship by law. Leading newspapers approved of the proposal in advance and spoke enthusiastically of it after some months of experiment, so that if it has proved a failure since, the collapse must have coma suddenly. The -Veto York Times, for example, still regarded it some months ago as a "stringent and "efficacious" measure which was "vastly to tho credit of the actors' "and managers' intelligence," while tho New York World, which began by being critical, said that the juries had "satisfied the demand for regulation /'without trampling on any play that i" could be described as a work of art."

That indeed was the tone of most journals of standing until, perhaps, two or three months ago, and as neither the Governor nor the Mayor of New York is a Puritan, the probable explanation of the Police Commissioner's threat is that the juries, by passing l all plays of which the author and producer wen " evidently "sincere," have either deliberately or stupidly passed stuff the .sincerity of which was more evident than real. And the pity of the Munition id that if the stage cannot ot will not reform itself from within ii will have reform thrust on it lrom without--a stupid, tyrannical, legal eensorship which will sooner or i::tir IjecoiiiL* j»t>!i:ir:i! :i:_Wc!l. It might indet-il be better and safer--it would certainly be .Minplcr if the Police (.' imiiiis.-i'incr were allowed a perfectly live hand for about six month-, lie would make .-omt; blunders, but so long as hi- wctmis were allowid to appeal to the Courts, his blunders would be a good deal less vexatious than the blind pronouncements of a Hoard of bureaucrat-.