The Evening Star FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1937. MORALS AND THE STAGE.

Evening Star, Issue 22798, 5 November 1937, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1937. MORALS AND THE STAGE.

The forthcoming campaign to clean up the London stage, news of which was announced by the Bishop of London at a service convened by the Public Morality League, makes encouraging reading for the many people who have every reason to suspect that the need for such measures is very real. Only a small section of New Zealanders—the tourists and travellers—can speak of the modem London stage with firsthand authority, but some intimation that the tone now prevailing is not all that it should be filters through from time to time via motion pictures, gramophone records, and the lighter type of song. It would, of course, be absurd to slggest that in the past all Loudon theatres have been free from vulgarity and the production of “ leg shows.” Nevertheless, the hearty vulgarity of one or two items on the programme of the average old-time music hall, while by no means the ideal entertainment for the young and impressionable, was preferable to the insidious suggestiveness now encountered in this more sophisticated era. People laughed at the old music hall quip, but they were fully aware that it was wrong. Some theatre patrons now snigger at suggestiveness and accept it as a rightful and normal aspect of life’s lighter moments. A corresponding line of demarcation can be drawn between the former “ leg shows ” and the highly objectionable near-nudity kind of performance to be seen to-day The first was more a robust exhibition of physical exercises put to dance rhythm and music than anything else, and, though it could not be defended on cultural grounds, it was the soul of ingenuousness compared with the more recent productions, which have an almost diabolical power to debase inconspicuously the weaker element of

humanity. There is danger to the nation in the change Among British communities the menace is perhaps greater than is the case on the Continent, for somehow or other it has been so decreed that by nature AngloSaxons are unable to view these developments with the same light-hearted complacency as, say, the French, who have a wonderful knack of shrugging the shoulders and forgetting.

Obviously it is the elimination of this danger which is the chief objective of the Public Morality League. The movement deserves every success. There is no reason why it should not succeed. Not so very long ago the (Roman Catholic Church in America launched a campaign for the cleansing of motion pictures, and there is ample evidence to prove that the tone of the American production, from the strictly moral point of view', was greatly improved by this protest from the church, which was commendably practical, well organised, and free from a useless string of resolutions condemning out of hand the conduct of the rising generation. An Australian motion picture censor made the announcement within the last year that he had had to cut more material from British films than from the American offerings. This criticism may bo unpalatable to a British country, but it was affirmed and reaffirmed at the time as being the truth. The reasons given were that, although the American films were in many cases slangy and blatantly “ cheap,” they were to a lesser degree infested with the sophisticated suggestiveness that is the greatest evil of all. The same sort of censorship could well be applied to gramophone records, both American and British. In New Zealand’s House of Representatives yesterday a discussion took place on the quality of the radio programmes being transmitted by the Governmentcontrolled commercial stations. If the call for remedial steps is as urgent as some speakers maintain, it should be needless to add that the Government stations cannot be the only offenders. The point is, however, that the Government is expected to show a good example. New Zealand does not want unwholesome or even cheap and vulgar entertainment provided under its auspices.