GAME OF “DIVORCES”

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 April 1937, Page 8

GAME OF “DIVORCES”

SCENE IN REVUE CRITICISED. LONDON, March 18. i \ Plays dealing with divorce and • gangster films were criticised at a i meeting of the London Diocesan ■ Council for Preventive and. Rescue Work, held at the Mansion . House , yesterday. The Lord Mayor of Lon- : don (Sir George Broadbridge) pre- . sided. Miss Naomi Whelpton, formerly ' moral welfare worker at Brighton, . said: “We are living in a time of . moral chaos. It is l possible this very afternoon to take children to a ■ matinee at a London theatre where ’ they will see depicted a nursery , with supposed children playing a /game which is called ‘Divorces.’ They , are squabbling over which of them shall take the part of the co-respond-ent. Think of the effect on the minds of the children in the audience. Do you not think it natural that they should ask, ‘What is a corespondent?’ ” Rev. Father George Potter, Warden of Canceller Memorial Hostel for Homeless and Probation Boys, said he had been working among the very poor in South London for 25 years, and knew from experience the bad effect of the films. “While I was at church one Sunday evening six of my boys went round. breaking into offices, wearing masks and rubber gloves, ripping the backs off safes — boys of 15 and 16 —and I know where they picked it up. I want it to be realised that the chief means of education in these matters is the cinema, and that many children in the poorest districts go to the pictures three or four times a week.” The scene to which Miss Whelpton referred is in the Cochran revue “Home and Beauty” at the Adelphi.