“CLEANED UP”

Southland Times, Issue 19656, 5 October 1922, Page 7

“CLEANED UP”

MOVIE BUSINESS IN AMERICA. “I was in Los Angeles last year, and spent a good deal of time at. Hollywood, where is centred the picture-making business. Things were a bit slumpy then, owing to over-production, but in part to recent scandals connected with the private fives of those in the business.” So said Mr J. O'Donoghue, government director for the United Artists Ltd. in Aus"Thai sort of thing has cropped up in most professions from time to time, but it has been bitter medicine to the movie industry, which has suffered considerably. But what was the position ? This was a business which grew with such miraculous speed that girls with pretty faces who had been scraping along in life suddenly found themselves with iortunes, and' could not. keep their heads. But all that, sort of thing has been scotched. The men with big capital at stake have insisted on the whole industry being cleaned up morally, and it will go hard with those who break loose. “The picture business is no longer a plaything—it is the third largest industry in the Stamps. Solid commercial men have put their money into it, and are not going to see it evaporate for any silly 'nonsense on the part of the people they pay. They have appointed Mr Hayes, late PostmasterGeneral for the States, at an enormous salary, to attend to this sort cf thing thoroughly, and what he says goes. “You can see the trend already in the good pictures that are coming along—pictures based on splendid books and dramas, eliminating the nasty and vicious in pictures. Commercial men of excellent standing are not only overlooking productions, but they are concerning themselves with the marketing of the films, and everywhere in America a bettdt tone and higher aim is noticeable. “Exhibitors all over the world are now aware that a nasty or suggestive picture is no good to them in the long run. It might pull good business for a week, but what they have made over and above that week will be mere than lost by the offence given to steady patrons. Pictures are now a family trade—they have to be clean and sweet enough to interest father and mother and the family—the appeal must be universal.”