THE MOVIE AND THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC RELATIONS
THE conviction expressed at the end of the preceding chapter that in the screen civilization has finally found a medium through which Man’s loftiest ideals, hopes, dreams, visions and good resolutions may find a way to fulfillment has been vouchsafed a new raison d’être of late, the importance of which can not be overrated. The existing reasons for the belief that the movie is to be a weapon wielded in the cause of righteousness against the powers of darkness were greatly increased in number and force when representatives of sixty national civic, educational, social and religious organizations functioning in this country met, at the invitation of Will H. Hays, in June of 1922, to discuss with him the problems of the motion picture industry and to devise ways and means for bringing about a better situation therein. The outcome of this gathering was the formation of the Committee on Public Relations, for “the establishment of a channel of intercommunication between the agencies instrumental in forming and interpreting public opinion and the motion picture industry.” This committee, coöperating with the organization known as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., is wielding the influence begotten of a combined membership of 60,000,000 people, scattered throughout the whole country, in behalf of
the increased use of motion pictures as a force for good citizenship and a factor in social benefit; for the development of more intelligent coöperation between the public and the motion picture industry; to aid the coöperative movement instituted between the National Education Association and the motion picture producers for the making of pedagogic films and employing them effectively in schools; to encourage the effort to advance the usefulness of motion pictures as an instrument of international amity by correctly portraying American life, ideals and opportunities in pictures sent abroad and by properly depicting foreigners and foreign scenes in pictures presented here; to further, in general, all constructive methods for bringing about a sympathetic interest in the attainment and maintenance of high standards of art, entertainment, education and morals in motion pictures.
Not the least important of the appendices to be found at the end of this book is that which gives a list of the national organizations composing this Committee on Public Relations. It is in effect a record of a great mobilization of the uplifting agencies of the nation on the side of righteousness and progress in a struggle between good and evil for control of the newest and most powerful of the vehicles at man’s disposal for influencing his fellowman. As has been demonstrated in another chapter, the screen has become the most effective and wide-reaching of all the media yet devised by human ingenuity for influencing the heart, mind and soul of the race. Realizing this, the organizations referred to above (listed with approximate fullness in the appendix), representing more than half the entire population of the United States, have thrown the weight of their enormous influence upon the side of those builders of a better civilization who are striving to make the motion picture more worthy of the important place it has so recently assumed in the life of the world. Never before in the history of the race has such a unification of effort by the great altruistic organizations of a nation been made in times of peace, and for the purposes of peace, as that which was begun a year and a half ago by the Committee on Public Relations. What the screen could do to improve the social order was recognized at the very moment it was seen what the social order could do to improve the screen—and, lo, there came about an alliance that, to those who grasped its full significance, stood revealed as one of the greatest forward steps civilization has ever taken. The organized powers of uplift and enlightenment had seen that a new, untried, undisciplined force, pregnant of both good and evil, had come into the world and they had rallied to its assistance at the psychological moment, to the end that the future of the screen, and therefore of the human race itself, might present a more satisfactory aspect than it has hitherto exhibited.
Says Mr. Jason S. Joy, Executive Secretary of the Committee on Public Relations:
I am often asked the following three progressive questions—First, why are the organizations affiliated with the Committee on Public Relations interested in the motion picture? Second, why are they working with the motion picture people rather than against them? Third, why do they coöperate with the so-called “old-line” companies rather than exclusively with independent companies?
I am able to answer these questions to my own satisfaction. Admitting that motion pictures exercise a powerful influence for good or evil, it is to the selfish interests of these organizations to make motion pictures an influence for good. As to the second query, let me say that constructive coöperation is capable of greater results than destructive criticism, particularly when it is accompanied by a willingness to privately but fearlessly condemn evil practices when they are found to exist. It seems to me wholly foolish and futile to cry out against any practice unless at the same time you are able to suggest a solution or at least an attempt at a solution of the problem. I am convinced that one of the most harmful habits of our day is the one which has been adopted by certain amateur and professional reformers who with half truths loudly condemn the motion picture industry and everybody connected with it. My answer to the third query is this: The Committee on Public Relations is working with the so-called “old-line” companies because these companies have demonstrated their ability to make the kind of pictures the public has hitherto demanded and have, therefore, manifested their knowledge of the technique and business methods of making pictures; because, also, they have demonstrated and expressed their desire to attain the ends for which the Committee is working, and because they have asked the Committee to coöperate with them, and are coöperating with the Committee. Within parenthesis, let me say, that there pass by me at the cross-roads where I sit no end of Sir Galahads rushing forth to conquer the world. These persons are usually well-equipped with ideals and enthusiasm and often with money, but because they lack the technical ability which results from long experience they come back with little to show for their efforts except a trail of broken promises, unpaid debts, and lost ideals. Our best and only hope for the future lies with the well established companies who have proved their ability in their profession.
The human race moves forward and upward through the efforts of those who know how to perform the miracle of hitching their wagon to a star while, at the same time, they keep their feet upon the earth. Taking at random a few of the sixty organizations comprising the Committee on Public Relations we come upon such sharply contrasted bodies as the Society of Colonial Dames and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs; the Academy of Political Science and the Salvation Army; the Girls Friendly Society and the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World; The National Council of Catholic Women and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association; the American Federation of Labor and the Boy Scouts of America, etc. Now all these societies, fraternities, sororities, or whatsoever they may be, helping by their membership to make up the 60,000,000 Americans who have come officially to the support of the motion picture industry, have, each and every one of them, reached a position of power and success by wasting no time in endeavoring futilely to put salt on the tail of the millennium but by combining loyalty to high ideals with practical efficiency in dealing with this world as it manifests itself to the worker who dreams and the dreamer who works. In other words, our great altruistic organizations discovered at the outset of their respective careers that the ideal and the practical are necessary to each other but, to produce results, must plan how to make constant compromises with each other for the sake of actual progress.
The motion picture producers have gone through, as an organization, the same experience that has come to the Colonial Dames, the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts, or any one of the organizations holding membership on the Committee of Public Relations. They have learned by experiment that progress is made possible only through a working adjustment between idealism and realism. If idealism is allowed to become rainbow-chasing, or realism to become revolting, the balance that assures a steady movement in the right direction is destroyed and disaster results. Every earthly institution that survives has been forced to fight its way to permanency against the disintegrating influence of its own extremists, its ultra-conservatives and ultra-radicals. In the long run, it is the middle of the road that leads nations and institutions into safe environments.
The great question at issue in connection with the motion picture industry, as it is with any given line of human endeavor, is this: Is its course upward or downward, will its future be free from the shortcomings of its past? Let me say here, very frankly, that had I not felt months ago that an affirmative answer to these queries was not merely justified but had been made imperative by facts and figures this book would never have been written. But as the work has progressed, and I have been obliged to look at the motion picture field through both a telescope and a microscope, I have been convinced by an overwhelming mass of evidence that the general trend of the newest of the arts is, in spite of all that I have said about its youthful indiscretions, in the right direction.
It can never attain perfection—nothing that is man-made can hope to do that. But the movie, whatever may be said against it by its detractors, is constantly making progress toward a commanding position where, it is conceivable, it may eventually confer upon mankind the inestimable boon of which the author, as stated in the first chapter of this book, has had the audacity to dream. And be it said just here that if the full dynamics of the screen as a world-civilizer are completely developed, eventually both producers and public will owe a great debt of gratitude to the Committee on Public Relations.