Celluloid Censorship

Britain's Will H. Hays is a distinguished old peer named William George Tyrrell. Like his U. S. counterpart, Baron Tyrrell of Avon, onetime British Ambassador to France, has no governmental standing but, as salaried ($10,000) president of the Board of Film Censors, a creation of the British film industry, he takes public responsibility for that organization's acts. Actual work he leaves mostly to a professional Cato, one J. Brooke Wilkinson, who works on the principle that any footage controversial enough to ruffle the customary calm of a cinema audience should be deleted.

Censor Wilkinson has had his troubles with the March of Time from its inception. Overruling the March of Time's claim that, as journalism in celluloid, it must be as free to handle controversial news as the Press, Watchdog Wilkinson has on various occasions removed from the British March of Time shots of German Nazis persecuting Jews, members of the French People's Front demonstrating against the Fascist Croix de Feu.

Last week Censor Wilkinson was shown the March of Time's eighth British edition. What chiefly caught his attention were the 651 feet which traced the course of His Majesty's Government's attempt to keep Italy out of Ethiopia and uphold the League of Nations as an instrument for international peace. Censor Wilkinson did not object to a shot of the British Home Fleet entering the Mediterranean, but he did object to shots of British troopships going to the same place and to the Voice of Time's announcement: "British troops follow the fleet to the garrisons of Malta and Egypt. There is even talk of closing the Suez Canal." Censor Wilkinson found no fault with a long sequence depicting the manner in which the League of Nations Union had polled more people than had ever voted for a British party, to discover that 11,000,000 were for the League, 10,000,000 were in favor of supporting its will by economic sanctions and 6,800,000 were willing to impose military sanctions. But the Voice of Time was silenced when it declaimed : "This tremendous new political fact sends England's Prime Minister into speedy consultation with his Cabinet." In all, Censor Wilkinson deleted 61 ft. from the reel. Because he considered that the work of his League of Nations Union had been deliberately minimized to spare the feelings of the Baldwin Cabinet, benign old Viscount Cecil of Chelwood promptly rose to complain: "It seems to me utterly ridiculous! Everything that has happened in the past two months has been recorded in the Press, and I fail to see why it should not be shown in the films." Always glad of a chance to blast any kind of censor ship, London editors found themselves in agreement with Viscount Cecil. "This time the film censorship has really passed all bounds," cried the Daily Herald. "Such dictatorship possesses a quality which can only be described as impertinence." "The cuts are obviously designed to save the Government's face," agreed the Leftist Daily Worker. "Is the Censor's job that of self-appointed protector of the Cabinet?" The liberal News Chronicle reproduced photographs from the film, cried: "CENSOR HAS DELETED WHAT THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS!" Less agitated was the arch-conservative Morning Post, whose editor had evidently not seen the film : "Two reservations occur to the impartial mind. First, any film out of America dealing with British policy and action is likely to be colored with a strong anti-British twist, for in the United States this country is always in the wrong. Secondly, peace is questionably served by pictures which make a crude appeal not to any moral instinct, but to physical fear."

The Times listed the Censor's changes, passed solemn judgment: "Most impartial critics will agree the Censor has improved the film."

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