Booklet for International DVD
Intro: A Night to Remember….
On September 14, 1954, Marilyn Monroe made pin-up history when a wind machine lifted her skirts over a subway grate in front of hundreds of cameras and thousands of people. The setting was Lexington Avenue, New York City. The time was one o’clock in the morning. The most famous newlywed in America, 28-year-old Marilyn Monroe, was in place as “The Girl” for a scene where the wind current from an underground subway lifts the sheer white skirt of her halter dress in front of an admiring “Richard Sherman” (played by actor Tom Ewell). Hordes of fans and photographers, alerted by Fox’s efficient publicity department, jostled to get a view of the beautiful star. As director Billy Wilder called for take after take, the crowds cheered and hollered. Marilyn repeatedly missed her lines.
The Girl: Oh, do you feel the breeze from the subway. Isn’t it delicious?
Richard: Sort of cools the ankles, doesn’t it?
From the sidelines, a grim-faced Joe DiMaggio watched his new wife light up under the enthusiasm of the gawkers. He returned to Los Angeles the very next day. Within weeks, their marriage was over. The scenes shot that night never made it into the final cut because of the crowd noise. Wilder built an exact replica of the setting at the Fox lot and Marilyn was forced to do another forty retakes. By the time the censors finished reviewing that footage, audiences saw far less than the crowds on Lexington Avenue. But what remained was a moment frozen in time, one of the most celebrated and beloved scenes in all of cinematic history. The film was The Seven Year Itch….
“The Girl”
Marilyn Monroe was the quintessential Hollywood star: she had gorgeous looks, abundant charm, and a sparkling wit. She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California. Norma’s early years were never easy: she was constantly being bounced between orphanages and various friends as her mother increasingly became unable to care for her due to mental illness. Norma was married at the age of 16, but the marriage dissolved when husband Jim Dougherty asked her to choose between her newly discovered talent posing for pictures and him. She filed for divorce. On August 24, 1946, at the age of 20, the gamble paid off when she was signed by 20th Century Fox in her first movie contract. Casting director and former actor Ben Lyon helped her choose her new screen name, but unfortunately, she continued to struggle for years in bit roles. Not until her performance in the Marx Brothers’ film Love Happy (July 1949) did she receive some real attention from fans and the press, and interest in Marilyn quickly spread from there. Films that followed included All About Eve, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Niagara, and How to Marry a Millionaire. Her roles embodied every quality of sensuality Hollywood could conceive (and get past the censors) and audiences just couldn’t get enough. By her 26th birthday, her handprints were being immortalized in cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
Marilyn met her second husband, former Yankees Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio, on a blind date in early 1952. They couldn’t have been more opposite: her total disinterest in sports was only matched by his apathy towards show business. Bu they were married on January 14, 1953 at San Francisco City Hall in an event that was hailed as a fairy tale union between two of America’s most-watched sweethearts. During their honeymoon in Japan, crowds there greeted her with the name “Mon-chan” (sweet little girl).
In June 1954, Fox revised Marilyn’s contract for a seven-year term, raising her pay to $100,000 per picture. Her previous suspension for not showing up for work on a film called Pink Tights (a role she later said was “the cheapest character I had ever read in a script”) was ended when she agreed to do There’s No Business Like Show Business, but she also made the studio promise that she could star in the film version of The Seven Year Itch. The role of the sultry, sexy, naïve upstairs neighbor seemed tailor-made for her.
Filming began on September 1st, 1954, but after the filming of the infamous subway scene, Marilyn’s marriage to DiMaggio quickly crumbled. On October 6th, 1954, Marilyn and her attorney announced their separation. The emotional stress of the relationship plus the fact that she had gone directly from There’s No Business Like Show Business to The Seven Year Itch with no rehearsal time and no break between projects made her chronically late and scattered. It was estimated that the film ran three weeks late and cost $1.8 million more due to Marilyn’s delays, but director Billy Wilder was still satisfied that her performance would make it all worthwhile. In 1956, he told Saturday Evening Post reporter Pete Martin, “She has what I call flesh impact. It’s very rare…Such girls have flesh which photographs like flesh. You feel you can reach out and touch it.”
And despite the toll the film took on her personal life, it seemed that Marilyn enjoyed making the movie, too. According to playwright George Axelrod, at the end of the shoot Marilyn said, “Billy’s a wonderful director. I want him to direct me again. But he’s doing the Lindbergh story next. And he won’t let me play Lindbergh.” Marilyn and Billy Wilder did work again, however, and their second collaboration was in one of the greatest comedies of all time, Some Like It Hot (1959).
The phenomenal success of The Seven Year Itch made Marilyn the most powerful star in Hollywood shortly after its release, and she demanded approval over future scripts and directors. She continued to become a worldwide sensation and took on roles that she felt would show that she had real dramatic range as an actress. Unfortunately, Marilyn passed away on August 4, 1962. Until September 1982, Joe DiMaggio had six red roses delivered three times a week to Marilyn’s gravesite. After twenty years he had the deliveries stopped because he felt that the money could be put to better use at the children’s charities Marilyn had supported.
Marilyn Monroe’s unforgettable presence lives on for millions: she is still the ultimate sex symbol, a goddess of the silver screen.
Tom Ewell
Born in Kentucky in 1909 as S. Yewell Tompkins, Tom Ewell studied acting at the University of Wisconsin and made his Broadway debut in 1934. (IMDB and Cunningham, p. 150). Before appearing in the film of The Seven Year Itch, he portrayed Richard Sherman 750 times on stage—performances that earned him the 1953 Tony Award for Best Actor. After a long career that included roles on stage, screen and television, Tommy Ewell (as he was sometimes credited) passed away in California in 1994.
Billy Wilder
In 1906, Samuel Wilder was born in Vienna where he studied law, but later gave it up to become a reporter for a Viennese newspaper. He moved to Berlin, where he worked for the city’s largest tabloid, and in 1929 he broke into the film industry as a screenwriter. He worked on scripts until 1933, when he left Germany after Hitler came into power. Eventually, he came to Hollywood where, as a newcomer to town, it has been said that he slept on the foyer of the women’s restroom at the Chateau Marmont, while waiting for a vacant room. In addition to The Seven Year Itch, his other notable works include Double Indemnity; The Lost Weekend, for which he won Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards®; Sunset Boulevard, which earned him Academy Awards® for Best Director and Best Screenplay; Sabrina; Some Like It Hot, which starred Marilyn Monroe; and The Apartment, for which he won Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards®. He died in Beverly Hills, California, in 2002.
Clothes Make the Woman
“Nudism is such a worthy cause…. Clothes are the enemy.” The Waitress (Doro Merande).
Costuming is a huge part of what makes The Seven Year Itch such a sexy, silly romantic romp. Perhaps the most famous outfit in cinematic history is Marilyn’s slinky white halter dress used in the subway scene. The costume designers had created it to be a knock-out sensation, and they thoroughly succeeded. Bill Sarris, assistant to costume designer William Travilla later said, “In those days you were not allowed to show cleavage, but Bill always talked about how, because of the way Marilyn’s breasts were, you could cut a dress fairly low and still not show breast. Then again, Bill would also take a little half-ball button and sew it inside the costume where the nipple would be … they had all kinds of tricks.”
The fabric proved to be a bit of a problem. Before filming, Marilyn asked if she could wear two pairs of white panties. In the dressing room, this seemed to cover up the problem of wearing the fairly sheer material. But rumors swirled through the crowd later that night that two panties really weren’t enough under the bright set lights.
But it didn’t matter what Marilyn Monroe wore; she was always provocative. Billy Wilder later recalled that in the scene in which Marilyn snuck down a staircase in her nightdress to visit Tom Ewell that “I could see she was wearing a bra. ‘People don’t wear bras under nightclothes,’ I [Wilder] told her, ‘and they will notice your breasts simply because you are wearing one.’ Marilyn replied, ‘What bra?’ and put my hand on her breast. She was not wearing a bra. Her bosom was a miracle of shape, density, and an apparent lack of gravity.”
Many of Marilyn’s costumes from the film have been duplicated, emulated and collected decades later. Actress Debbie Reynolds bought the sequined, strapless pant-outfit with the vibrant pink shawl at a studio auction. When she auctioned it again in a Beverly Hills fundraiser in 2003, it fetched the highest bid of the event at $58,750. Reynolds also owns the famous white dress from the subway scene. There are plans to exhibit it at the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Motion Picture Museum at Belle Island Village, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee when it opens in 2006.
The City
A quintessential New York comedy, The Seven Year Itch, ironically, used very few New York locations and replicated much of the scenery later at a set at Fox Studios in Los Angeles. Director Billy Wilder found shooting on-location to be more of a hassle than it was worth. He was quoted as saying, “Personally I prefer to shoot in the studio because I can control it. And then there’s the bother of working with strangers.”
Wilder’s concern for control was not merely egotistical: the crowds swarming to view the filming of The Seven Year Itch were unprecedented in number. Shooting began September 1st at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx for a scene that was eventually cut.
The number of spectators multiplied ten-fold after that first scene when Harry Brand, head of Fox publicity, alerted the New York City publicity machine that Marilyn Monroe was arriving on September 9th. The response was phenomenal. Wilder attempted to shoot Monroe and Ewell in a leased apartment on East Sixty-first Street, having erected a barricade at both ends of the block to keep the crowds away. It wasn’t enough of a barrier for Marilyn’s fans. The noise level was so high that Wilder had to shoot the film without sound and loop it in later in a studio.
And then, of course, there was the subway scene on Lexington Avenue…..
The New York premiere on June 1st was held at the Loews State Theater in New York. A scandalous, fifty-two foot tall cut-out of Monroe had been erected over the theater during the last week of May, titillating many and shocking even more. In fact, the cut-out was considered so revealing that Fox replaced it with a more modest version after receiving a flood of complaints. The premiere was a sensation, publicity-wise, with Marilyn arriving ten minutes after the picture began on the arm of her ex-husband, Joe DiMaggio. It was her 29th birthday and Fox had a huge cake delivered to the theater for the birthday girl. New Yorkers love a good party, and The Seven Year Itch became one of the talked about films of the year.
The Seven Year Itch
Just what is “The Seven Year Itch”? In his book Watching My Language: Adventures in the Word Trade, William Safire researched the phrase, which generally refers to a skin malady. The expression “You’re worse than the seven years’ itch” was traced back to 1907 New Hampshire. Specifically, this skin condition is probably Sarcoptes scabieik—commonly known as scabies, which produced an irritation that, before modern medicine, lasted seven years.
But Safire determined that the use of the term “seven year itch” for sexual unrest after seven years of marriage was invented by the playwright. Axelrod heard the expression while “writing jokes for a hillbilly comedian,” and the phrase went through his mind when he was searching for a title for his play. Originally, the Richard Sherman character had been married for ten years, but Axelrod changed it to seven.
From The Great White Way to the Silver Screen
George Axelrod’s play The Seven Year Itch was first presented at the Fulton Theatre in New York City on November 20, 1952. The successful comedy about a married man’s affair with his attractive neighbor seemed like a natural work to adapt for the big screen, except for one major issue: live theatre had more artistic freedom than the movie industry, and Hollywood studios were reluctant to take on the controversial topic of adultery.
Flashback to: June 13, 1934. Location: New York City.
Will H. Hays, President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) — known to all as the “Hays Office”– presided over a meeting at which Joseph I. Breen presented a pamphlet he had written, entitled “A Code to Govern the Making of Motion and Talking Pictures, the Reasons Supporting It and the Resolution for Uniform Interpretation.” This new Code contained an addendum, called “Compensating Moral Values.” It demanded “that in the end the audience feels that evil is wrong and good is right. To satisfy the Code requirement, stories must contain at least sufficient good to compensate for any evil they relate. The compensating moral values are: good characters, the voice of morality, a lesson, regeneration of the transgressor, suffering, and punishment.”
The MPPDA adopted this Code, with Breen as its Administrator, as a self-regulating entity for the Hollywood industry. The Code had absolute power and authority over how movies were made until 1968, when it was revised and industry no longer enforced censorship. Instead, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) instituted the rating system that continues today.
When Axelrod’s play was being considered for adaptation to the screen, the Hays Office was at the height of its power. The Production Code stated that adultery could not be presented in a humorous manner, stating: “The sanctity of the institution of marriage and home shall be upheld. No film shall infer that casual or promiscuous sex relationships are the accepted or common thing…Adultery and illicit sex, sometimes necessary plot material, shall not be explicitly treated, nor shall they be justified or made to seem right or permissible.” A motion picture comedy about a married man’s affair with a neighbor seemed unlikely.
However, director Billy Wilder had successfully side-stepped censors in the past, with films such as Double Indemnity and The Long Weekend. Axelrod recalls, “Billy Wilder was my hero,” and when Wilder contacted him about securing the rights to The Seven Year Itch, it was “like having a call from God.” Axelrod sold the rights to his play with the stipulation that no film version would be released until it had finished its Broadway run. He came on board to write the screenplay adaptation with Wilder, and at their first meeting, he brought along a script of the original play. “I thought we might use this as a guide,” Axelrod said. “Fine,” replied Wilder, who took the script and dropped it on the floor. “We’ll use it as a doorstop.”
Even if Wilder had wanted to use the play’s dialogue, it had to be cut since the script could not contain any overt mentions of adultery. The screenwriters originally wanted to suggest the affair by having a maid find a hairpin in Richard Sherman’s bed, but the studio wouldn’t allow it. Axelrod recalls, “We were hamstrung because of the censorship.”
In addition to the famous subway scene, another was cut from the domestic version of the film. In it, The Girl gets her toe stuck in her bath tub’s faucet, and a plumber comes to fix the problem. Flustered because of the beautiful blond covered only in water and bubbles, he drops his tool into the bathwater, and then commences to search for it. This long-lost scene was discovered decades after the film’s release when researchers at 20th Century Fox screened a print that was supplied for foreign press. A longer version of the infamous subway scene was also found among the archives.
The filming of The Seven Year Itch was not only troubled by outside pressures; the production was often delayed because of its leading lady. Billy Wilder has said of Monroe, “She was never on time once… It is a terrible thing for an acting company, the director, the cameraman. You sit there and wait. You can’t start without her. Thousands of dollars you see going into the hole. You can always figure a Monroe picture runs an extra few hundred thousand because she’s coming late. It demoralizes the whole company. It’s like trench warfare. You sit and sit, waiting for something to happen. When are the shells going to explode?”
Despite its troubles, The Seven Year Itch was completed on November 4, 1954, and George Axelrod was paid a $175,000 bonus for permission to open the film while the play was still on Broadway. Having pushed the limits of censorship, it remains an important–and funny–part of Hollywood history.
Trivia
In an early instance of product placement, Bell Potato Chips was looking for a way to expand its brand beyond the western US. They decided to send cases of chips to the movie sets with the hope that they’d be used as a prop in a film. When Marilyn Monroe started eating them in The Seven Year Itch, they found the publicity they needed to go national.
Marilyn Monroe was nominated for the 1956 BAFTA Award for “Best Foreign Actress” for her performance in The Seven Year Itch. Tom Ewell received the 1956 Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy, and Billy Wilder was nominated for a Director’s Achievement Award from the DGA.
In 1946, Norma Jeane began using the stage name Marilyn Monroe, but she didn’t legally change it until shortly after the opening of the film on February 23, 1956.
On Marilyn Monroe’s birthday, hundreds of fans still gather to salute her tomb in Westwood Village Memorial Park in West Los Angeles, CA. The plaque for one of cinema’s most enduring icons simply lists only her name and the years of her birth and death.
Marilyn Monroe once suggested that her tombstone should read:
Here Lies Marilyn Monroe
37-22-35
Wilder had wanted Walter Matthau for the role of Richard Sherman, but the studio didn’t want to take a chance with the unknown actor. Gary Cooper was also considered for the part, but it was given to Tom Ewell who had more of an “every man” look and feel.
When The Seven Year Itch opened in New York in 1952, Vanessa Brown played The Girl.
Bill Wilder did not film The Seven Year Itch in black and white only because Marilyn Monroe’s contract demanded color.
The Critics
Initial audiences were bowled over by the film’s breezy humor and Marilyn Monroe’s captivating presence. One year after it opened, the film had grossed $5,734,471 worldwide, a healthy profit considering its delays and costly retakes.
Critics of the time also seemed to realize that the film, while lacking the punch of the Broadway version, was more to be celebrated for Marilyn Monroe’s effervescent presence:
Bosley Crowther, The New York Times: From the moment she steps into the picture, in a garment that drapes her shapely form as though she had been skillfully poured into it, the famous screen star with the silver-blonde tresses and the ingenuously wide-eyed stare emanates one suggestion. And that suggestion rather dominates the film. It is – well, why define it? Miss Monroe clearly plays the title role.
Philip Strassberg, New York Daily Mirror: This is the picture every red-blooded American male has been awaiting ever since the publication of the tease photos showing the wind lifting Marilyn Monroe’s skirt above her shapely gams.
The L.A. Examiner: “Never has Marilyn the Marvelous been so well photographed, wonderfully dressed, nor presented as such an understanding young comedienne. She is truly a knockout.”
The Lines:
The Girl: [in Richard's fantasy] Rachmaninoff…It isn’t fair…Every time I hear it, I go to pieces…It shakes me, it quakes me. It makes me feel goose-pimply all over. I don’t know where I am or who I am or what I’m doing. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop!
The Girl: Yes, when it’s hot like this – you know what I do? I keep my undies in the icebox.
The Girl: I do the commercial part…Honest, it’s a very good part. First, they put a little gray makeup on my teeth to show what happens when you use ordinary toothpaste. Then, they wipe it off again to show what happens when you use Dazzledent. I kind of sit there like this, for about 14 seconds, and I get to speak lines too: ‘I had onions at lunch. I had garlic dressing at dinner. But he’ll never know, because I stay kissing sweet, the new Dazzledent way.’
The Girl: I think it’s wonderful that you’re married. I think it’s just delicate…I wouldn’t be lying on the floor in the middle of the night in some man’s apartment drinking champagne if he wasn’t married….
The Girl: Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. A married man, air-conditioning, champagne and potato chips. This is a wonderful party.
The Girl: This is what they call classical music, isn’t it?…I can tell because there’s no vocal.
The Girl: Hey, did you ever try dunking a potato chip in champagne? It’s real crazy. Here…Isn’t that crazy?
Richard: Please go, I must insist. Take your potato chips and go.
Dr. Brubaker: If something itches, my dear sir, the natural tendency is to scratch.
Richard: It’s just my imagination. Some people have flat feet. Some people have dandruff. I have this appalling imagination…
The Girl: I think it’s just delicate to have an imagination. I just have no imagination at all. I have lots of other things, but I have no imagination…
The Girl: I have a message for your wife. [She kisses him.] Don’t wipe it off. If she thinks that’s cranberry sauce, tell her she’s got cherry pits in her head.
Sherman’s Boss: It’s a natural, Sherman! Look at what we’d be giving them for a quarter – violence, lust, and corruption! The story of a young man. On the surface, clear-eyed and healthy. Just like you, Sherman! But underneath – ah, dry rot! And the termites of sin (wheeze) and depravity (wheeze) gnawing at his soul!
The Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code)
If motion pictures present stories that will affect lives for the better, they can become the most powerful force for the improvement of mankind
A Code to Govern the Making of Talking, Synchronized and Silent Motion Pictures. Formulated and formally adopted by The Association of Motion Picture Producers, Inc. and The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. in March 1930.
Motion picture producers recognize the high trust and confidence which have been placed in them by the people of the world and which have made motion pictures a universal form of entertainment.
They recognize their responsibility to the public because of this trust and because entertainment and art are important influences in the life of a nation.
Hence, though regarding motion pictures primarily as entertainment without any explicit purpose of teaching or propaganda, they know that the motion picture within its own field of entertainment may be directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking.
During the rapid transition from silent to talking pictures they have realized the necessity and the opportunity of subscribing to a Code to govern the production of talking pictures and of re-acknowledging this responsibility.
On their part, they ask from the public and from public leaders a sympathetic understanding of their purposes and problems and a spirit of cooperation that will allow them the freedom and opportunity necessary to bring the motion picture to a still higher level of wholesome entertainment for all the people.
General Principles
1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
Particular Applications
I. Crimes Against the Law
These shall never be presented in such a way as to throw sympathy with the crime as against law and justice or to inspire others with a desire for imitation.
1. Murder
a. The technique of murder must be presented in a way that will not inspire imitation.
b. Brutal killings are not to be presented in detail.
c. Revenge in modern times shall not be justified.
2. Methods of Crime should not be explicitly presented.
a. Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc., should not be detailed in method.
b. Arson must subject to the same safeguards.
c. The use of firearms should be restricted to the essentials.
d. Methods of smuggling should not be presented.
3. Illegal drug traffic must never be presented.
4. The use of liquor in American life, when not required by the plot or for proper characterization, will not be shown.
II. Sex
The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.
1. Adultery, sometimes necessary plot material, must not be explicitly treated, or justified, or presented attractively.
2. Scenes of Passion
a. They should not be introduced when not essential to the plot.
b. Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown.
c. In general passion should so be treated that these scenes do not stimulate the lower and baser element.
3. Seduction or Rape
a. They should never be more than suggested, and only when essential for the plot, and even then never shown by explicit method.
b. They are never the proper subject for comedy.
4. Sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden.
5. White slavery shall not be treated.
6. Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races) is forbidden.
7. Sex hygiene and venereal diseases are not subjects for motion pictures.
8. Scenes of actual child birth, in fact or in silhouette, are never to be presented.
9. Children’s sex organs are never to be exposed.
III. Vulgarity
The treatment of low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects should always be subject to the dictates of good taste and a regard for the sensibilities of the audience.
IV. Obscenity
Obscenity in word, gesture, reference, song, joke, or by suggestion (even when likely to be understood only by part of the audience) is forbidden.
V. Profanity
Pointed profanity (this includes the words, God, Lord, Jesus, Christ – unless used reverently – Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd), or every other profane or vulgar expression however used, is forbidden.
VI. Costume
1. Complete nudity is never permitted. This includes nudity in fact or in silhouette, or any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture.
2. Undressing scenes should be avoided, and never used save where essential to the plot.
3. Indecent or undue exposure is forbidden.
4. Dancing or costumes intended to permit undue exposure or indecent movements in the dance are forbidden.
VII. Dances
1. Dances suggesting or representing sexual actions or indecent passions are forbidden.
2. Dances which emphasize indecent movements are to be regarded as obscene.
VIII. Religion
1. No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith.
2. Ministers of religion in their character as ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains.
3. Ceremonies of any definite religion should be carefully and respectfully handled.
IX. Locations
The treatment of bedrooms must be governed by good taste and delicacy.
X. National Feelings
1. The use of the Flag shall be consistently respectful.
2. The history, institutions, prominent people and citizenry of other nations shall be represented fairly.
XI. Titles
Salacious, indecent, or obscene titles shall not be used.
XII. Repellent Subjects
The following subjects must be treated within the careful limits of good taste:
1. Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishments for crime.
2. Third degree methods.
3. Brutality and possible gruesomeness.
4. Branding of people or animals.
5. Apparent cruelty to children or animals.
6. The sale of women, or a woman selling her virtue.
7. Surgical operations.
Reasons Supporting the Preamble of the Code
I. Theatrical motion pictures, that is, pictures intended for the theatre as distinct from pictures intended for churches, schools, lecture halls, educational movements, social reform movements, etc., are primarily to be regarded as ENTERTAINMENT.
Mankind has always recognized the importance of entertainment and its value in rebuilding the bodies and souls of human beings.
But it has always recognized that entertainment can be a character either HELPFUL or HARMFUL to the human race, and in consequence has clearly distinguished between:
a. Entertainment which tends to improve the race, or at least to re-create and rebuild human beings exhausted with the realities of life; and
b. Entertainment which tends to degrade human beings, or to lower their standards of life and living.
Hence the MORAL IMPORTANCE of entertainment is something which has been universally recognized. It enters intimately into the lives of men and women and affects them closely; it occupies their minds and affections during leisure hours; and ultimately touches the whole of their lives. A man may be judged by his standard of entertainment as easily as by the standard of his work.
So correct entertainment raises the whole standard of a nation.
Wrong entertainment lowers the whole living conditions and moral ideals of a race.
Note, for example, the healthy reactions to healthful sports, like baseball, golf; the unhealthy reactions to sports like cockfighting, bullfighting, bear baiting, etc.
Note, too, the effect on ancient nations of gladiatorial combats, the obscene plays of Roman times, etc.
II. Motion pictures are very important as ART.
Though a new art, possibly a combination art, it has the same object as the other arts, the presentation of human thought, emotion, and experience, in terms of an appeal to the soul through the senses.
Here, as in entertainment,
Art enters intimately into the lives of human beings.
Art can be morally good, lifting men to higher levels. This has been done through good music, great painting, authentic fiction, poetry, drama.
Art can be morally evil it its effects. This is the case clearly enough with unclean art, indecent books, suggestive drama. The effect on the lives of men and women are obvious.
Note: It has often been argued that art itself is unmoral, neither good nor bad. This is true of the THING which is music, painting, poetry, etc. But the THING is the PRODUCT of some person’s mind, and the intention of that mind was either good or bad morally when it produced the thing. Besides, the thing has its EFFECT upon those who come into contact with it. In both these ways, that is, as a product of a mind and as the cause of definite effects, it has a deep moral significance and unmistakable moral quality.
Hence: The motion pictures, which are the most popular of modern arts for the masses, have their moral quality from the intention of the minds which produce them and from their effects on the moral lives and reactions of their audiences. This gives them a most important morality.
1. They reproduce the morality of the men who use the pictures as a medium for the expression of their ideas and ideals.
2. They affect the moral standards of those who, through the screen, take in these ideas and ideals.
In the case of motion pictures, the effect may be particularly emphasized because no art has so quick and so widespread an appeal to the masses. It has become in an incredibly short period the art of the multitudes.
III. The motion picture, because of its importance as entertainment and because of the trust placed in it by the peoples of the world, has special MORAL OBLIGATIONS:
A. Most arts appeal to the mature. This art appeals at once to every class, mature, immature, developed, undeveloped, law abiding, criminal. Music has its grades for different classes; so has literature and drama. This art of the motion picture, combining as it does the two fundamental appeals of looking at a picture and listening to a story, at once reaches every class of society.
B. By reason of the mobility of film and the ease of picture distribution, and because the possibility of duplicating positives in large quantities, this art reaches places unpenetrated by other forms of art.
C. Because of these two facts, it is difficult to produce films intended for only certain classes of people. The exhibitors’ theatres are built for the masses, for the cultivated and the rude, the mature and the immature, the self-respecting and the criminal. Films, unlike books and music, can with difficulty be confined to certain selected groups.
D. The latitude given to film material cannot, in consequence, be as wide as the latitude given to book material. In addition:
a. A book describes; a film vividly presents. One presents on a cold page; the other by apparently living people.
b. A book reaches the mind through words merely; a film reaches the eyes and ears through the reproduction of actual events.
c. The reaction of a reader to a book depends largely on the keenness of the reader’s imagination; the reaction to a film depends on the vividness of presentation.
Hence many things which might be described or suggested in a book could not possibly be presented in a film.
E. This is also true when comparing the film with the newspaper.
a. Newspapers present by description, films by actual presentation.
b. Newspapers are after the fact and present things as having taken place; the film gives the events in the process of enactment and with apparent reality of life.
F. Everything possible in a play is not possible in a film:
a. Because of the larger audience of the film, and its consequential mixed character. Psychologically, the larger the audience, the lower the moral mass resistance to suggestion.
b. Because through light, enlargement of character, presentation, scenic emphasis, etc., the screen story is brought closer to the audience than the play.
c. The enthusiasm for and interest in the film actors and actresses, developed beyond anything of the sort in history, makes the audience largely sympathetic toward the characters they portray and the stories in which they figure. Hence the audience is more ready to confuse actor and actress and the characters they portray, and it is most receptive of the emotions and ideals presented by the favorite stars.
G. Small communities, remote from sophistication and from the hardening process which often takes place in the ethical and moral standards of larger cities, are easily and readily reached by any sort of film.
H. The grandeur of mass settings, large action, spectacular features, etc., affects and arouses more intensely the emotional side of the audience.
In general, the mobility, popularity, accessibility, emotional appeal, vividness, straightforward presentation of fact in the film make for more intimate contact with a larger audience and for greater emotional appeal.
Hence the larger moral responsibilities of the motion pictures.
Reasons Underlying the General Principles
I. No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin.
This is done:
1. When evil is made to appear attractive and alluring, and good is made to appear unattractive.
2. When the sympathy of the audience is thrown on the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, sin. The same is true of a film that would throw sympathy against goodness, honor, innocence, purity or honesty.
Note: Sympathy with a person who sins is not the same as sympathy with the sin or crime of which he is guilty. We may feel sorry for the plight of the murderer or even understand the circumstances which led him to his crime: we may not feel sympathy with the wrong which he has done. The presentation of evil is often essential for art or fiction or drama. This in itself is not wrong provided:
a. That evil is not presented alluringly. Even if later in the film the evil is condemned or punished, it must not be allowed to appear so attractive that the audience’s emotions are drawn to desire or approve so strongly that later the condemnation is forgotten and only the apparent joy of sin is remembered.
b. That throughout, the audience feels sure that evil is wrong and good is right.
II. Correct standards of life shall, as far as possible, be presented.
A wide knowledge of life and of living is made possible through the film. When right standards are consistently presented, the motion picture exercises the most powerful influences. It builds character, develops right ideals, inculcates correct principles, and all this in attractive story form.
If motion pictures consistently hold up for admiration high types of characters and present stories that will affect lives for the better, they can become the most powerful force for the improvement of mankind.
III. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
By natural law is understood the law which is written in the hearts of all mankind, the greater underlying principles of right and justice dictated by conscience.
By human law is understood the law written by civilized nations.
1. The presentation of crimes against the law is often necessary for the carrying out of the plot. But the presentation must not throw sympathy with the crime as against the law nor with the criminal as against those who punish him.
2. The courts of the land should not be presented as unjust. This does not mean that a single court may not be presented as unjust, much less that a single court official must not be presented this way. But the court system of the country must not suffer as a result of this presentation.
Reasons Underlying the Particular Applications
I. Sin and evil enter into the story of human beings and hence in themselves are valid dramatic material.
II. In the use of this material, it must be distinguished between sin which repels by it very nature, and sins which often attract.
a. In the first class come murder, most theft, many legal crimes, lying, hypocrisy, cruelty, etc.
b. In the second class come sex sins, sins and crimes of apparent heroism, such as banditry, daring thefts, leadership in evil, organized crime, revenge, etc.
The first class needs less care in treatment, as sins and crimes of this class are naturally unattractive. The audience instinctively condemns all such and is repelled.
Hence the important objective must be to avoid the hardening of the audience, especially of those who are young and impressionable, to the thought and fact of crime. People can become accustomed even to murder, cruelty, brutality, and repellent crimes, if these are too frequently repeated.
The second class needs great care in handling, as the response of human nature to their appeal is obvious. This is treated more fully below.
III. A careful distinction can be made between films intended for general distribution, and films intended for use in theatres restricted to a limited audience. Themes and plots quite appropriate for the latter would be altogether out of place and dangerous in the former.
Note: The practice of using a general theatre and limiting its patronage to “Adults Only” is not completely satisfactory and is only partially effective.
However, maturer minds may easily understand and accept without harm subject matter in plots which do younger people positive harm.
Hence: If there should be created a special type of theatre, catering exclusively to an adult audience, for plays of this character (plays with problem themes, difficult discussions and maturer treatment) it would seem to afford an outlet, which does not now exist, for pictures unsuitable for general distribution but permissible for exhibitions to a restricted audience.
I. Crimes Against the Law
The treatment of crimes against the law must not:
1. Teach methods of crime.
2. Inspire potential criminals with a desire for imitation.
3. Make criminals seem heroic and justified.
Revenge in modern times shall not be justified. In lands and ages of less developed civilization and moral principles, revenge may sometimes be presented. This would be the case especially in places where no law exists to cover the crime because of which revenge is committed.
Because of its evil consequences, the drug traffic should not be presented in any form. The existence of the trade should not be brought to the attention of audiences.
The use of liquor should never be excessively presented. In scenes from American life, the necessities of plot and proper characterization alone justify its use. And in this case, it should be shown with moderation.
II. Sex
Out of a regard for the sanctity of marriage and the home, the triangle, that is, the love of a third party for one already married, needs careful handling. The treatment should not throw sympathy against marriage as an institution.
Scenes of passion must be treated with an honest acknowledgement of human nature and its normal reactions. Many scenes cannot be presented without arousing dangerous emotions on the part of the immature, the young or the criminal classes.
Even within the limits of pure love, certain facts have been universally regarded by lawmakers as outside the limits of safe presentation.
In the case of impure love, the love which society has always regarded as wrong and which has been banned by divine law, the following are important:
1. Impure love must not be presented as attractive and beautiful.
2. It must not be the subject of comedy or farce, or treated as material for laughter.
3. It must not be presented in such a way to arouse passion or morbid curiosity on the part of the audience.
4. It must not be made to seem right and permissible.
5. It general, it must not be detailed in method and manner.
III. Vulgarity; IV. Obscenity; V. Profanity; hardly need further explanation than is contained in the Code.
VI. Costume
General Principles:
1. The effect of nudity or semi-nudity upon the normal man or woman, and much more upon the young and upon immature persons, has been honestly recognized by all lawmakers and moralists.
2. Hence the fact that the nude or semi-nude body may be beautiful does not make its use in the films moral. For, in addition to its beauty, the effect of the nude or semi-nude body on the normal individual must be taken into consideration.
3. Nudity or semi-nudity used simply to put a “punch” into a picture comes under the head of immoral actions. It is immoral in its effect on the average audience.
4. Nudity can never be permitted as being necessary for the plot. Semi-nudity must not result in undue or indecent exposures.
5. Transparent or translucent materials and silhouette are frequently more suggestive than actual exposure.
VII. Dances
Dancing in general is recognized as an art and as a beautiful form of expressing human emotions.
But dances which suggest or represent sexual actions, whether performed solo or with two or more; dances intended to excite the emotional reaction of an audience; dances with movement of the breasts, excessive body movements while the feet are stationary, violate decency and are wrong.
VIII. Religion
The reason why ministers of religion may not be comic characters or villains is simply because the attitude taken toward them may easily become the attitude taken toward religion in general. Religion is lowered in the minds of the audience because of the lowering of the audience’s respect for a minister.
IX. Locations
Certain places are so closely and thoroughly associated with sexual life or with sexual sin that their use must be carefully limited.
X. National Feelings
The just rights, history, and feelings of any nation are entitled to most careful consideration and respectful treatment.
XI. Titles
As the title of a picture is the brand on that particular type of goods, it must conform to the ethical practices of all such honest business.
XII. Repellent Subjects
Such subjects are occasionally necessary for the plot. Their treatment must never offend good taste nor injure the sensibilities of an audience.