Will Hays: And What the Pictures Do to Us
I
HUNDREDS of thousands have some image in their minds of the Will Hays of slight frame, quick step, blue eyes, and ears outstanding. A lesser number portray to themselves the brain that organizes, conciliates, and is the centre for the handling of complex trifles and massed affairs of business. How many undertake to conceive clearly the soul behind the blue eyes, the active temper, and the friendly contact? As easily essay a just emblem of the Middle West, with its Sunday schools side by side with the gangs who are now and then elected to high office in, say, Illinois, Ohio, or Indiana. For to comprehend Hays, and what he means in the element of American life in which he is the leader, is not only to understand his influence justly, but also to understand the strata in our country that Hays instinctively represents.
My first contact with William Harrison Hays was in the smooth relation of a newspaper correspondent to a Postmaster-General who knew how to handle publicity; and since Hays ran his big machine with quiet mastery, and understood his hundred million masters, the contact was pleasing. There stands out in my memory a dinner, at a small round table, to which Hays came to help give to H. G. Wells a just conception of the United States of America. On his preceding trip to this country Wells had frankly and without urbanity complained, at a more elaborate function, that his host had gathered only the type of intellectual who could as well be found in London, wherefore the same host undertook on this occasion to present in Hays an aspect of American thought less likely to be familiar to the visitor.
This time the world-envisaging Briton expressed no disapproval. The contribution of Hays was a lyric picture of the inland small town; no apology for its provincial aspects, but a happy celebration of the new dresses and washed faces seen along the road to church. It was the Presbyterian elder unfolding his heart, but not the elder as we commonly imagine him. Indeed, looking at Hays, and seeing him in the light of politics, moving pictures, and social charm, one may find at first a difficulty in placing him in a smalltown church universe — real as we know that universe has ever been to him. About the church and religion he has not been as articulate as about the principles behind his most conspicuous undertaking. It is a real interest none the less — a part of that picture he sees of average goodness and contentment; part of his saga of the masses. From early childhood to now there has been comfortable identity between him and the standards of his place and era.
II
It was in Sullivan, Indiana, that our hero appeared, on the fifth of November, 1879. His father was a successful local lawyer, and the head of the firm which now has Will at the top of its letter paper. Exactly on the day he became of age Will was admitted to the bar, as his natural destiny. Already he had started in politics, beginning at the age of sixteen, when his father took him to the convention that nominated McKinley — a favorable start in conservatism, since it was the year of the scare over Bryan. Will, faithful to the past, to-day looks back on that convention as the outstanding political experience of his life.
Early he took hold of the principal groupings of his town, joining the Masons and, as he puts it, ‘about all the other lodges.’ It was part of his gospel of the excellence of the little place, of the democracy in which the most respected worker in the church, the Grand Master in the Lodge, the leader in charity work, may be the carpenter, the coal man, the brick mason — and was. He has never been a drinker, never a smoker — thus from another angle reflecting the standards held to be best by the world into which he had been harmoniously introduced.
In school, and at the Presbyterian Wabash College at Crawfordsville, it was in oratorical contests that he stood out, preparing for the law but no less for public life. Even before he was of age he was precinct committeeman, and, beginning when he was twenty-five, he was for four years chairman of the Republican County Committee, most of this time also serving as chairman of the Speakers’ Bureau of the Republican State Committee. At thirty-one he began three years of work as city attorney of Sullivan. At thirty-five he became chairman of the Republican State Central Committee, and four years later was made chairman of the Republican National Committee. By this time, 1918, the United States had gone into the war, and Hays, not accepted for the army because of his light weight, became chairman of the State Council of Defense.
Chairman of the National Committee he still was when Warren G. Harding was nominated for the Presidency, and in the campaign his success was undoubted, both as an organizer and as a raiser of campaign funds. In regard to the funds there was later an investigation in the Senate, in which Hays was grilled, and which left on the public the impression that he had things to conceal. He admitted making a call on Harry Sinclair, later notorious in the oil scandals. His success in politics was not the expression of any cause, but was based on work, shrewdness, party loyalty, and the faculty we call executive. Many have expected from him what there was no reason to expect, and what indeed might have been impossible for any man.
Hays was clearly a succecs as Postmaster-General in the Harding cabinet. His knowledge of politics, his administrative endowment, and his tact were admirably fitted to the post. Therefore one day, in the third year of his cabinet experience, Hays remained in his rooms at the Wardman Park Hotel, where he received certain gentlemen who had made a pilgrimage to Washington in order to offer him a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year to drop politics and devote himself to organizing, harmonizing, and smoothing the path of the cinema industry.
His resignation took effect on March 4, 1922, and he at once became president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.
III
Hays likes to tell of a certain incident that was in his memory as he prepared to take his seat as chief director of the business side of a new and hugely popular art. It was during the Christmas recess that he, bringing some cowboy suits to his son and nephews in Indiana, heard them disputing about what rôles each was to have; Bill Hart, with his guns, was the favorite, and Douglas Fairbanks, less gory, was accepted by one of the boys only as a concession. He told me that this incident printed on his mind the importance of what he was about to undertake.
Those, however, who were to pay his salary suffered not at all from reflections on the moral effect of their productions. The benefits they hoped from the services of the cabinet officer were several and definite: —
1. Movements toward censorship were vigorous in a number of states. It was thought that Hays, as well as anybody in the country, would be able to prevent the passage of such legislation. He has done it.
2. Behind the political impulse toward censorship lay certain bodies of opinion, notably the churches. In understanding such moral opposition, and dealing with it, Hays was judged by the picture magnates to be second to none. In my opinion, the best tribute that can justly be paid him is to say that in forming groups inside his organization to keep in touch with every kind of expressed opinion, to answer weekly thousands of letters, and to bring better standards from outside to the attention of producers, he has done all that circumstances have permitted.
3. The United States Post Office, the largest distributing agency in the world, was being handled with ease by its head. The picture business, in its three branches of production, distribution, and exhibition, was in utter confusion, and needed an executive with prestige and talent to give it unity. Nobody doubts that he has accomplished this work with skill. He has been attacked, indeed, for creating too much unity; for building a monopoly too complete for the public good.
Perhaps the employers gave out the story that Hays was to be a ‘tsar’; certainly he did not. There never was such an intention. If the history of Hays had been that of a boss-reformer, he never would have seen his present salary. Too much has been expected of him by the 3 per cent (to use his own estimate) who go to the theatre for originality, ideas, and literature. The wishes of the 3 per cent do bother him. Their wishes count with him. He does what he can for them. But he knows that he is dealing with 97 per cent; that nine out of ten enter the theatre for what is commonly called amusement; and that what amuses them is naïve, romantic, and forced. If what is popular happens to be ‘ sophisticated ’ and of the moment, it is not less naïve; if it undertakes to be daring, even wicked, it is not more intelligent, or less banal. Hays never dreamed he could make the pictures satisfactory to people whose pleasure is gained in the higher thinking. He did have, and still has, the wish to have the pictures do no harm to the moral sense, as represented by earnest churchgoers, Boy Scouts, and women’s clubs — what in some localities are called ’just folks.’ In so far as such kinds of sentiment and morality are organized and articulate, Hays showed at once a desire to coöperate with such groups, to make his cruder associates realize the cash value of conciliating virtue.
IV
Although the moral, artistic, and intellectual product is what has been most discussed, the need of reconciling the business desires of producers with those of distributors and exhibitors was, in 1922, uncomfortably urgent. When Hays took the presidency, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., included eight producers and one distributor, and it produced about 60 per cent of American films. By 1930, of twenty-five members, twenty-one were producing companies, three were manufacturers of equipment, one was engaged exclusively in distribution, and it was a subsidiary of a producer; and, of the twenty-one producers, three were also distributors and one was a manufacturer of equipment. As the combination gained in strength, it became more and more necessary to study the antitrust laws carefully — a task which is not peculiar to the picture industry, but is facing all business, as the nation considers the nature and effects of competition in the light of the breakdown of 1929. There have been lawsuits, and Hays has taken the leading part in meeting them, and has been the leading villain to those who dislike the so-called monopoly and the mental food provided by it, but he has kept the peace.
It has been said of him that he never ‘knocks,’ but always ‘boosts’; that he uses bricks, not as missiles, but for building; and as one observes the gayety with which he goes off to difficult business meetings, one easily realizes that his spirit is most apposite for settling the numberless disputes which complicate relations among those producing, distributing, and exhibiting. In promoting arbitration he has been brilliantly successful, and this side of his activities alone would make him secure in his post. He earns his salary, regardless of higher qualities. As Hays has undoubtedly strengthened the combination, it is fair to ask if in so doing he has hurt the possibilities of progress in the cinema. I doubt it.
Thirty years ago there was a combination called usually the Theatrical Trust, or Syndicate, headed by Charles Frohman and Al Hayman, of New York, the firm of Klaw and Erlanger, of New York, and Nixon and Zimmerman, of Philadelphia. Among them these three firms had obtained possession of so many theatres that for a time they could dictate routing and thereby control the destinies of other producing managers, of local theatres, of actormanagers, of dramatists and players. Those of us who in those days represented the intellectual element in criticism looked upon this phenomenon with dislike, urging that mere moneymaking was thus made more predominant, uniformity and the commonplace were aided, originality met a new difficulty, leadership was discouraged. William Dean Howells went so far as to say: ‘Not merely one industry, but civilization itself is concerned, for the morals and education of the public are directly influenced by the stage. Everyone who takes a pride in the art of his country must regret a monopoly of the theatre, for that means “business” and not art.’ And Thomas Bailey Aldrich: ‘The inevitable result of a Theatre Trust would be deterioration in the art of acting and discouragement of dramatic literature.’
These gloomy forebodings, expressed at the time also by the author of this article, have not been realized. New York, from offering in its theatres far less of interest than Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Paris, or London, now can make a fair claim to be on the whole second to none in what may be seen. The American dramatist is far ahead of where he stood at the opening of the century. All over the land are experimental theatres that are full of health. The legitimate theatre was able not only to survive the syndicate and its fleeting monopoly; it has continued to improve in intellectual quality since the advent of the moving pictures threatened it with extinction. It is true that in many small places the regular theatre has gone over to the pictures, and so taken away the brief visits of traveling companies, but the loss to the culture of the nation has not been great, and the money troubles of the professional theatre owners have been a stimulant to local and idealistic effort.
I am giving a personal judgment, and must add that in so far as Hays has centralized power over production he is held by much respectable opinion to have kept pictures on a lower level than might otherwise have been reached.
Perhaps my reasons for defending Hays on this monopoly issue are relevant to the question of his account before Saint Peter. In my opinion, the outlook for safe profits in the pictures is now bad, and I think the monopolistic aspect, therefore, of the Hays organization need not dismay the mind that has perspective. We are still in the period of huge money costs, which are likely to continue while the art is violently experimental in its mechanism and uneducated in its personnel; and these large investments call for leaders who think in money. Some producers are now in the hands of their bankers, so that the bankers have their say about what shall be produced. A high percentage of those at the top are the same men who, when Mr. Edison invented the motion picture, added the idea to their nickelodeons and shooting galleries. It is likewise true that, of the chiefs operating in Hollywood, not many would be called adult. A picture is more expensive than a play, but nevertheless there is no reason to be sure that the cinema will not begin to break into smaller and more significant units before many years, just as the regular theatre has already done. When this happens, men of light will not fare as badly as Eisenstein, Reinhardt, and Nemorovich-Danchenko fared in Hollywood.
The more money the big film business loses, of course, the better. The larger the investment, the more necessary is it to have stories and treatment that please ninety persons out of a hundred, and such a percentage means the commonplace or worse. When, in the normal course of speculative commercialism and purely mechanical progress, the product drops into smaller pieces, it will adapt itself better to intellectual expression.
It may seem inconsistent for me to say that Hays is doing no harm in strengthening central control, and yet to add that, when decentralization comes, improvement is likely to follow. There is no inconsistency. Hays and his combination do not prevent the growth of the most promising smaller units. What they interfere with is other business enterprises on no higher plane than their own, and often on lower. The truly superior film can be stabilized only by an increased demand.
It is this belief that keeps me from giving much space to the Brookhart bill, which is the most conspicuous political move that Mr. Hays will need to take the lead in killing. It undertakes to prevent block contracts between producer and exhibitor — a form of contract in which the local picture manager, in order to obtain the product of a certain firm, has to contract for the whole of it, with the privilege of a slight percentage of rejection. The bill now being much talked about makes such a contract illegal, and thus undertakes to put the local manager in a position where he can buy pictures singly according to his preference. The probability of passage I should estimate to be slight. Arguments that will be used by Mr. Hays, quietly or publicly as may be required in the various stages, will be, first, that large sums of money cannot be risked in production without a secured market; and, second, that there is no sign whatever that the local manager would reflect a taste higher than that exhibited by the producers. The second of these two considerations is the one that will concern the family with children. It will, in general, harmonize with the facts, but in some localities it will not. The first argument, plus constitutional considerations, is likely to be the ground on which the bill will be defeated.
V
What does Mr. Hays see as he sits at his desk and reads the figures about those productions that arouse praise among the fastidious? He sees that: —
The Scarlet Letter was produced with the recommendation of Protestant clergymen, and after production it was attacked by other Protestant clergymen, because in it a clergyman showed a human weakness.
The King of Kings, made with the coöperation of Jewish leaders, was so vigorously attacked later by Jewish organizations that it had to be extensively altered.
Disraeli was received with plaudits by all the better film people, and lost a fortune.
Abraham Lincoln had a similar fate.
Grass shows that the screen can do what has never been possible, and all the parents in my circle had their children see it, yet its losses were heavy.
Such facts make Hays unhappy, and he works genuinely toward organizing such support for better films as will make them a more promising investment. Can the economic aspect of the motion picture and its cultural-moral aspect be brought into harmony? As an affirmative answer to this question Mr. Hays likes to cite The Man Who Played God, which started as a failure and was turned by praise, especially in the pulpit, into a success.
Among his official posts, inside the organization, Mr. Hays is ‘spokesman for the association in all communications to the public.’ He has built up the ‘Public Relations Department,’ for the purpose of ‘stimulating better audience appreciation’ and also for giving help to local groups that wish to develop satisfactory community programmes. Within three months after taking office he began a series of conferences with representatives of such organizations as the Russell Sage Foundation, the Girl Scouts, and the Boy Scouts, which resulted in the Committee on Public Relations, predecessor of the Department of Public Relations. It represented, besides the three organizations just named, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the International Federation of Catholic Alumnæ, the National Education Association, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the American Library Association, and the Y. M. C. A. Naturally such a combination for bringing public opinion into joint action with film production would have to act mostly through small committees. One committee has had to do with the selection of films especially adapted for children; another has concerned itself especially with educational pictures; there has been work on patriotic pictures by representatives especially interested in patriotism. The various groups endeavor to increase attendance at the films which they favor; some films have been furnished without charge.
There has been some trouble. Julius Barnes, representing the United States Chamber of Commerce, resigned from the Committee on Public Relations, and in 1924 the National Congress of Parents and Teachers and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs withdrew, all of these withdrawals being on close differences of judgment. The General Federation resumed relations. Among productions that have been assisted by these affiliated organizations are America, Romola, The Ancient Mariner, The Scarlet Letter, and Evangeline.
The Department of Public Relations has given attention to children and to Saturday-morning programmes. The lists furnished by the Hays organization have been somewhat freely criticized as not suitable for children, but there are at least constant experiment and experience. The three national organizations which have most fully developed their programmes in connection with the Hays machinery are the International Federation of Catholic Alumnæ, the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution, and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Many organizations publish lists of pictures with comments, so that any parents who care to take the trouble will be able to learn much about the programmes accessible. One of the most persistent and influential forces bearing on the quality of pictures has been the voluntary association known as the National Board of Review, with which are affiliated many local councils. In an excellent study carried on by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America these illustrations are given: —
In Macon, Georgia, the better-films committee that coöperates with the National Board of Review has representatives of the Macon playgrounds, the Art Association, the Parent-Teachers Association, the League of American Penwomen, the Catholic Women’s Club, the Board of Education, the Society of Colonial Dames, the Council of Jewish Women, the American Legion, the Y. W. C. A., the Macon History Club, and the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches.
The Better Films Council of Rhode Island has delegates chosen by the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, the State Congress of Parents and Teachers, the W. C. T. U., the Federation of Women’s Church Societies, the Association of University Women, the Sunshine Association, the Girl Scouts, the International Association of Catholic Alumnæ, the Rhode Island Library Association, the State Federation of Music Societies, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the State Council of Women.
The Chicago Joint Committee on Motion Pictures is composed of two delegates from each of forty organizations, including church bodies and civic organizations, but principally women’s clubs.
The degree to which such local influences are brought to bear on the producer and on the attendance at the local moving-picture houses naturally differs greatly. Some, in addition to their published lists, give regular radio talks in which they broadcast information about pictures that are immediately to be offered in their vicinity, and also take special measures to assure in advance a good reception for any uncommonly good picture about to be seen. Parties, telephone ‘chains,’ and posters are among these stimulants. As could be guessed, the attitude of the local managers toward such community activity varies from cordiality to resentment. As far as the national spokesman is concerned, there can be no doubt that the heart of Mr. Hays has been genuinely in the ever-continuing and ever-difficult task of making enlightened opinion an increasing force.
It should be said, however, that his perspective naturally differs from that of a clergyman or other citizen who is primarily a moralist; for while Hays is always oiling and greasing his machinery for moral progress, he is the employee of business men and inevitably has in his mind all that can be said to the public on behalf of things more or less as they are. The most adequate brief statement of this side of his propaganda is that motion pictures are primarily amusement; that amusement is right and valuable; and that the masses themselves must be the final judges of what it is that gives them amusement. If they are not interested in Grass or Abraham Lincoln, it is simply too bad, and we must wait for a better world; a world, let us say, in which all high-class pictures will be received as favorably us Arrowsmith or The Covered Wagon.
VI
What is it in the situation that causes so many parents and other citizens acute alarm? In answering this question I shall be more skeptical than Mr, Hays is himself, for he (unlike the present writer) accepts prevailing views of morality, and argues only about whether certain pictures are in conflict with them.
Take the much-discussed gang picture, for example. Since Miss Lillian Gish is one of the most intelligent stage people of my acquaintance, I may quote her as saying, in a private conversation, ‘If I had children I should not care to have them attend those pictures. What is dangerous about them is that the actors who are cast for gang leaders are in their own personalities attractive, and through that fact are admired by boys.’ Certainly I should regret to have my children see these films. In their environment it would not lead them toward crime, but would be part of a more general curse on the pictures, the prevailing falsity in values. The public believes that criminals are created in the picture houses. On the whole, expert students of crime do not. Mr. Hays has recently congratulated both the public and the industry on the lessened production of these pictures.
Sex will continue to be a much more difficult matter to deal with. Since Mr. Hays has been at the head of the industry there has been developed a set of moral rules, some of which are mere danger signals about offending limited groups, but many of which bear on this never-ending problem of life, and especially of adolescence. As revised in 1930, the code represents the present conclusions of Mr. Hays on what can be done or tried for. About sex the most important provisions are these: —
Adultery, although sometimes a necessity of the plot, must not be treated with explicitness or sympathy.
The sanctity of marriage shall be upheld, and pictures shall not infer that irregular (‘low’ is the word used) forms of the relationship are accepted or common.
‘Scenes of passion’ are not to be introduced when not essential to the plot. This, of course, depends wholly on its interpretation. Robert Louis Stevenson might be somewhat startled to see how essential violent sex scenes are to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In this field sheer prejudice must have its rights, as in the ban on sex hygiene and warnings about venereal disease, but we reach the essence of the difficulty in prohibitions of ‘excessive and lustful kissing’ and ‘lustful embraces.’ Can anybody accustomed to the pictures be optimistic about the extent to which this prohibition is now carried out? Also, we may ask, can the absurd over-emphasis be diminished, in the general performances, or shall we rely in the end on the degree to which programmes for children are separated from those frequented by unsorted adults?
VII
Children are to the fore in censorship abroad, and Mr. Hays, on account of the large export of American films, has had many negotiations with foreign countries, which are still alive, though no results have yet been reached. It is agreed that there can be no centralized censorship on morals, since experience shows that standards of what is harmful differ basically in different countries. As the Hays organization represents at least 70 per cent of American production, and American production represents about three quarters of the attendance at films in the whole world, this problem will grow — unless, indeed, the invention of the talking film turns out to be a check on export, as it well may. Among the most active countries in preventing the infliction of Americanization on her citizens by the film route has been France, and she has been especially active on features that have any governmental significance, or bear on international policy. It was almost inevitable that Germany should register an objection to a melodramatic interpretation of the story of Nurse Cavell. The League of Nations has the whole subject before it, and its complexity is indicated by the fact that the topic is before branches of the League organization that are charged with questions political, moral, and economic, sometimes easily separable, sometimes not.
Great Britain has not been slow to consider Asia in this new light. What conception of the white race, its standards and its life, is making its way through India and China as increasing numbers watch the pictured luxury, violence, lubricity, and vacuity? Speaking before the House of Commons in 1927, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald said: ‘Only a few months ago, I happened to be wandering up and down a little village in one of the outposts of civilization, and not only an outpost of civilization but an outpost of life. There I came across a cinema. I was in the company of a very noble and dignified member of a foreign race in whose land I was at the time, and when we passed that cinema it was emblazoned with advertisements which ought to have brought the blush of shame to the cheek of the thickest-skinned and most corrupt and abandoned of men; and the actors in that film were white people.’
Two years earlier Stanley Baldwin, also speaking in the House of Commons, had declared: ‘I think the time has come when the position of the film industry in this country should be examined, to see if it is not possible, as it is desirable on national grounds, that a large proportion of films exhibited in this country are British, having regard to the enormous power which the film has developed for propaganda purposes, and the danger to which we in this country, and our Empire, subject ourselves if we allow that method of propaganda to be in the hands of foreign countries.’
Mussolini is taking an active interest in the films, and of course in Russia they are entirely dominated by the government; in democracies these short cuts to an objective desired are inconsistent with the conception of real progress.
It was before the Committee on Arts and Letters, in 1928, that John Galsworthy moved a resolution recommending ‘action to prevent moving pictures from being used to foster ill will among the nations.’ Their record on the question of peace has much of positive assistance, as in The Enemy, The Man I Killed (of which the title has been flattened into Broken Lullaby), Journey’s End, What Price Glory, The Big Parade, and All Quiet on the Western Front.
Many articles have been written on the moron standards of those at work in Hollywood itself. It is to the credit, presumably, of Will Hays that he is widely disliked in that community. He is disliked because he interferes with the unchecked manufacture of the kind of product that the mechanics of the industry believe can be sold to the largest masses. If by the pressure of minority opinion we are able to avoid political censorship, and to put the lower appetites on something reasonably near to a starvation diet, it will be one more hint that, in the long perspective, democratic methods are best. If on Hays were to be bestowed a degree, it might recount that he has used his gift for business, tact, and organization to make it easier for minorities to accelerate the slow progress of the many.