1. The Work of the Censors

From the time that you begin to write moving-picture plays, one important fact must be borne constantly in mind: The National Board of Censorship inspects and passes on all films before they are permitted to be released, and this Board will not pass any subject it considers objectionable. It is not our province to discuss the methods of the censors in making decisions, though in some sections the local board carries the censorship idea to extremes, even barring some subjects that have already passed the National Board. It is safe to say, however, that the folly of hacking to pieces a film portraying Shakespeare's tragedy of "Macbeth," on the ground that it contained too many scenes showing murder and other crimes, will soon become apparent even to over-zealous police and other censors of certain cities. As Mr. W. Stephen Bush writes in The Moving Picture World: "A very small and a very short-sighted minority of motion picture manufacturers, together with occasional lapses of National Censorship," are responsible for the exceedingly silly and presumptuous system now existent in some localities.

It is because of this "small and short-sighted minority" that we offer this advice: Write as your conscience and a sense of decency as an individual and as a good citizen dictate. The chances are that then your photoplay will meet with no serious objection. Do not introduce a crime-scene into your picture simply because when you saw a similar scene in a photoplay it aroused a moment's thrill among the spectators. The fact that it passed the National Board and the local censorship committee—if your city has one—does not mean that it is the kind of picture the better class of theatre patrons want, and the better class ought to be set up in your mind as the judges of all you write. A bad example will not justify you in writing a play containing objectionable scenes. The safe ground is the best ground because it is right.

The following list of features disapproved by the National Board of Censorship gives a good general idea of the things that may be regarded as under the ban, not in one or two special cities, but throughout the country. It is not a copy of an official list, as, to the best of our knowledge, none such is sent out; it is merely a draft prepared by Mr. John F. Pribyl, then with the Selig Company, after he had had a conversation on the subject with the Secretary of the National Board, Mr. Walter Story, and courteously transmitted by Mr. Pribyl to the authors of this volume.

Disapproved by the National Board of Censorship

The Unwritten Law: The Board does not recognize the so-called unwritten law as a justification for the killing of any being.

Crime: 1. When crime is the obvious purpose of the picture—that is, when the whole story hinges on the perpetrated crime.

2. When the crime is repulsive and shocks the spectator.

3. The shooting in "cold blood" of any being.

4. Any crime that portrays a unique method of execution.

Suicide: The Board will not pass a picture in which there is a suicide or any suggestion of a suicide, with incidents leading thereto. The purpose of the Board is to prevent all suggestion of self-destruction to those who are morbidly inclined.

Burglary: There is no objection to a burglary scene in a picture so long as there is no actual demonstration of the act of burglarizing; for instance, the burglar may be shown entering through an open window, but must not be shown in the act of "jimmying" the window. He may be shown with his back to the audience, opening a safe and extracting therefrom money or papers, but he must not be shown opening the safe by any means known to the art of burglars.

Vulgarity: All vulgarity and suggestion must be avoided. For instance, flirtations with women who are unmistakably of easy virtue. Letters making appointments with such women are objectionable, as is any "rough-house" conduct with them.

Mischief: The Board objects to pictures that will suggest to the mind of youth acts of mischief, such as mutilation or destruction of property for the purpose of perpetrating a joke on someone, especially playing jokes on invalids or cripples.

Lynching: Lynching is only permissible when the incident happens in the days when Lynch Law was the only law, i.e., in the early days of the Far West when the Vigilantes were the only effective means of enforcing order.

2. Other Objectionable Subjects

The foregoing, of course, is not a complete list, as points are coming up continually. For instance, scenes showing kidnapping are forbidden by the police of many cities, and the introduction of that form of crime into a film story is frowned upon by the National Board. The point is that scenes of crime and violence are not absolutely barred, nor are offenses against the moral law, but where permitted these must not be presented offensively, and they must be essential to the story, rather than the purpose of the play. This is a difficult point which nothing but common sense and experience can perfectly interpret.

As an example, a story written about a murder or a robbery will not be passed, but such an incident may be allowed in a story in which it is not the leading feature. In any event, the incident must serve to point a moral and not serve as a spectacle.

Another thing to remember is that—aside from the moving-pictures exhibited in the various "regular" theatres—dozens of incidents which are shown on the regular stage without being questioned in any way, would never be allowed on the screen. This is partly due to the fact that such a large percentage of the attendants of moving-picture theatres are children and undiscriminating adults. The writer of fiction entering the field of photoplay writing will do well to bear this further fact in mind: the very incident that might be the means of selling a story to a certain magazine might be the cause of a rejection if introduced into a moving-picture plot. The photoplay has standards all its own.

"One type of the unpleasant drama," says a writer in the Photoplay Magazine, "is the kind showing scenes of drinking and wild debauchery, where some character becomes drunk and slinks home to his sickly wife, beats her, and then, finally, after reaching the last stages of becoming a sot, suddenly braces up and reforms." The same writer also remarks: "The only time that murder should be shown, and that very delicately, is either in a detective drama or else in good tragedy, where the removal of some character is essential to the plot." "Every one of Shakespeare's tragedies tells of crime," says an editorial in The Moving Picture World, "but does not exploit it, and never revels in the harrowing details to produce a thrill."

It is not to be denied that careless and unthinking directors are responsible for a good deal of what is objectionable on the screen. At the same time—and this is especially true of comedy subjects—the director is merely, as a rule, carrying out the author's suggestions, if not his actual directions. The best way is not to give the director the opportunity to adopt objectionable features—leave even questionable incidents out of your photoplay.

For example, the elopement is legitimate moving-picture material, provided it is not introduced in such a way as to instill mischief into the minds of young men and women. At least one picture was produced a year or so ago which showed two high-school girls eloping with a couple of young rakes who in another part of the photoplay "registered" that they were by no means the kind of young men who would ever have received the sanction of the girls' parents to marry their daughters. Such a picture may have been conceived innocently enough, but as a subject that would be shown to thousands of young people all over the world it was decidedly deserving of censure. And yet some of the very incidents that served to make the picture doubly objectionable in the eyes of grown people, especially fathers and mothers, might have been the result of the director's unthinkingly adding certain scenes that served to portray young men in a bad light—incidents which were not even thought of by the author when he planned his picture of a youthful escapade. We sympathize with the lovers when Dorothy's father refuses to let her marry Jack, to whom she is plainly devoted. But when, in another scene, we see Jack wasting his time in pool-rooms or lounging in a saloon, we give the father credit for being a good judge of character, and not simply a harsh and stubborn guardian.

Writers should remember that even though a film is passed by the National Board, if it gets into a city in which the local censorship board objects to one or two scenes, these scenes will be literally cut out for exhibition in that city. Afterwards, they may be put back; but if this happens in several communities, the film is likely to be shortened by many feet, since in cutting and re-splicing each cut means the loss of at least two "frames," or pictures, and even more if the operator does not know his business—not to mention the loss of the actual scenes cut out. Suppose that two or three of a writer's "strong" scenes are cut when his picture is shown—in Detroit, for instance—the result on the screen is more likely to become an illogical and incoherent jumble than the powerful "drama with a punch" he had intended it to be. But "Censorship realizes," says Mr. A.W. Thomas, in the Photoplay Magazine, "as does every editor and author, that morality is to be desired, and to this end, crime or suggestion of crime is presented, as a rule, to convey the moral. 'Crime for crime's sake' is to be condemned. Sensationalism and forbidden themes are seldom seen nowadays."

Aside from murder and suicide, why is it that so many young authors imagine that to be strong a story must have at least one violent or tragic death-scene? That there are hundreds of gripping stories, pictures with the biggest kind of "punch," in which no death or suggestion of death is shown, is well-known to every photoplay patron whose mind and heart are in good working order. And yet editors are every day returning scripts in which a murder, a suicide, a death as the result of a duel, or a death arising from disease or accident, is shown—all for no other reason than that the writer imagines he is thereby producing a strong drama.

3. Depressing Dramas

Death in a picture is neither undesirable nor out of place—provided it is necessary to the proper and inevitable development of the plot. But the mistaken idea that to snuff out a human life in a thrilling or a heart-rending manner, when there is really no logical necessity for it, makes a picture either strong or dramatic is responsible for scores of unaccepted scripts. Yet it would not be well to try to apply to all picture stories Mr. George Cohan's motto, "Always leave them laughing," for, as every intelligent exhibitor knows, and as a certain producer once said, "they come to weep as well as to laugh." The point that seems to have escaped many young writers is this: There is very often a more decided, a more convincing, and a far more welcome, "punch" in a scene which shows the saving of a human life than there is in one which shows a death, even of the most unworthy character in the cast. To have your villain nursed back to life by the man whom he has so persistently and cruelly persecuted, and then to have him show the change of heart that one would expect in him in the circumstances, will be far more dramatic and gripping in the eyes of an intelligent audience than to have your hero "hurl the black-hearted ruffian to his doom" over a cliff a thousand feet high.

There is a distinction, with a very decided difference, between the picture that fills the spectators with gloom and the one that simply allows them to have what many women would call "a good cry." "It is a great thing to be able to lift the spectators out of their seats with a big, gripping melodrama," remarks Mr. Sargent, "but it is a far more creditable thing to send them home with a tear in their eyes while a smile hovers about their lips."

4. The Use of Deadly Weapons

It is understood, of course, that the use of guns, knives, and other weapons is seldom objected to by the censors when they are employed in a historical picture, or one that shows pioneer life. The trouble is that some young writers, knowing that they are granted more license in this direction when doing "Western stuff," make the mistake of abusing this liberty. Mr. R.R. Nehls, of the American Film Company, says: "The most noticeable fault with manuscripts dealing with Western life is the natural inclination to run too much to gun play, stagecoach robberies, etc. Please remember that we do not wish to distort conditions in the great West—rather we seek to portray it as it really exists today."

Mr. Nehls, it will be noticed, says "the great West ... as it really exists today." It should be apparent to any writer that in turning out stories of the present-day West there is even less excuse for promiscuous gun-play than in a story, say, of California in the days of the Forty-Niners. But Indian massacres, soldier warfare, Indian and cowboy fights, usually come under the head of "historical" subjects and are therefore permissible.

5. Plays Offensive to Classes of Patrons

It seems scarcely possible that any intelligent photoplay writer would introduce into one of his stories an incident calculated to offend the religious or political faith of any patron, and yet in the past different pictures of this kind have been the cause of more than one unthinking moving-picture theatre manager's losing some of his best patrons. People as a rule have no objection to being preached to in a mild and entertaining way when they go to a picture show, but they do object to having their feelings hurt. A man who is over-fond of drink may sit through a play on the screen in which the evil results of intoxication are depicted and come away filled with a determination to reform his way of living, but the man who after paying his admission is asked to sit through five or more reels of film almost every foot of which is a shock to his religious or his political sensibilities will come away filled only with the determination to avoid that theatre in the future, if not, indeed, to eschew moving-pictures entirely.

During 1911 and the early part of 1912 several pictures were released, both by European and American manufacturers, which were so objected to by Roman Catholic picture-patrons that not only were they suppressed but the whole film-manufacturing industry was aroused and put on its guard against producing more pictures of this kind. Here is a rule of photoplay writing that you must not violate: Do not offend the religious beliefs of a single patron if you wish to retain the good will of the editors and manufacturers. And have you stopped to think how broad that statement really is? Have you taken into consideration the many different nationalities, with their widely different creeds and religious convictions, which see the pictures daily put upon the market? As one critic says: "The photoplay film goes to Europe and Australia and South Africa. Some of them even get to China; so you can realize that what may seem foolish to you may be sacred to someone else, and exhibitors have to be careful."

To say that you must be careful not to write stories that will be likely to arouse the ire of certain photoplay patrons because of the way a political theme is handled does not mean that you cannot introduce political themes at all. If, for instance, you have a particularly good suffragist story—one which contains both heart and human interest—there is little doubt that it would sell. Several such pictures have been shown in the past year or two. Or if you have a story in which the leading male character is a Socialist, it may be appreciated by many photoplay-goers without giving offense to those whose views do not coincide with the hero's. But, to quote the editor of The Coming Nation, stories are not wanted "where the hero arises and makes a soap-box speech on Socialism, converting all by-standers." And at all times you must keep in mind that, no matter what political theme you exploit in your story, heart-interest must predominate if you wish it to sell—another way of saying that unless you are sure that you have a very strong and unusual story, it is best to leave out politics. That form of journalism which is best known as muck-raking is also out of place in the pictures.

Few films, however, outside of the sectarian subjects which were the cause of so much disturbance a year or so ago, have given displeasure to so many people as those—fortunately, they have not been many—which revealed and held up to the public the secret and dark sides in the lives of famous men and women of history. "There are some things that are sacred," says a writer in The Moving Picture World, "even from the hand of the most circumspect of picture makers." It is a source of regret that even a shadow of reproach should be cast upon distinguished men, particularly when the question of blame is debatable, as when, for instance, a picture portraying the love affair between Sir John Millais, the artist, and Ruskin's wife, was actually produced by a well-known company.

No matter what the opportunity to produce what seems to you to be a strong or interesting story, never offend against good taste. "Plays that antagonize the finer element in an audience," says Mr. Louis Reeves Harrison, "had better never be shown at all. There is nothing funny in what is cruel, though vulgar brutality in a play may get a laugh from a few who have not yet emerged from primitive egoism."

That last sentence should constantly be borne in mind.

A certain film, "Adrift," released back in 1912, showed an incident that in real life would have been impossible. The rejected suitor of a woman who is afterwards seen on the downward path seeks to relieve his lonely existence by the adoption of a child. Because a certain little girl in an orphan asylum bears a striking resemblance to the woman he has loved and lost, he decides to adopt her. And he does; they are seen leaving together, the child being turned over to its new guardian in the most off-hand way imaginable. Of course, later, the child, having grown to womanhood, falls in love with and marries her guardian; but in real life how little chance there would be of a foundling institution's giving one of its girl charges over to a young bachelor in this informal manner, if, indeed, he were allowed to adopt her at all. Of course, it is not always possible to say whether the script for such a picture was the work of an outside writer or whether it was written by the director himself. But it sometimes happens that a picture is produced because it was written by the director himself, whereas the same story, sent to the editor by an outside writer, would be returned with a warning to avoid similar scenes or situations in the future.

The difference between the photoplay and prose fiction, or even the regular drama, is illustrated by the so-called problem plays and novels. These are acceptable mainly because their themes can be explained from every point of view, and treated in a manner that renders them less objectionable, when skillful dialogue and discussion are used in telling the story, than if they were to be acted in pantomime. Besides, to give the same story in motion pictures would necessitate the use of more leaders and other inserts than would be practicable, even in a feature picture, unless the director were to risk offending the public, if not the Censorship Board, by putting on scenes that, insufficiently explained, would be far too risquÉ for the photoplay stage. Furthermore, when there are so many good, pleasant, and interesting themes to choose from, why elaborate what is unpleasant or morally objectionable?

6. Themes Unsuitable to the Producing Company

In the chapter on the limitations of the photoplay stage we have already said something about the inadvisability of calling (in your scenario) for elaborate snow-and rain-storm effects. But of course it is another matter to plan stories with winter or with summer backgrounds. Take into consideration that most of the Eastern companies, once the winter season is at hand, look for stories that may be done mostly in the studios, with interior settings. If the company has a branch studio in California or in Florida—facts which you can easily learn from the trade publications—they will very probably take suitable stories calling for outdoor scenes. As the winter season approaches its end you begin to offer scripts that call for exterior scenes, though, of course, there are some scenes which it would not be possible to do until summer is well advanced.

It is impossible here to lay down any exact rules for submitting to any company; you must be guided by your good judgment and your acquired knowledge of how the company to which you submit your scripts has its field-forces distributed. But in order to make scripts acceptable for production by a company that has a field-force working, say, in the Adirondacks, it is necessary to get your stories to them in good time. Therefore, post yourself concerning the movements of the various companies, and when you learn that a certain concern has a field-company in the West Indies, send them the best script you have or can write, suited to the locality in which they are working. If it is accepted, you may be sure that the editor will be very glad to keep you informed as to how long they are going to stay. In that way you will avoid sending to a company a story with a Jamaican background when the field-company has been moved to the Delaware Water Gap region.

7. Hackneyed Themes

Here is a list of subjects no longer wanted by the editors—unless the theme is given a decidedly new twist—because they have become hackneyed from being done so often. Many such lists have been printed in the various motion-picture trade-papers and the different magazines for writers. We give the tabooed themes that have so far been listed, and others drawn from different sources. A careful study of this list may save you from wasting your time writing a story that has already been done—perhaps two or three times, in one form or another—in every studio.

(1) The brother and sister, orphaned in infancy, parted by adoption and reunited in later life. They fall in love, only to discover the blood relationship.

(2) The little child stolen by gypsies, and restored to her family in later life, generally by means of a favorite song.

(3) The discharged workman who goes to do injury to his former employer, but who performs some rescue instead and gets his job back.

(4) The poor man who attends a fashionable dinner. He conceals in his clothing delicacies for his sick wife. A ring or other valuable is lost. He alone of the party refuses to be searched. The valuable is found and his story comes out.

(5) The man who assumes his brother's crime for the sake of the girl he loves, and who, he thinks, loves the brother.

(6) The child who reunites parted parents or prevents a separation.

(7) Baby's shoes. Edison, Vitagraph, Universal and other companies have worked out all the sentiment attached to them. Bannister Merwin, Robert E. Coffey and other authors have reunited separated couples by means of baby's shoes. Don't do it any more.

(8) Two suitors for the hand of a girl. They go to one of the parents to decide, or she gives them a common task to perform. One wins by foul means. He is found out, and she marries the other.

(9) The convict who escapes and robs an innocent man of his clothes, thereby causing another to appear temporarily as the jail-bird.

(10) The story of the girl's name and address written on the egg which is relegated to cold storage for twenty years, then to be discovered by a love-lorn man who seeks out the writer, who by this time has at least one unromantic husband and a brood of children.

(11) The pathetic "Mother" play in which Thanksgiving and pumpkin pies tug hard at the heart-strings.

(12) The play in which the rich crippled child is contrasted with the poor strong child, and in which the two are brought together and exchange confidences—and money.

(13) The husband jealous of his wife's brother, whom he has never seen.

(14) The burglar who breaks into a house, to be confronted by his own child, who has been adopted by the family.

(15) The policeman who calls on the cook and removes his hat and coat, which are used by another.

(16) The child who reunites parents and children separated through an unapproved marriage.

(17) The child who redeems the criminal or who saves the discouraged from the downward plunge.

(18) The employee who gets an interest in the business, and his employer's daughter, either with or without opposition from the foreman or the junior partner.

(19) The bad small boy.

(20) The sheriff who is rescued by the outlaw and who later allows him to escape, or prevents his being lynched.

(21) The revenue officer who falls in love with the moonshiner's daughter, and who is forced to choose between love and duty.

(22) The Southern boy who enlists in the Federal army, and is cast out by his father for so doing. Or the young Northerner who, acting as a Federal spy, falls in love with a Southern girl, the daughter of a Confederate officer. There are dozens of variations of the Civil War "brother against brother" plot, but all have been done so often that, unless you can give such a theme a decidedly new "twist," it is much better not to send it out. And note that merely to give the old theme a "Great War" setting is not to render it more acceptable.

(23) Stories requiring too much trick photography, and stories based upon "love pills," "foolish powders," and other "influences."

"Editors and public tired long ago of the poor boy whose industry at last brought him the hand of his employer's daughter; the pale-faced, sweet-eyed young thing whose heroism in stamping out a fire enabled her to pay off the mortgage; the recovery of the missing will; the cruel step-mother; answering a prayer which has been overheard; the strange case of mistaken identity; honesty rewarded; a noble revenge; a child's influence; and so on to a long-drawn-out end."[26]

In avoiding trite subjects the surest teachers are common sense, a wide reading, the constant study of the photoplays seen on the screen, a friendly critic, and the printed rejection slip. And do not forget this most important point: It is not so much the time-worn theme that makes a story hackneyed as it is the threadbare development of the theme. A new "twist," a fresh surprise, coming as the climax to an old situation, may redeem its hackneyed character. But when you can combine a fresh theme with a new treatment you have reached the apex of originality. Time spent in working on unhackneyed lines will save you many later heartaches.

8. Inconsistent Situations

A word or two concerning inconsistencies in film stories. While the inconsistencies and absurdities occasionally seen on the screen are often traceable to the director alone, the writer must do his share toward eliminating what is incorrect or out of place. Take for instance the Red Cross in war-pictures. The introduction of the Red Cross into American Civil War pictures was something that one of the present writers had commented upon and criticized two or three years before Mr. Herbert Hoagland, of PathÉ FrÈres American company, wrote his helpful little book on the technique of the photoplay[27], but, since Mr. Hoagland puts it so comprehensively in that work, what he says is quoted here:

"In a Civil War story the scenario called for a field hospital with the Red Cross flag flying from a staff. Well, the Red Cross wasn't organized until the closing year of the war, and then it was done in Switzerland. The Southerners and the Yankees never saw this emblem of mercy during the whole four years of strife."

Following the foregoing paragraph in his book, Mr. Hoagland speaks of another script in which an officer in Confederate uniform is informed by a courier—in Confederate uniform—that war had been declared between the North and the South. "But," the PathÉ censor of scripts remarks, "there was no gray uniform of the Confederacy before the C.S.A. was formed!"

As one critic has remarked, "Screen credit for the author may not bring him the credit for which he is looking." In other words, if the director bungles a scene or allows some historical or other inaccuracy to creep into the picture, the blame may be placed by the unthinking spectator on the author—or even, in case of the picture's being an adaptation of a novel, on the writer who prepared the continuity, or scenario. Thus, while what Mr. Hoagland wrote was written in 1912, the Red Cross flag was seen waving bravely in Paralta's "Madame Who?", produced in 1918, and we feel sure that neither Mr. Harold MacGrath, who wrote the novel, nor Mr. Monte M. Katterjohn, the staff-writer who wrote the scenario, was responsible for the error.

So it will be seen that the photoplaywright may easily find himself under the fire not only of the professional critic, but also of the lay patron and of his brother writers. Do not, therefore, risk anything that may, so to speak, make it easier for the director to "go wrong." To quote Davy Crockett's motto, "Be sure you're right; then go ahead."

As an example of what may happen if you fail to observe this warning, consider the Vitagraph release, "A Wasted Sacrifice," referred to in the previous chapter.[28] The big "punch" in this story, as already pointed out, was where the young squaw steps on the concealed rattlesnake. Women in the audience screamed; men felt the proverbial "cold chill" run down their spines. Then came the climax, in which the young Westerner, hoping to save the life of the papoose, takes it away from the dead mother and hurries back to meet the doctor-sheriff who is pursuing him with the posse. The doctor tells him that the child is dead; his sacrifice—from which the story derives its title—has been unnecessary. The poison, drawn from the breast of the stricken woman by the nursing child, has killed the baby. A real "punch," indeed! But wait. A prominent physician in an Eastern city writes to the producing company protesting that it is impossible for a child to draw poison into its system in the manner described. And the physician knows! In other words, what happened in the picture could not happen in real life. The backbone of the plot has been broken! Seven in ten people might not know the difference; they would never question the probability of the scene. The other three in ten would know, and, seeing your name on the film, would put you down as a first-class "nature faker," or else as a very careless and badly informed writer. And remember that even though the director may be the one most to blame for not taking the trouble to verify the action introduced into your story before putting it on, you will be the one blamed by those in the studio, and your next story will undoubtedly be looked at askance, and probably rejected.