The only protest now being offered is by the small dramatic clubs which, whether or not they know it, are the strongest “anti-Semitic” influence on the theatrical horizon.
Issue of January 22, 1921.
The Jewish Aspect of the “Movie”
Problem rPHERE was once a man named Anthony Com- stock who was the enemy of public lewdness. Of course he was never popular. No newspaper ever spoke of him without a jeer. He became the stock joke of his time—and it was not very long ago. He died in 1915. It is very noticeable that the men who mocked his life with banal jesting were non-Jews. It is also worth recording that the men who profited from the commercializing of much of the vice which he fought, were Jews. It was a very familiar triangle —the morally indignant non-Jew fighting against public lechery, and the Jewish instigators of it hiding behind ribald Gentiles and Gentile newspapers.
Well, the fight is still going on. If you will sub¬ scribe to a clipping bureau, or if you will look over the press of the country, you will see that the problem of the immoral show has been neither settled nor silenced. In every part of the country it is intensely alive just now. In almost every state there are movie censor¬ ship bills pending, with the old “wet” and gambling elements against them, and the awakened part of the decent population in favor of them; always, the Jew¬ ish producing firms constituting the silent pressure behind the opposition.