Scenes Showing How to Commit Crimes Are the Greatest Evil

From the Annual Report of The New York State Motion Picture Commission:

"The greatest evil is the exhibition of pictures showing the method of committing crimes and escaping punishment. Other pictures that are objectionable are intended to appeal to sex instincts. It has been said that motion pictures give a false idea of life. People living in immoral relationships are shown to be surrounded with the luxuries which girls and boys who have worked for a living cannot afford. In this manner the life of the American people is misrepresented."

In 1923 the State Motion Picture Commission

"cut out 2260 scenes and 621 titles from 585 films.Thehe following reasons are given: indecency, 105; inhumanity, 223; inciting to crime, 882; tendency corrupt morals, 126 sacrilegious, 29; obscene, 26."[. . .]

"It said that in the undeleted pictures the tendency is to glorify vice, while 'virtue, sobriety and observance of the law, the fundamental basic attributes of life , are made unattractive.'"

["Film Board Calls Censor Essential,"New York Herald, January 19, 1924, p.2]