Richard Maltby
Harmless Entertainment:
Hollywood and the Ideology of Consensus
(1983)
PART 2
THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE
...
CHAPTER 4
SENSE AND SENSORSHIP
CHIEF INVESTIGATOR STRIPLING: Mr Menjou,
if a picture is produced, as for example Mission
to Moscow, which gives a false portrayal or which
has propaganda in it, who do you hold responsible
in your own mind as a veteran actor in the motion-
picture industry?
MR. MENJOU: Well, I believe that the manufac-
turer of any product is responsible in the end for
the quality of his product.
MR. STRIPLING: In other words, the producers
should be held responsible?
MR. MENJOU: They should be.
House Committee on Un-American Activities,
October 1947.
The producers, the studio executives, never attempted to deny their public responsibility for the quality of their product, nor for its content. Their films, of necessity, existed in the public domain, and were therefore subject to the critical comment not only of their audiences, but also of the socially opinionated. As a pervasive mass entertainment, the cinema was exposed to a more intense examination of its social implications than either more conventional non-durable consumer goods or forms of expression generally seen to operate independently of commercial pressures and the responsibilities of the mass audience. The unique position of the film industry made it vulnerable to a particular kind of public threat. ...
[95]
...
In dealing with those who took an undue interest in their merchandise, the producers invariably placed a premium on their own financial interests. The crucial threat to the majors' interests came from the raising of the anti-trust issue; compared to the maintenance of their economic hegemony, questions of the political or artistic freedom of the screen dwindled into insignificance. The only threats industry leaders took note of were financial ones. Nothing else could persuade them to act in concert, and nothing would make them acquiesce so fast as a threatened boycott. Equally, they saw no purpose in challenging a status quo which worked to their financial advantage. ... since both the most severe restriction of the cinema's freedom of expression and the greatest opportunity to expand that freedom took place at times of financial crisis in the industry, the majors' preference for their short-term economic interest was never revealed so clearly.
