Strange Times 66: Exaggerated Sex Plays

Today we serve forth drama at the opera, twin tales of hazing, and a resolution to ban filth from the silver screen. Brace yourself for odious virtue and attractive vice, because it’s…

March 7, 1921

• ACLU founder Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is arrested in Philadelphia before making a speech, on charges of distributing seditious literature.

• The thirtieth annual six-day bicycle race begins at Madison Square Garden. After 47 laps and "a spasm of wild riding," Reggie McNamara leads the pack.

• German is sung at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time since the language’s banishment at the outbreak of the World War.

• Despite rumors to the contrary, Caruso's condition continues to improve as he makes plans to travel to Italy with his brother.

• The Weather: Probably rain and colder today; unsettled, probably rain tomorrow.

Opera feuds! I am desperate to know just what that $125 worth of supplies actually was. Caviar? Crullers? Cocaine? Surely, it must have been something that no opera can do without.

Rows and bickering because of a little bill of $125 for supplies, it became known yesterday, vexed the last days of the Chicago Opera's $400,000 season in New York, and for a time threatened a break between Oscar Hammerstein's widow and the company under Mary Garden's direction as to the lease of the house for next year. 

Mrs. Hammerstein first received the bill about two weeks ago, and as it was for articles used by the Chicago stars she turned over the memorandum for Miss Garden to pay.

Miss Garden sent it back to Mrs. Hammerstein. The company heard of the trifling difference, which followed on the heels of other and more momentous negotiations, and all hands took the affair as a joke.

But Mrs. Hammerstein, not to be outdone, again forwarded the bill to Miss Garden, who in turn hurried it by one and another messenger, to such effect that the theatre's titular proprietor was said to have declared an ultimatum.

"Pay the bill or take back your contract for next year in my opera house," was the version of that ultimatum that passed current among the singers of the troupe, who asserted that Miss Garden finally told her business aids, "Oh, pay the blamed bill!" and that settled it.

Miss Garden's final days of directing the opera season here brought her some more serious questions to settle. On the closing night, last Saturday, she came near having a dark house when the company which had installed a $7,000 electric switchboard obtained a legal order to take the apparatus out unless it was paid for, spot cash. Miss Garden paid.

On the previous day, Friday, the basement of the Manhattan was turned into a lawyers' room for a court hearing on the suit of Nina Morgana, who had been announced as a member of the troupe a year ago and brought action when, as she asserted, she was not permitted to appear. 

Because the stars were leaving on a tour, it was agreed that their testimony should be taken at once. So their rehearsals for "Hamlet," the last production, were interrupted, in order that those might testify whose views were wanted, while all their companions joined in listening to these novel proceedings in an opera house.

This is some authentic prep school nonsense right here.

STAMFORD, Conn., March 6.—The local police broke up a "prep" school fraternity initiation here today, when they escorted Jerome A. Kaufman of 210 West Ninetieth Street, New York, and Mairo Villalba of Havana, Cuba, students at the Massee School, to police headquarters and forced them to discard female attire they had on over their street clothes.

The two boys were masquerading as girls with two other Massee students, Edward M. Hirschler of Norfolk, Va., and Alfred Fears of Jonesboro, Ark., as their escorts. The "girls" wore evening attire and one had on a "Harding blue" hat.

A fascinating little article whose tone of indignation is neatly undercut by the final paragraph, where the entire punishment is revealed to be—and I do not apologize for this pun—a slap on the wrist.

BANGOR, Me., March 6.—The faculty of the University of Maine have suspended fifty-six members of the sophomore class for subjecting freshmen students to a form of hazing forbidden at the university. The offense consisted of making the freshmen run a paddle gauntlet in the basement of the non-fraternity dormitory.

No one was injured and the affair was taken in good part by the victims, but the faculty considered that punishment was necessary in view of a recent ruling that all hazing involving corporal punishment should be punished. 

The faculty, however, tempered the ruling by suspending the suspension until April 5, action to be taken or not taken at that time, according to faculty decision, depending on the attitude of the students involved and their parents.

Somewhere, a 28-year-old Mae West says, "We'll just see about that."

Pending action on Governor Miller's demand for a moving picture censorship in this State, the members of the National Association of the Moving Picture Industry announced yesterday that they had agreed upon "a definite and concrete plan which will insure against the production of questionable films and will prevent also the exploitation of pictures in a manner offensive to good taste."

By unanimous vote, the members of the association, representing about 90 per cent. of the motion picture production, adopted resolutions calling upon all members to assist in the prosecution of all members who failed to comply with the aim of the association to make the screen "clean and wholesome."

Under the ban of the industry are exaggerated sex plays, white slavery and commercialized vice, themes that make virtue odious and vice attractive, plays that would make drunkenness, gambling, drugs or other vices attractive; themes that tend to weaken the authority of the law; stories that might offend any person's religious beliefs; and "stories and scenes which may instruct the morally feeble in methods of committing crime or by cumulative processes emphasize crime and the commission of crime."

It was also decided that "this association record its intention to aid and assist the properly constituted authorities in the criminal prosecution of any producer, distributor or exhibitor of motion pictures, who shall produce, distribute or exhibit any obscene salacious or immoral motion picture in violation of the law, to the end that the recognized public good accomplished by the motion picture shall be preserved and advanced.…

"This action is expected to prove most effectual in keeping the screen entirely free from questionable matter."