July 20 Lunch Colloquium

Christine Smith (Gilliam): Atlanta's Film Censor, 1944 to 1962

MATTHEW H. BERNSTEIN, Professor and Chair, Department of Film and Media Studies

We are fortunate to have two members who wrote articles about last Monday's Lunch Colloquium!

From Jan Pratt:

In 1915 the U.S. Supreme Court decided that movies were not entitled to First Amendment protection. The Court ruled that the movie business was a for-profit entertainment business similar to the circus. Therefore, as movies were not intended to communicate ideas, constitutional protection was unnecessary, and moviemakers could not claim freedom of expression as a right! This decision ushered in the era of the censor as states and cities across the US set up Censorship Boards to review films and decide what moviegoers in their areas might see. The Atlanta Board was established to make sure that "obscene, vulgar, or immoral" movies were not shown in our city. So we learned at the last colloquium for the Emeritus College this summer, on Monday, July 20, when Matthew Bernstein, Professor and Chair of Film and Media Studies, discussed a small part of his research focusing on the work of Christine Smith Gilliam who was the Atlanta Film Censor from 1944 to 1962.

Atlanta played an important part in distribution of movies through the 20th century. All the major studios had offices here. Movies were sent out from Atlanta to other southern cities, so the Atlanta censor, in fact, was the censor for the entire region. Mrs. Smith Gilliam and her predecessor, Mrs. Alonzo Richardson, were concerned to protect moviegoers from depictions of illicit sex (as defined by the League of Decency) and were alert to any problems in depictions of race relations.   Professor Bernstein spoke of the censorship of the movie Imitation of Life, in 1934, when it was first released, and then after the war, when it was re-released. The film (based on a novel by Fannie Hurst) tells the story of two single mothers raising daughters, one pair white, one black, though the latter daughter has enough white blood that she can pass as white, and chooses to do so. We may remember the remake of the movie from 1959 (the version with Lana Turner), but it was this earlier version that has long been recognized as among the top films ever made on race relations. Not that Atlanta audiences got to see it uncensored--or even at all. When the movie was first released, Mrs. Richardson cut out all scenes which seemed to depict the white star and the black star in any way as equals but left everything else. When it was re-released in 1947, it was banned entirely by Mrs. Smith Gilliam.   According to Professor Bernstein, the handling of this film thus illustrates the differences between these two censors. As he has written, "Mrs. Richardson. . . was old school, in the city's blue book, a member of a woman's volunteer group devoted to seeing better films be shown in Atlanta, who began being anti-censorship, and paradoxically carried that attitude towards her work on censorship.  She was most cooperative with Hollywood.  On the subject of African-Americans and social equality, however, she was an unambiguous and crude racist, by our standards. [On the contrary,] Miss Christine Smith, later Mrs. Christine Smith Gilliam, was a college educated former head of the League of Women's Voters who viewed Hollywood with great suspicion, [and] banned things left and right . . . It was not entirely  her fault--Hollywood produced more risqué material in the post-war period that would have made Mrs. Richardson apoplectic."  Ironically, although white audiences only had a week or two to see Imitation of Life before Mrs. Smith Gilliam removed from their theaters, black audiences at the movie theaters exclusively for black citizens were able to see the movie for nearly a month. (And by the way, the story of the growth of movie theaters for white patrons and those for black or "colored" citizens, and of the "black movies" with all-black casts to be shown in those segregated theaters, which Professor Bernstein also shared with us was fascinating.)

Mrs. Gilliam Smith was representative of the Atlanta culture of her era. However, through the fifties, that culture began to change. The public started to question the work of the censor. Criticism came to a head over the banning of the movies Never on Sunday and Room at the Top. The producers of those films sued and the censorship decisions were overturned.   The Supreme Court began a series of decisions which finally gave First Amendment protection to movies and, in 1962, the era of the censor came to an end.

Professor Bernstein left us with lots of questions and the desire to know more! It was a fascinating program and the general consensus of the attendees was that he could come back any time! Perhaps next time he can bring his collaborator in this research, our fellow retiree Dana White, with him. The two books they are preparing for the University of Georgia Press should be out before long with much more information about the history of film in Atlanta.

From Holly York:

Moving pictures, originally seen as a personal entertainment medium to be viewed at home, were projected on a public screen for the first time ever at the 1895 Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta. Nobody came to see them. In his forthcoming book with urban historian Dana F. White, Emory professor emeritus, Segregated Cinema: Atlanta 1895-1962, Matthew traces a narrative history that includes reception studies, censorship history, exhibition history, and business history. Begun in 1992, this, along with the Bernstein and White anthology, Atlanta at the Movies, will be published by the University of Georgia Press.

Until the "quiet desegregation" of Atlanta movie houses in 1962, certain theaters were designated as "colored." There, patrons could view special "race films" made by independent filmmakers to appeal specifically to Black audiences. These films usually had a short two-day run, with major Hollywood films presented at other times. The "colored" theaters often received Hollywood films a year later than the white theaters, but Atlanta audiences were more fortunate since Atlanta, as the distribution hub for the southeast, had early access to films awaiting scheduled transportation to other cities.

Among films about the South and race relations, Matthew notes that Birth of a Nation (1915) might be seen as a sort of "original sin" of film making. Used as a recruiting tool by the Ku Klux Klan, it is an example of a well-made film that is ideologically repugnant.

Also in 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that movies were strictly entertainment and not a medium for communication of ideas; thus the right to freedom of speech did not apply. This decision paved the way for cities and states to install boards of censors. The city of Chicago had already created such a board in 1907 and boards were subsequently created in seven states.

Atlanta had already established such a board in 1913, housed in the Fulton County Library and led by Mrs. Alonzo Richardson. Mrs. Richardson, who considered herself a friendly intermediary between Hollywood and the Atlanta public, guarded moviegoers against depictions of illicit sex and improper representation of the races. She was empowered to demand that cuts be made before a film could be shown to an Atlanta audience. This impacted the viewing of the whole southeast since the films came to Atlanta first and were sent out minus the objectionable portions.

Christine Smith Gilliam, an Emory MA graduate in psychology, succeeded Mrs. Richardson as censor in 1944. Less communicative than Mrs. Richardson, she saw Hollywood as the enemy, and was relentless in her crusade to protect public decency. Her zeal led to the total banning in 1962 of the highly acclaimed Never on Sunday and Room at the Top. The lawsuits occasioned by these actions and a growing public outcry against censorship finally contributed to the demise of the city board of censorship in the same year as the quiet desegregation of Atlanta theaters.

Interdisciplinary Seminar for Fall 2015

PROPOSAL FOR AN INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINAR

Fall Semester, 2015

Dear Fellow Member of the Emeritus College:

I would like to propose a seminar for the fall semester. It would deal with just one book, Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, published this year (2015) by Harper Collins.

The book has received strong reviews and is much talked about. In a blurb on the book jacket Jared Diamond writes that "Sapiens tackles the biggest questions of history and of the modern world . . . in unforgettably vivid language."

Even though we'd be reading just the one book, this would be very much an interdisciplinary seminar, since the comprehensive sweep of this "history" manages to invoke almost all of the various research disciplines and fields of study to be found in a modern university - from history to biogenetics, from economics to linguistics, from anthropology to literature. It's quite a tour de force.

Our requirements would be simple: members doing the seminar would get hold of the book and read it over the summer. It's just a bit more than 400 pages, not including the notes. Then, for the purpose of discussing the book in the fall, they would choose a topic or theme raised in it that seems most pertinent to their own particular scholarly or professional interests. In addition, they would choose a few pertinent readings from their own fields that comment on or support the chosen topic, and then make these titles known to the leader of the seminar (me, in this instance), who would arrange to have them made available to all participants.

For example - and to tip my hand at the outset - as a literature person I'm especially struck by Harari's suggestion that homo sapiens became the most successful species of all mainly because we learned how to act cooperatively in large numbers, specifically through a new-found ability to use language to make fictions. In other words, our myths, our stories, are what allow us to rule the world.

This is but one of hundreds of surprising and challenging insights about our evolved human condition that make the book so provocative, and I am sure that if you do join the seminar you will encounter more than a few to engage with intellectually.

What I would expect to do as a member of the seminar, given my interest in the topic of myth-making, is make a short list of works on the anthropological uses of myth and offer these to my fellow seminar members as commentary on Harari's point above. And a suggested format of the seminar would be for me to present the topic of myth to the group and then lead the discussion that ensues.

This, then, in broad outline, is how I see the seminar proceeding, with each participant taking responsibility in this fashion for a chosen topic and its development.

The seminar would start sometime in later September and meet at least once a week; it would meet often enough to give each participant a chance to lead a discussion on at least one tantalizing aspect of the book's argument.

If you are interested in this endeavor - a kind of intensive "book club" experience - I urge you to let me know by emailing me at engjmb@emory.edu.

This is in the nature of an experiment, of course, but rarely does a book come along that is worthwhile reading for just about every member of a university community!

With best wishes for an enjoyable summer,

John Bugge

For an NPR interview with the author, click here.

To read a review in The Guardian, click here.

For the book's page at Harper Collins, click here.

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