Judge — February 12, 1927 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUDGE The Real Culprit Ni‘ YORK has been going through what has become its annual orgy of righteousness. About this time every year the theatre season suffers a slump which is the forerunner of the long yawn of spring and summer. The big butter-and-egg boys and their relations from the hinterland, who sup- port the girl shows, are fed up and heading South. Theatregoers in general are a bit jaded. The man- the need of a filip to the public appetite. So two things happen. They put on their most daring shows and they deliberately provoke the professional good boys to a public protest nst them. There's nothing like the ballyhoo of the indignant smut hound to fill a theatre, This year the M noise and is conduc agers sec yor has taken cognizance of the ng an inquiry. We hope he dis- covers this conspiracy between the prurient play and the puritan barker and publishes if to the world, In the meantime, the Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church has welcomed him as an ally in its holy effort Particularly interesting is this paragraph from the pean in its clip sheet: to emasculate us by statute and ukase. It is contended that filthy plays and musical shows pros- per, and that the other kind do not. Such an assertion is an indictment of the people of New York. It is in effect a declaration that it is useless to appeal to their intelligence, to their asthetic sense, to natural and clean emotions, and that it is possible to appeal successfully only to the motives of the visitor to the house of prostitution. ich indictment of the City of New York cannot be easily sustained. You will notice between the flowers of this bouquet the characteristic tendency of the liter: of this lobby to blame the sins of the nation on York. As if it were the citizens of New York who flooded the naked shows and the night clubs and made Broad- synonym for boredom. These things exist primarily to attract the out-of-town sucker, the in- hibited materialist of the great open spaces, who simmers there in his own hypocrisy until such time as he can make his annual or sem to the metropolis and bust loose. Without him they would wither like the grass of the fields; for no one ean live day in and day out with loud sham and brazen cupidity and not develop a distaste for them. We have faith to believe that even the virtuous Westerner, so beloved of the Methodist lobby, would way a annual pilgrimage ack Shuttleworth. Dramatic Editor, Gey But cloistered as he is for the greater part of the ycar in the keeping of our sumptuary tyrants, he alw has slipped do so if he had the chance. ys succumbs to the stupid s leading strings and hit lure once | Manhattan. If the Board of Morals would like to know what shows the New Yorker goes to see, let it consider the Theatre Guild, which fills its theatres very largely by local subscription and imports for its patrons the best plays on the American sti Or let it observe nd the neighborhood What the New Yorker supports is on the whole the best the stage affords. The shows of which the Methodist Board is so fond of complaining exist for the benefit of its pets from the plains. the foreign language theatres playhouses that dot the town. A Hot Race Hever Broun long ago called John Roach Straton America’s leading candidate for Heaven, But consider the competitors that arisen since then. For example: The Rev. J. Frank Norris. Mr. Norris is the most acquitted man in the American pulpit. He is a killer rts, who has revived the romance of in the West. And he is an eloquent undamentalist who has t tie following that all tole telligence of the devil. Aimee Semple McPherson. More than any other preacher living, Mrs. MePherson has shown. that religion can be made attractive to men. She radiates magnetism—for money, for publicity, for radio operators and Mexican kidnappers, and no person equally devout can tell such romantic stories. Edward Young Clarke, As a causes Mr. Clarke stands pre his Invisible Empire he ha of his soul and yours the Supreme Kingdom, which bids fair to bring him a better income than his forme venture. Mr. Clarke has been instrumental in re minding us that the Mann Act is still a statute. Kleagle Stephenson. Mr. Stephenson put the St: of Indiana on the straight and narrow path to which it still adheres in a statutory sense. He, too, is a killer of no mean parts, though he was unfortunate in his jury. But even in jail he continues to dictate to his State Government and to Senator Watson. All representative Americans and ardent workers in the vineyards of the Lord. WM. H. have of no mean pi the six-shoo' and devoted and enthu 1 huge ance and in booster of sacred iled from for the hab comicbooks.com