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Show MOVIES AND MORALS IN LOS ANGELES Los Angeles, Jan. 24. The all-consuming desire de-sire on the part of many of our well meaning, but ill advised, citizens and citizenesses to reform, to regulate and sterilize this supposedly chemically rotten movie town out of existence, is at last awakening a few of the business men to the fact that one of Los Angeles' most attractive industries indus-tries is being suffocated by the gas route. Certain skirted males and females of Los Angeles, some time ago, thought they had discovered in the movie villagers certain abodes of crime. Dreadful places where male hands pinched tender ladies where they should not be pinched, and under the cover of darkness bold, bad male voices tried to make dates with maidens in adjoining cafeterias, where milk and honey allured innocence to the Inv ferno. Several women, moral sleuths, wrote to General Gen-eral Harrison Gray Otis of the Times, whoso martial mar-tial soul is ever alert to succor distress, especially especial-ly when skirted. Then the board of censors got busy, and there was the deuce to pay. Now, the owners of the moving picture concerns are not exactly ex-actly made of the mutton which composes the carcass car-cass of the pop-eyed lambs. They fought back, and are still fighting the all-round charges made against the every-day life of the people in their employ. Owing to the equable, warm weather and sunlight So essential to the success of making films, that prevails the year round in Los Angeles, there are more film companies in and about Los Angeles than in any other part of the world. It is claimed that seventy-five per cent of the moving mov-ing pictures of the country are taken near Los Angeles. Eminent star players are brought to the coast, and these pay liberally for their pleasures and surroundings; they buy homes and automobiles, automo-biles, and help materially to keep Los Angeles alive and in the limelight, something it perennially peren-nially craves. Many thousands of dollars are spent each day by employees alone. It is not uncommon un-common to send 1,000 persons into the country for a day to take battle pictures; one concern recently re-cently required the presence of 1,000 men and women in a small town near Los Angeles to lynch a man from San Francisco a glowing tribute to San Francisco. Now the moving picture magnates tell the Los Angeles people that unless the Board of Censors is abolished and they are assured of no further molestation, they will abandon California and go to Florida, where they have been given assurances of just treatment. Having grown weary of baiting the railroads, steam and electric lines and other public utilities, the reformers "are getting after" the movies. But the movies have the advantage over railroad, rail-road, telephone, water, lighting and other companies, compan-ies, for tlijey can say: "We will abandon our studios stu-dios to the bats and the owls, and go to Florida," and they certainly will go there or to the San Francisco bay region unless the Los Angeles skirted reformers, male and female, stop heckling them over "morals" and other charges. They insist in-sist that a chemical test on their villages show a percentage of purity up to the celebrated "chemically "chemic-ally pure" test given Los Angeles some years ago, and they are willing to let the case go at that as long as they are held fellows in business with the pure bred Los Angelanos. San Francisco News Letter. |