Estabrook on censorship

[Terry Harbin]

HEARST ASSOCIATED
WITH WHARTONS
IN PICTURE PRODUCING
**********
Howard Estabrook Makes
Announcement at Rotary
Club Luncheon -- Calls
Local Firm Greatest Producers
of Serials in Country
**********

That Ithaca's prosperous moving picture
concern, Wharton, Inc., will hereafter have
William Randolph Hearst, millionaire publisher,
associated with it in its productions.

It was an important announcement made in a talk
by Howard Estabrook, leading man of the Wharton
company in the Mysteries of Myra serial
picture before the Rotary Club at itsluncheon today.

Mr. Estabrook presented some interesting
figures concerning the phenomenal growth
of the moving picture industry and incidentally
took a slam at the censorship of films.

Referring to the censorship, he said:
"The principle is wrong and the American public
never stood for a thing that is wrong in its life,
from 1776 to 1916. It is true that some films
are objectionable but so are some people.

It is also true that those objectionable productions
are a very small minority that is growing smaller
every day. Good things always dominate over bad
and they always will. If this were not true we
would see blood running in our gutters as often
as rainwater.

"That is why I say that the public will not stand
for censorship much longer."

Of the Wharton company, Mr. Estabrook said:

"The Wharton Brothers are the greatest producers
of serial pictures in the world. I make no qualification
to that and it is a proud distinction for Ithaca to
have them here.

"The Whartons have never produced a scene that you
couldn't take your youngest daughter to see and
the Wharton studio is, has always been and always
will be a place where any man's daughter or wife
or mother would be as much at home as in her own home."

"Don't ask if films will endure." he said. "They will
last for always, improved, changed, added to in
various ways, but they have found the universal
language, the form of expression that everybody
understands.

They have reached nearer to the heart than all
printed words or paintings the world has ever known."

Mr. Estabrook gave the following
figures of the moving picture industry:

Twenty-one thousand picture theaters in the United
States, with an average seating capacity of 500 in each,
making a total of 10,500,000: on an average price of
eight cents, the sum that the American public spends
yearly to see moving pictures is $655,2000,000: the
industry employs 300,000 persons in all its various branches.

source Ithaca Journal 4-4-1916