Last edition — on Easter Sunday, April 1st — certainly was on account of April Fool’s Day. There won’t be a “grandson of King Kong” in October. Or let me just say he’s singing the song: “I Won’t Dance, I’ve Got Ants in My Pants”.
In these fussy days I’m asking myself how the catholic Legion of Decency might spell the word humanity. Will civilization decline — just because I saw Olympic gold medalist Josephine McKim’s naked bottom blurry shine under water? (People are blaming Maureen O’Sullivan for that, but she’s innocent!) If I was a man and pretty eager to get a glimpse of something like that, I’d probably be disappointed. I had seen Tarzan and His Mate in an unmodified version, before Mr. Breen and his Legion started protesting. And I see this problem much more basically. For example in M-G-M’s slogans, to boost this movie. They sound long-known and quite hinky to me:
“Girls! Would you live like Eve if you found the right Adam?”
It seems this turns out to be sort of girl’s bible lesson. Well, everything’s hunky-dory, or what? …. I’d call that stuff simply hypocritical monkey business.
“Modern marriages could learn plenty from this drama of primitive jungle mating!”
It is extremely immodest, to call this modest flicker a “drama”. And “primitive jungle mating”: Do they mean those animals that climb trees? Picking fleas out of your lover’s pelt?
Picking fleas, or "primitive jungle mating", soon quite à la mode?
“If all marriages were based on the primitive mating instinct, it would be a better world.”
Modern civilized marriage is mainly protection for children, in order to raise families. People who marry, proof they’re ready to overtake responsibility. Guys who don’t want to be responsible, invented exactly those phrases, as now spread out by M-G-M again. The direction of impact is clear: At first relativization, to dissolve boundaries, and finally total negation of marriage. Because these people want nothing but fast pleasure. Whatever, the national calamity is not as great as the Legion of Decency think. Marriage won’t fall because of that old stuff. The best we can do is tell our daughters not to trust those silly clichés. The same old attempt to escape civilization as already known from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
But my disapprobation goes deeper. This film is full of uncivilized violence. The way African natives are treated is shocking. It looks like their lives wouldn’t mean anything. You can’t censor a film because of silliness and stupidity. I would just ban it because of barbarian violence. But as it looks now, Tarzan might get us into another mess: Federal government censorship, before any motion picture can be released. It already sounds like that in Congress.
Clarissa Smith — April 16, 1934
