QUESTION:
Sometime ago you wrote an article about “Smellies” in which you said that a flew kind of movies is being produced in which smell will be added to sight and sound. You said that an announcement of this new kind of filming “ad already been made by Mike Todd, Jr. Your article poked fun of the whole matter, and like so many ministers do, you criticized modern amusements severely. Some of us have been wondering where you got this information. We have heard nothing more about it. Not that I intend to go to one of these new shows, but it seems strange to us that nothing more is published about them. Are you sure that your information is correct?
ANSWER:
Although you have sent me this question without signature, I am going to make an exception to our rules and reply to it. The article to which you refer is undoubtedly the one I wrote for the Youth Page of The Banner, April 17, 1959. My source of information was an announcement that appeared in the Saturday Review. Unfortunately, I cannot at this writing lay my hands on the clipping. Apparently it is misplaced in my files. However, a similar announcement more recently has appeared in the October 28, 1959, issue of The Christian Century, page 1263. I have this reference before me on my desk, and will be glad to send it to you, if you will give me your name and address.
As for my criticism of modem amusements, particularly jazz and movies, I make no apologies. I do not hesitate to say that the run-of-the-mill productions of Hollywood already smell. Nothing need be added to give them stench. Time magazine, November 9, 1959, page 84, has this to say about a new Hollywood release: “The film treats adultery as casually as if there were nothing at all hoJy about matrimony”.
I will repeat what I said before, namely, that Hollywood seldom passes up an opportunity to convert obscene literature into a film. A new novel, soon to be published, has been described by none other than its author as “full of sex, drink, incest, suicide, dope, horse-racing, a scandalous legal procedure, with a good public hanging attended by 30,000.”
Imagine what that will smell likel