If They Prohibit Booze in Movies, No More Drunken Bullies to Fight

1919

WILL THE DRY WAVE AFFECT THE MOVIES

Here's Henry Lehrman's Humorous Account of Substituting Tea for Booze

The recent intimation that the depiction of intoxicating liquors and their effect on the consumers thereof will in future be taboo in motion pictures has brought consternation to the hearts of producers, who have already begun to wonder what will happen when the reels are really removed from the films. Henry Lehrman, the noted comedy producer, having duly sworn, deposes and says:

If wet goods must disappear from film comedy, bald-headed theatre patrons may find comfort in the fact that dry goods are following in the same pathway.

Many a film actor will sprain his ankle within the next few months, when he strides up to a coffee counter and reaches for the rail.

It is a sad thing to realize that the kick in comedies must now be registered entirely with the feet.

Picture the hero, disappointed in love, rushing off to a tea room and making a beast of himself on Lipton's Best.

How can he save the heroine from the drunken bully, if there are no drunken bullies?

We will now be confronted with the spectacle of the weak but willing hero going west to fight off an inherited craving for orange phosphate, and clapping on a gas mask every time he approaches a fruit stand.

If a ship captain can't take a schooner over the bar, will they even prevent his making port in a storm? Can we show a horse's neck or a bier? How about the old parlor wood-box, if there happens to be a stick in it?

We are ruined! They're going to take the punch out of the pictures!

—Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne, IN, Aug. 10, 1919, section 4, p. 5.