Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/192

180 effeet. that the comic book, My Friend Irma, so-called royalty-type book, was in practice an advertising device featuring a central charac- ter. You see, My Friend Irma is a title on it by Cy Howard who, I believe, at that time was under contract with CBS and there was a series of My Friend Irma motion pictures as well as radio and tele- viston shows. In any event, the Post Office considered that our comic book, for which we paid a royalty to CBS on a per copy sold basis, was an advertising device featuring building up and enhaneing the value of My I*riend Imma, and they cracked down on it and said we were not entitled to second-class privileges. There was quite a hassle about it. Unfortunately we lost.

That set a pattern for the industry generally. Jt did not affect titles to which seeond-class entry had been granted prior to that de- cision, but since that time it is not possible to obtain second-class mail- ing privileges on so-called royalty-type books. I wish we had a lot inore of them.

iL have a few more comments, We were talking about the fact that we certainly know that we cannot change people's taste. Unfor- iunately this was very upsetting, to try to pat out something that has a great deal of moral, esthetic value, and have it backfire like that. Thai does not mean that we should cater to every literary demand that will sel], but the lines in a few fields are noi clearly defined.

If the gentlemen on your committee would tell us what we should produce in a comic fechuique such books probably would not sell. We have diseussed this problem with many decent, intelligent per- sons, educators, psychiatrists, clear-thinking members of PTA groups, ministers, and soon, Inevitably such persons, if they do have eriti- cisms, recommend a type of comic book which would appeal only to the small intellectual minority in the United States, and which would be basically uneconomic and inconsistent with the pattern followed by the other vast media.

Senator. That applies somewhat to television, so-called edueational, documentary films, radio programs?

Mr. . Yes, sir.

Senator. The word "educational" sometimes causes people to

Mr. . It has to be sugar-coated and made palatable. That ig what we tried to do here.

If something were to happen to change the demand of our reading public so that the only comic that would sell would be simple, ami- mated comicsand we have raade books in that fieldwe would be all right.

I can assure you that we would definitely get our share of such tmsiness, but while the rules of the game are as they are, we wish to mainiain a foothold in all areas of comic fields, however tenuous that hold may be, with one tremendous provision, and that is that there is no proven evidence of harm to the reader.

It is just as wrong to take motion picture selected stills and show bare legs and so forth and use the picture as representative of the entire Industry as it is to take a relatively small number of comic books and brand a linc or the industry.

At least 95 percent of our production is completely defensible and our remaining 5 percent may be in the arca of mixed opinion. But in our opinion, it is injurious to none.