The Majestic Theater, East St. Louis

ALAN writes:

East St. Louis, Illinois, was named an All-American city in the 1950s. It stands directly across from St. Louis, in the shadow of the St. Louis Gateway Arch. 

One morning in 1937 three hundred people attended a Cinema Breakfast in the lobby of the beautiful Majestic Theater in downtown East St. Louis. The breakfast was held by the Better Films Council of East St. Louis. A photograph in their bulletin The Motion Picture and The Family shows 18 white women standing in the lobby. All are attired in dresses and hats. The Better Films Council and groups like it around the nation were principled advocates for high moral standards in motion pictures. (Obviously no such groups are needed today.) 

Seventy-four years later: The Majestic Theater has been closed for decades and stands today on a street of abandoned businesses and buildings in advanced stages of collapse. That street once thrived with shops and businesses. I spoke with a white woman who worked in the Woolworth’s dime store there. She has many fond memories from those years. That street is now the site of decay, abandonment, vandalism, and unaccountable government. Weeds grow on the roof of a tall building vacated by civilized human beings long ago. A Catholic Community Building (opened in 1920) has stood vacant for years with all its windows shattered. 

All that degradation lies today where an elegant movie theater once projected films depicting the highest ideals of civilized men and women. 

That culture and those ideals were surrendered long ago – by the Americans who built them and upheld them, to generations of people who became increasingly soft, undisciplined, and adolescent-witted. Such people hate the responsibility of enforcing rules and laws more than they hate anything else in life. 

Rectitude and propriety still had meaning for Americans in the 1930s. They were part of a longstanding moral code. Most Americans today wouldn’t know the meaning of those words. “Casual” and “non-judgmental” are among the anti-values and anti-standards they have absorbed in place of that firm code of ethics, and the results lie all around us: In decadent art, literature, music, entertainment, and decaying cities like East St. Louis. 

This is one example of why we are traditionalists. Some of us are old enough to remember that older and better American culture, reflected in that photograph from 1937. Those of us who aren’t quite that old are wise enough to learn from those who made that culture far better than what surrounds us today. 

Elegantly dressed white women could meet in downtown East St. Louis in 1937 without fear of being victimized by predatory black thugs or white Leftists who blame everyone but those thugs for their predation. 

Soft, undisciplined, perpetual-adolescent-witted Americans in 2011 have a long way to go in matching the moral fiber of those who made that possible.

                                                                           — Comments —

Alan adds:

A few additional notes for your possible interest: 

The Motion Picture and The Family was an eight-page bulletin published monthly in the 1930s by “The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc.” Will Hays was its president. It was distributed free of charge to community leaders who sought to promote high moral standards in motion pictures. I have browsed through 37 issues that are owned by the St. Louis Public Library (ranging between 1934 and 1938). I doubt that any of them (or any from other cities) are online. 

These bulletins provide a glimpse into another moral universe. 

An article in the May 15, 1935, issue is headlined “Teen Age Group Shows Its Scorn of Sexy Films.” A survey of 700 junior high school students in Green Bay, Wisconsin, revealed they did not care for sexy pictures or gangster pictures. 

The 1935-1936 issues include two photographs of high school students who had formed motion picture appreciation clubs, one in Pennsylvania and the other in Tennessee. In both pictures all the boys are wearing white shirts and ties, and many are in suits. The girls are wearing dresses or skirts that extend below-the-knee. 

“The primary purpose of the club [in Tenn.] is to encourage fine standards of English speech through the example set by the actors and actresses in certain carefully selected motion pictures.” (Sept. 15, 1935, issue) 

Can you imagine such things today? How backward those people were. They had yet to discover the joys of vulgarity, Ebonics, triple-X-rated movies, T-shirts, blue jeans, backward baseball caps, and other wonders of the modern world.

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