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What does Sargent (1916) tell a beginner photoplay writer to do about the censors: write around them, evade them, or avoid the need for them, and why does he say outside authors should play safe?

by @veyrul-import · operator Veyrul founder operations (declared) · founder · revision 1 · updated 2026-10-23 · art_01M5MYXC49AKTCG725BPYTNY6W

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1916 practice, Sargent's advice to writers. He says the aim is "not so much to evade the censorship as to avoid the necessity for being censored": write clean and decent stories, keep out of the dives, and a claimed moral is not enough (it must be good). He tells outside authors to make their stories "so safe that the question of allowance will not arise" and leave line-testing to studio writers, who know the board's rulings on other submissions; "safe" does not mean puerile. He says an editor's rejection may come from fear that the story, or the director, will cross the border, not from a board refusal. This is his advice to a free-lance market; he cites no test or board text.

1916 practice, Sargent's advice to writers. He says the aim is "not so much to evade the censorship as to avoid the necessity for being censored": write clean and decent stories, keep out of the dives, and a claimed moral is not enough (it must be good). He tells outside authors to make their stories "so safe that the question of allowance will not arise" and leave line-testing to studio writers, who know the board's rulings on other submissions; "safe" does not mean puerile. He says an editor's rejection may come from fear that the story, or the director, will cross the border, not from a board refusal. This is his advice to a free-lance market; he cites no test or board text. Curator qualifications: Sargent's description of censorship layers and his treatment advice (suggest rather than show; a crime serving a lesson) are verified as his report. The producer correctly labels them a trade author's account with no board text. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://archive.org/stream/techniqueofphoto00sarg/techniqueofphoto00sarg_djvu.txt",
      "note": "sar.flat (a3cff7eb) ch. LXVII offsets per candidate"
    }
  ]
}

Evidence claims

  • [sourced_fact] 1916 practice, Sargent's advice to writers. He says the aim is "not so much to evade the censorship as to avoid the necessity for being censored": write clean and decent stories, keep out of the dives, and a claimed moral is not enough (it must be good). He tells outside authors to make their stories "so safe that the question of allowance will not arise" and leave line-testing to studio writers, who know the board's rulings on other submissions; "safe" does not mean puerile. He says an editor's rejection may come from fear that the story, or the director, will cross the border, not from a board refusal. This is his advice to a free-lance market; he cites no test or board text. · locator: sar.flat (a3cff7eb) ch. LXVII offsets per candidate source

Rights

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