Influence Is Hard to Dispute

In the movie “The Program,” which set out to be an expose of the abuses that coaching staffs bring to college football but ended up as emotional and cheerleading as a remake of “Navy Blue And Gold,” there is a scene where the star quarterback decides to prove his machismo by lying down in the middle of a busy highway at night, reading a magazine. Almost reluctantly, several of his teammates join him. Traffic swerves around them at the last second, horns blaring, curses rising.

Now, I don’t know how this scene got in the script. (“Hey, Solly! I got it! How about if we have What’s-his-name? the hero, lie down in the middle of the freeway? Is that picture? Will they love it in the sticks?”)

They sure did. In the little town of Stoneboro, Pa., an 18-year-old boy tried a copy-cat stunt. He lay down in the middle of U.S. 62. He was killed by a truck. A buddy was seriously injured.

This, coming on the heels of the episode in which a 5-year-old, apparently prompted by a scene from the cartoon show, “Beavis and Butt-head,” a pair of mutants given to pyromania, set a fire that killed his baby sister.

Is Hollywood or the entertainment industry at fault?

They’ll never admit it.

Many years ago, when I was in the magazine business and my beat was Hollywood, we used to have lively discussions (read: arguments) as to the impact of films on behavior.

To me, the proposition was simple: If the farm girl in Kansas saw Joan Crawford dallying with the hired man, that was the thing to do. My colleagues, almost to a man, hooted. Hollywood was apoplectic. No one was ever ruined by a movie or a book, they retorted. Hollywood’s influence on public mores was exaggerated.

Really?

In 1934, Hollywood made a great Frank Capra film, “It Happened One Night.” In it, the stars, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, had to share a motel room. In that more circumspect day, the script called for them to hang a sheet between the beds, separating one side of the room from another. “The walls of Jericho,” the stars called it.

When the camera panned to Gable disrobing, it showed him removing his shirt--horrors!--and he wasn’t wearing an undershirt!

Can you believe what that did to the cotton undershirt business? Hardly a young man from coast to coast would be caught wearing one after that. It almost wrecked an industry, put people out of work.

That one scene also spawned an industry. From then on, representatives of key industries maintained representatives in Hollywood whose main purpose was to see to it that their products found their way into movies.

A refrigerator company would dress a complete set, and donate refrigerators to the crew and cast, if, say, their Kelvinator was prominently featured. Motor car companies furnished fleets to the films if only one of their models was seen being driven by the star.

An entrepreneur named Adolphe Wenland set up a business providing free prizes to radio show contests. It ended up with some companies helping bankroll the pictures if their products were prominently featured. Corporate marketers indulged in “tie-ins,” in which the movie’s name on a cup or plate not only hawks the movie but sells hamburgers. Corporate America well understands this.

This, it would seem to argue, provided dramatic proof that whatever Hollywood showed, the world did.

But Hollywood pooh-poohed the image. The movie makers continued to downplay their influence. That’s because they feared censorship. They feared that the ticket-selling excesses of sex and violence would be legislated out of existence if they admitted how powerful were their influences.

But they spoke out of both sides of their mouths. Because, when smoking became the crime of the century, when the dangers of even secondary smoke became apparent and when drinking became not a social grace but a disease, Hollywood fell into line. This censorship they approved of.

It used to be a standard bit of business for the star to light up a cigarette--Paul Henreid used to light up two in one award-winning film with Ingrid Bergman--or to take a drink. It filled in the dramatic pauses.

Now if you see an actor light a cigarette or take a drink, he’s the bad guy.

Where does this leave Art with a capital A? Well, Hollywood art may be an oxymoron.

There is some question as to whether Hollywood invented the lie-down-and-die sequence or whether they had picked it up after hearing about it as a practice of juveniles playing chicken in other parts of the country. In other words, it was a case of art imitating life rather than vice versa.

It goes to the whole question of role models. Movie stars are probably as reluctant to accept that responsibility as sports stars. Bogart probably didn’t want to encourage anyone to pursue a life of crime--but don’t bet he didn’t.

Sports stars protest the role-model image. But when Wilt Chamberlain showed up in headbands and wrist bands, hardly a playground in the country didn’t have kids wearing them. Madison Avenue knows this. If Michael Jordan holds up a shoe, every kid in the country wants one.

They don’t mind being role models if it sells shoes or soft drinks. But if it interferes with their baser drives, they holler for their privacy.

Hollywood induces behavior modification, always has. We don’t have heroes anymore. We have mass killers--Rambos, Terminators. Their robotic insensitivity to death seems to be reflected in the national homicide rates. They can argue they’re simply portraying a homicidal country. Just hope a homicidal country isn’t portraying them.

Hollywood can’t put a “Don’t try this at home” disclaimer on the foot of its scenes.

It has removed the offending sequence from “The Program.” It might have been better if they had showed one of the actors getting “killed” in the original scene. The life they saved would have been a real one.