Gossip Friday: Two Worried Mothers

Letter to the editor, February 1935:

We are two young mothers who feel it our duty to not let the evil influence of our cinema contaminate the innocent young minds of our children. You can imagine our distress when we found out that our little Freddie, aged ten, and Johnnie, aged eleven, had wandered into the neighborhood theater during the showing of “Dancing Lady.”  We feel that such pictures are a menace to civilizaton and that they should be abolished.

Our little ones now prefer to attend an evening show instead of hearing bedtime stories. “Peter Rabbit” and “Bunny Brown” are being sadly neglected these days.

We wonder if such actresses as Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer realize their evil influence upon the youth of America, and such actors as Clark Gable and James Cagney–we shudder at their very names. Let us have more of Janet Gaynor’s pure, wholesome films so that we may take the kiddies to an occaisonal clean show.

The one player who has our vote for the kiddies is that young actor Max Baer, whose ethereal charm makes him the ideal of the mothers of America. Let us have more of Max Baer. We think he’s cute!

–Two Worried Mothers

Beach Haven, New Jersey

_____

Wow, makes you wonder what these two worried mothers would think of what is out in theaters in 2014…

And I’m sure little Freddie and little Johnnie turned out just fine and not forever tainted by the memory of Dancing Lady…