John Wayne saw the path that downward path that Hollywood was on all the way back in 1971 when he blasted the studio executives as “high class whores.”
When asked how he felt about the state of the motion-picture business today, Wayne shared in an interview, “I'm glad I won't be around much longer to see what they do with it. The men who control the big studios today are stock manipulators and bankers. They know nothing about our business. They're in it for the buck.”
“The only thing they can do is say, 'Jeez, that picture with what's-her-name running around the park naked made money, so let's make another one. If that's what they want, let's give it to them.' Some of these guys remind me of high-class whores,” he observed.
He went on to add, “As much as I couldn't stand some of the old-time moguls—especially Harry Cohn—these men took an interest in the future of their business. They had integrity.”
“There was a stretch when they realized that they'd made a hero out of the goddamn gangster heavy in crime movies, that they were doing a discredit to our country,” he explained. “So the moguls voluntarily took it upon themselves to stop making gangster pictures. No censorship from the outside. They were responsible to the public.”
In contrast, he noted how the executives of his day had no problem pushing immorality on moviegoers, “But today's executives don't give a damn. In their efforts to grab the box office that these sex pictures are attracting, they're producing garbage. They're taking advantage of the fact that nobody wants to be called a bluenose.”
Finally, he predicted, “But they're going to reach the point where the American people will say, "The hell with this!" And once they do, we'll have censorship in every state, in every city, and there'll be no way you can make even a worthwhile picture for adults and have it acceptable for national release.”
When asked if the ratings system would prevent the spread of this immorality, Wayne accurately noted, “Every time they rate a picture, they let a little more go.”
Next, he shared how the rating system in general is ridiculous and would not even be necessary if moral men were still in charge, “Ratings are ridiculous to begin with. There was no need for rated pictures when the major studios were in control. Movies were once made for the whole family. Now, with the kind of junk the studios are cranking out—and the jacked-up prices they're charging for the privilege of seeing it—the average family is staying home and watching television. I'm quite sure that within two or three years, Americans will be completely fed up with these perverted films.”
Wayne was not the only one to make such criticisms. It’s A Wonderful Life director Frank Capra made similar comments in his book The Name Above the Title, which was also published in 1971.
Capra wrote:
The winds of change blew through the dream factories of make-believe, tore at its crinoline tatters... The hedonists, the homosexuals, the hemophiliac bleeding hearts, the God-haters, the quick-buck artists who substituted shock for talent, all cried: ‘Shake ’em! Rattle ’em! God is dead. Long live pleasure! Nudity? Yea! Wife-swapping? Yea! Liberate the world from prudery. Emancipate our films from morality!’ ... Kill for thrill—shock! Shock! To hell with the good in man, Dredge up his evil—shock! Shock! Practically all the Hollywood film-making of today is stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardization of a great art to compete for the ‘patronage’ of deviates and masturbators.
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Wow, Frank Capra really called it.