Cinema: Scotch Accent

That Hollywood influences manners and morals is a fairly prevalent theory. Recent evidence: the Shirley Temple coiffure, Mae West’s gusty wisecracks, Holly-wood halo-hats, a break on the rising consumption of native U. S. whiskey. To relate this last-named fact to the cinema involved a statistical triumph of sorts, but the researchersof the Distilled Spirits Institute (formed after Repeal and headed by erstwhile Prohibition officer Dr. James M. Doran) collated the findings of its sober field workers, arrived at the conclusion that screen bibbers were shown drinking Scotch almost exclusively, to the detriment of an impressionable public.

To Hollywood’s Hays office, the Institute last month complained: “This Institute is, of course, composed entirely of producers of American whiskey such as rye and bourbon, and they feel that an imported product which contributes little or nothing to the economic life of the U. S. seems to be unduly favored. It is not their contention that rye or bourbon should be specified, but that it might be possible to use merely the term ‘whiskey and soda’ which . . . would, even in pictures with an English setting, be more correct since it is the form the British use.”