Movies and morals on the cutting-room floor
Movies and morals on the cutting-room floor
A scene from Soldiers of the Cross where Perpetua comes before the Pro-Consul.
The Salvation Army, a bombastic, lively offshoot of Methodism, grew rapidly on Australian soil. It grew connections with governments and business leaders and got into trouble with councils and publicans for its teetotal campaigns and rowdy music. Gradually, from heartbreak to heartbreak, generation to generation, The Salvation Army was deemed to be ‘fair dinkum’.
The Salvos, as Australians grew to know them, loved, converted and helped people heal and grow. They housed them, fed them, entertained them, and got them off booze, opium and tobacco. They comforted them in times of loss and disaster, took them out of brothels, tended to their wounds and illnesses, gave them jobs, and searched for and found their missing relatives.
They visited them in prison or hospital. They gave them trombones and cornets to blow, drums to whack, and timbrels to rattle. They officiated by swearing them in as God’s soldiers, marrying them, dedicating their kids to God, and burying them and their lost ones. They went to war with them, not to shoot or stab the enemy – no human was their enemy – but to pray with them and comfort them.
Three slides from Soldiers of the Cross.
For some time, a golden era of Salvo engagement with popular culture, the Salvos were also pioneers in the use of film. With Soldiers of the Cross – a multimedia extravaganza that used numerous 90-second lengths of film in narrative drama depicting Christian martyrs being slain for their faith – the Salvos had people fainting in the aisles. They won converts, raised money to fund their social and evangelical work, and introduced thousands of Australians to moving images.
With their efforts, the Federation of Australia, on behalf of the newly minted federal government, the Salvos shared the message of national unity and made the world’s first-ever film documentary.
For the years that the Salvos’ Limelight Department and Biorama Troops existed, they crisscrossed the cities and hamlets of Australia and New Zealand, spreading joy and the Christian message and raising hundreds of thousands of pounds.
In his autobiography, Aggressive Salvationism, Commissioner James Hay declared himself to be the man who chose to cut off film-making from the Salvation Army’s pastimes.
A dour Scotsman, Commissioner Hay understood the value of publicity and fundraising. In the UK, he’d proved himself by staging the Army’s ‘campaigns’, and ‘special demonstrations’. He was also something of a frustrated dramatist himself. He’d been converted in Govan, Glasgow, at ‘that old theatre where I had seen all manner of plays and foolishness. Religion in an ill-smelling theatre!’
A keen admirer of his own skills and a firm believer in his own judgments, Commissioner Hay said of his early days (undertaking a demanding role at ‘The Army Headquarters in London’) that the job was one where ‘weaklings wilted while more resolved and more self-reliant characters expanded in knowledge and moral and spiritual character’.
Commissioner James Hay led The Salvation Army in Australia from 1909 to 1921 and was responsible for shutting down the Army’s flourishing Limelight Department that produced evangelistic movies.
Not a fan of comedy or ‘lightness’, Commissioner Hay closed film-making down when he was in charge of the Salvos in Australia. He did not rate the movies. In fact, he believed they were leading the Salvos down a slippery slope towards ‘naughtiness’.
Listing his achievements and ‘records of advances of Salvation Army work in Australia, 1909 to 1921’, Commissioner Hay said, “it should be noted that the cinema, as conducted by The Salvation Army, had led to weakness and a lightness incompatible with true Salvationism, and was completely ended by me. This had affected many aspects of finance at the time, but within two years, the income of every department was greater than ever. It may be argued that the cinema was surrounded with pious hopes that the still or motion picture would make great impressions. Alas, for that hope! Money-makers from the showmen of the entertaining world swept this off its moral base, and now it is the HABITATION OF ALL MANNER OF UNCLEAN THINGS ...”
Other factors also included the financial disincentive of losing government contracts and the financial costs of producing and touring with new films. But the main reason listed for leaving off from film-making was an ethical choice: other production companies making movies (hello Hollywood) were licentious, depicting violence (of the non-martyr persuasion), and confronting sights such as men and women kissing. Heaven forbid!
Puritanism reigned, and The Salvation Army no longer made films.
Disengagement from what Commissioner Hay and his peers viewed as the ‘sinful’ popular culture meant that it was deemed naughty for Salvos to attend a movie, go to a football game, go to the beach or otherwise enjoy recreation – especially on ‘the Sabbath’.
As technology advanced, and the lure of cinema became a salve during war, financial crises and social unrest, Salvos continued to be isolated from that arm of popular culture. It was still considered ‘sinful’ for a Salvationist to go to the movies in the 1950s and ’60s.
As for Commissioner Hay, while he considered the movies to be forbidden, it didn’t stop him in retirement from frequently attaching himself ‘to queues and cinemas’. His motivation? “To invite those near me to the meetings and say a few words calculated to lead their thoughts to higher planes.”
Of course, if he’d seen the value in continuing to serve up salvation through the medium of the movies, his audience could already have been captive, sitting snugly inside – inside chewing on popcorn and mulling over the Salvos’ message.
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