Tomorrow's Children

Cinema has always "exploited" social issues, including controversial ones. It is in the nature of the beast and an entirely proper function of the medium. Mainstream films frequently exploit voyeuristic sex, violence, even sadistic violence and all manner of "immorality" for its entertainment value. In this sense, so-called "exploitation" films are no different in kind.

The phenomenon as it existed in the US was a product of censorship. Censorship had always existed; William Hays did no more than codify on behalf of the industry the criteria that already existed.

These had been established by a more or less case-to-case basis over the years and a particularly instructive example is the well-documented debate over "white slavery" films in the 1910s. Essentially just films about prostitution rackets, the first "white slavery" films had been made in Denmark 1907-1910 and are often regarded as locus classicus of the exploitation film. They were unquestionably intended to exploit the subject for all it was worth and create a lucrative niche for the small Danish industry.

The US typically took the whole subject more seriously. It led to legislation (the Mann Act for 1910) and the films made there (in 1913) were less obviously exploitative. George Sloane Tucker's Traffic in Souls was sensationalised fiction much on the model of the Danish films but The Inside of the Slave Traffic produced by Samuel H. London was a more serious piece of work, more documentary in style and based on some solid research. It showed for instance the social problems particularly ill-paid employment) that led women into prostitution and castigated the role of police corruption.

Tucker's film was PASSED by the censors, enjoyed a very fair success in the cinemas and was even subsequently turned into a novel. London's film was convicted for "tendency to corrupt morals". The censors even urged London to make his film "more of a drama".

The case went to the heart of the US film industry. Tucker's film that was the first major success for Carl Laemmle newly-incorporated Universal. And the moral was clear. Drama and fiction were acceptable (even where they departed from or deformed the truth); truth was not.

So honest films on controversial subjects were henceforward condemned to the alternative unlicensed circuits - the "exploitation" film. But the films were not necessarily inherently exploitative nor was the exploitation the intention of the film-makers themselves. Reefer Madness for instance was commissioned by an entirely serious (if somewhat hysterical) anti-drug association; Child Marriage was a perfectly serious film on an entirely serious subject; one is decidedly exaggerated, the other is rather a good film.

The exploitation was a function of the marketing and the responsibility of the producers, whose sole concern was to make money. Obviously a certain cycle developed whereby this might in turn encourage the film-makers to dress up their subjects accordingly but the fact remained that the "exploitation" circuit was the only cinematic forum where such issues could be discussed.

This somewhat perverse situation had another more perverse corollary. The fiction films that entered the mainstream thus gained the reputation of portraying "the truth" while the films condemned to the "exploitation" circuit would be considered sensational, alarmist, even ridiculous. Look at the reviewer who thinks this films is just a bundle of laughs....

This film is a shade lurid (although the rather scifi/horror hospital is well imagined) but the issue it addresses is an entirely real one and an entirely serious one. "Eugenics" has become something of a dirty word since the forties (thank you, Mr. Hitler) and people now find it hard to believe how hugely widespread it was in the first decades of the twentieth century. It had huge support in the US. The eugenicist views of Teddy Roosevelt are well known (and were sometimes mocked in early film - see the films of Edwin S. Porter).

It is true that the sterilisation Laws were based on the states (the US is after all a federal system) but they had the sanction of the Supreme Court and received federal funding. Some twenty-eight states already had such legislation when this films appeared and laws were pending in several other states. They would eventually extend to the great majority.

Moreover eugenics represented a progressive, middle-class value. The European country which eventually had the most long-lived sterilisation programme was not Nazi Germany but progressive socialist Sweden. The US state with the most vigorous sterilisation programme was California (20,000 sterilisations). Ironically .the only state not to implement such programmes tended to be the backward, rural ones.

As shown in the film, these programmes primarily targeted the poor but they were also used against ill-favoured minorities (blacks and Mexicans notably in California). In some southern states (Mississipi was notorious) they were more or else an extension of the "Jim Crow" laws. Virginia was still practising forcible sterilisation in the seventies, Oregon as late as 1981.

The scenarist of this film is in fact the brilliant young black writer Wallace Thurman (best known for the 1929 novel The Blacker the Berry), who tragically died the same year, aged only 32.

Thurman and Wilbur had done their homework. The title of the film is in fact that which was intended by the American Eugenic society for their rewritten "catechism". This highly respectable society had been founded in 1921 and the Eugenics Catechism had first appeared in 1923. These worthy scientists were naturally hugely admiring of the Nazi Sterilisation Act (July 1933) which they instantly republished in translation. The Nazis went on to carry out some 300,000 sterilisations (the US is thought to have notched up about 60,000) but the President of the US Eugenic Society, Ellsworth Huntington, in the 1935 Tomorrow's Children: the Goals of Eugenics, would talk far more ambitiously of five million, six million.......

The Society changed its name in 1972 but it still exists.....

100% hysterical! This ancient cry for the end of forced sterilisation will have you bewildered, and laughing. The Board of Health wishes to streilise a family of nitwits. The parents are lazy boozehounds well past 70 years old, yet they have infant children! Their oldest daughter is up for the operation, but she's normal wants to marry some nice guy, and have kids. Highlights include a courtroom scene where a judge decides if an insane young man is to be sterilised. We know he's crackers cuz he has an Alfred E. Newman grin, has dark, wild raccoon eyes and giggles when he rips his nurse's gown off! Then there's a hospital scene where a Doctor uses kindly, almost baby talk to a tough Cagney-like gangster in explaining the sterilisation process. You won't want to miss these hy-jinks!

Alice Mason (Diane Sinclair) sure has her share of problems. She's the only one in her family who has a job; mom and dad spend the day guzzling cheap hootch and Dad won't even help clean the house because, he says, "That's no job for a man." Alice would like to marry her truck driver boyfriend Jim (Donald Douglas) but that would mean leaving her family alone. A well meaning but misguided doctor reports to the court that Alice's family is made up of "drunks, cripples and idiots" and suggests that the whole family be ordered by the court to be sterilised to prevent them for siring any more societal misfits like themselves.

Science fiction? A look into a possible Orwellian future? A warning against a Totalitarian government? Sorry but this is all true! When this movie was made 28 states had laws allowing mandatory sterilisation of criminals and people the courts deemed "unfit".

Okay now back to the review. As always the government is far from perfect. A drooling, hollow eyed psychotic is spared having to go under the knife even after he nearly assaults a nurse. Why? Because his dad is rich and slips the judge a big role of bills! Sadly Alice has no one to intercede for her except her boyfriend. Lucikly Jim learns an important clue about Alice from her drunken mother. Ah, but will he be in time to save her from the operation? For cryin' out loud Jim, drive faster!

Director Crane Wilbur was the brave hero in the action serial THE PERILS OF PAULINE (1914). He began to divide his time between acting and directing and this Poverty Row short is one of his efforts. He also went on to direct the 1959 remake of THE BAT; this one, starring Vincent Price, is the best remembered of all the versions.

Comedian Sterling Holloway pops up in a supporting role as an overworked intern whose efforts to take a much needed nap are constantly being spoiled. A year earlier Mr. Holloway had appeared in a musical number in the multi-starred comedy INTERNATIONAL HOUSE. He would go on to be the voice of Winnie The Pooh in several made for TV cartoons.

Sure TOMORROW'S CHILDREN is exploitation at its scariest but it's also a look into a dark aspect of past society.

Threatened with the loss of welfare benefits, Arthur Wanzer and Sarah Padden agree to their own sterilization, and those of their children. This includes Diane Sinclair, who wants to get married to Carlyle Blackwell Jr.. She tries to run away, but is recaptured. A court hearing results in the affirmation of the operation; she is only 17.

Forced sterilization was practiced in 30 states of the Union at the height of its..... well, call it popularity. It was considered a matter of good eugenics, one of the planks of the Progressive movement of the era. A case reached the US Supreme Court, in which Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Expostulated that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough!" even though the facts of the case did not support this; but then, the Supreme Court does not (usually) rule on facts, but the law.

This movie in which the facts clearly do not support forced sterilization, even if you consider it a good practice. It was produced by Bryan Foy, with Crane Wilbur directing, as well as appearing as the sympathetic priest. In this period, he was mostly writing for the movies, usually about subjects of moral importance. Because of his high standing on stage and screen, he got a good cast for this movie that was not distributed through the usual channels. They include Donald Douglas, Sterling Holloway, and in bit parts, Lane Chandler and Ray Corrigan.