Narcotic

The working title of this film was They. The running time listed above was calculated from the footage given in NYSA records. The opening credits contain the following announcement: "This picture is presented in the hope that the public May become aware of the terrific struggle to rid the world of drug addiction....We sincerely dedicate this picture to those who have worked with unceasing effort and given freely of their time to this cause: The Prevention of Drug Addiction." The film then opens with a letter dated November 10, 1931 and signed "Will" which reads, "Dwain [presumably producer Dwain Esper]-It's 4 o'clock. Dawn is here, the devil's trumpets are bellowing. 'You can take it out of the body, but you can't get it out of the mind ...' but I have found a way."
       This was Dwain Esper's second film. According to a Film Daily news item, the film had been in preparation for eight months before shooting began, and Esper formed his own releasing organization for the film. In a brief for an appeal to a rejection of an application for a license to exhibit the film in New York State, producer Hildagarde Esper stated that in the production of the film, she "had the cooperation and active assistance of police officials in the Los Angeles Police Department one of whom actually furnished her with the drug paraphernalia" and that she "also received the active support and cooperation of officers of the federal government connected with the narcotic division." No further information concerning these claims has been located. In Dwain Esper's obituary in 1982, Variety noted that because his films were so controversial, "he handled them himself, taking prints from town to town and promoting them with sensational ads and displays."
       This film includes clips from other films, including footage of a roadster crashing into a vegetable wagon that originally appeared in the 1924 Thomas H. Ince Corp. production Broken Laws, which was produced by Mrs. Wallace Reid, a crusader against drug addiction (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1921-30; F2.0628). No reviews for Narcotic have been located. It was rejected for exhibition in the state of New York on October 6, 1933 for the following reasons, according to correspondence at NYSA: "Indecent, immoral, will tend to corrupt morals and incite to crime." Hildagarde Esper applied for a re-examination on October 9, 1933, stating that the film "is decent, moral and instead of corrupting, it uplifts morals, and instead of inciting to crime its tendency is to prevent it." The rejection was sustained on 10 Oct, and Esper appealed to the Commissioner of Education, claiming that the film "tends to discourage the use of illicit narcotic drugs" and citing as precedents for scenes to which objection was taken, supposedly similar scenes from films such as Footlight Parade, Scarface, The Story of Temple Drake, The Power and the Glory and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which were approved for showing in the state. On December 13, 1933, the appeal was dismissed.
       According to a March 5, 1934 Motion Picture Daily news item, Hays Office officials in Hollywood wired a complaint to the New York office stating that salacious advertising copy for the film, which was then showing in Los Angeles, had appeared in Los Angeles newspapers and was in direct violation of the production and advertising code. No further information concerning the complaint has been located. A May 1934 Motion Picture Daily news item described the film as a "frank exposition of the drug traffic 'for adults only.'" Because of protests from the Merchants' Association and the Women's City Club, the theater that was exhibiting the film in Kansas City was forced to "tone down" its public displays. The film was granted a certificate in that city only after "an extensive 'cleaning.'"