Source: Samuel Roth, Stone walls do not: the chronicle of a captivity (New York: William Faro, 1930), volume 2, pp. 297-298
Text: To-night we had the second entertainment of the season, a cinema show in the dining-room. Last week it was a picture called Telling the World. It featured a young gentleman named William Haines and a young woman named Anita Page, and it was enjoyed hugely because almost all of the love scenes were clowned by the clever Mr. Haines, and not too much was shown of the pudgy Miss Page. Last night’s entertainment, Forbidden Hours, did not fare so well. It pictured that Italian-American gentleman Ramon Navarro levelling a battery of celluloid charms at the quaintly attractive Rene Adoree, and even had the picture had some merit of pictorial honesty or beauty (which it didn’t) it could not have been liked by the thousand womenless men who watched it.
After a few passages the picture was lost on me entirely. When I see Mr. Novarro in a naval or military uniform I cannot help remembering his sleek-haired contemporary in South Prison who tortured that old “obso” to within a few hours of his pitiful end. And to keep myself from generalizing on the whole race of Navarro, I was even willing to deprive myself (who was to remain womanless for sixteen more days) of the pleasure of losing myself in the comforting admiration of the features of Miss Adoree. So, instead of continuing to watch the picture I observed the reactions of the men (some of whom had been years without women, and with many womenless years before them) to the violent passages in the conduct of the story.
It may be due chiefly to the fact that the plot was so unplausible [sic], but the audience disapproved of almost everything it saw. I do not think, however, that the men’s cynical looks and remarks arose from the demerits of the picture alone. Without consciously meaning to do so, they were resenting being reminded of the chief humiliation of being in confinement: the enforced separation from the feminine world. I do not think it is possible to visit a man with a greater humiliation, unless one were to castrate him.
Comments: Samuel Roth (1893-1974) was an American publisher, known for championing (and pirating) progressive authors such as James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, who was imprisoned in 1929 for distributing pornography. Stone walls do not is an account of his imprisonment. The films mentioned are Telling the World (USA 1928) and Forbidden Hours (USA 1928). The ‘obsco’ refers to a prisoner under observation who had been taunted before his death by an Italian-American inmate.
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