Zimmerman Hits Flynn, Chaplin in Second-Round Tirade at Filmdom

"The flagrant cases of Errol Flynn and Charlie Chaplin in propagating marital irresponsibility among the youth of this country are not sterilized by the example of the few nice people in Hollywood," Carle C. Zimmerman, assistant professor of Sociology, yesterday retorted to movie colony protests which had arisen because of a similar statement he had made recently.

Cause of the third broadside in the battle of national morals was the widely publicized statement by Zimmerman that "one of the first things that has to be done to preserve the family system is to clean out the group of decadent people in Hollywood." Indignant disclaimers had poured in from the cinema capital and yesterday Zimmerman felt called upon to enlarge his charges. Few areas of the Sunshine State were left untouched in his subsequent remarks.

The falling banner of filmdom was grasped after the opening gun by Ronald Reagan, father of two, who snapped back, "If the professor could be persuaded to leave the cloistered halls where intellectual inbreeding substitutes for the 'synthetic' life of Hollywood, I believe that we could show him that the people in the studios are a pretty good cross section of American life, no better, no worse."

Zimmerman, however, believes that the exceptions do not prove the rule and remarked that "taken as a whole, the Southern California and Hollywood radio and movie people represent a sophisticated and abnormal population and are the quintessence of upper class family disintegration.

He feels that the worship and imitation of the personal scandels of celebrities by youth has done immeasurable harm to the moral standards of the American people.

Entertainment without the aid of visual stimulation also came under the sociologist's fire when he added that "If anything can be worse than Hollywood, it is the radio and its soap operas. The enervating effect of such goulash on the masses is too great even to be estimated."