The picture on the left is of 1910 Essanay actor Warren Kerrigan otherwise known as the "Gibson Man"; the picture on the right is of 2000 era Colin Firth.The first photo is from The New York Dramatic Mirror, July 1910, the second I stole off the Net. So it's not in the public domain.  The snippets below are from the same issue of the Dramatic Mirror and discuss movie censorship of the era, overseen by 'pious moral regulators'. I included Colin's picture (and you can believe me if you want to) because his latest film Where the Truth Lies (Atom Egoyan) was recently deemed too disturbing for teenagers, basically and given a NC 17 rating in the US because of a certain scene, which it could be argued is no more graphic than a lot of stuff in many movies rated R (R-bitrary?) PG 16.  A 2006 documentary, This Film is Not Yet Rated, covered the topic.

From section The Motion Picture Field in New York Dramatic Mirror, July 23, 1910


In the midst of the recent deluge in motion  picture denunciation from zealous but badly informed social regulators, not to mention those pious moralists, the police, it is peculiarly pleasing to note a sane view of the matter in a prominent religious journal. The Congregationalist and the Christian World. George J Anderson writing especially for that publication, describes the business of picture production as it really exists and says pertinently:

While no one can be blind to the fact of its great possibilities for evil as well as for good, the moving picture has neither done as much harm nor deserved such imprecations as have been put upon it by well-meaning but uniformed Christian people. The Church particularly cannot afford to adopt toward it that prejudicial attitude so often maintained toward the theatre in general.

Further along, after describing a session of the voluntary censorship board which 'really supervises the national supply two months before it is distributed to the exchanges' he keenly remarks the 'ridiculous' aspects of some of the wild outcries, editorial and otherwise, on vicious moving pictures.

He has seen pictures in the making and the exhibiting. The social regulators and uplift enthusiasts would be forced to change their opinions if they would investigate with unprejudiced minds, as Mr. Anderson has recently done.

The Press and its role in vilifying movies, ah, motion pictures;  The Motion Picture vs. Moving Picture; Movies Vs Theatre.. More from Editorial Section in Dramatic CLICK HERE

Movie Documentaries in 1910. Movies and Race: The controversy over Johnson Jeffries Fight Film. And Edison helps out Sir Wilfrid Laurier (maybe).