Religious involvement in censorship
In the early part of the 20th century the movie industry was under heavy pressures from many external sources calling for the cleansing of the American Cinema. Jowett (1990) notes the major secular call came from the Chicago City Council, whom on November 4th 1907 enacted an ordinance which empowered the General Superintendent of Police to issue permits for the exhibition of motion pictures. These permits could be refused if the Superintendent deemed the film in question to be “obscene or [portraying] depravity, criminality or lack the virtue of a class of citizens of any race, color, creed of religion, and [exposing] [the audience] to contempt, derision, or obloquy…” (Paragraph 1). According to Black (1996) the major religious voice calling for a change during this time period, the Catholic Church was the driving voice of religion in the quest to “purify” films. The most notable act of Catholic Censorship was Father Daniel Lord, S.J., who believed the movies were corrupting American moral values. To oppose the influence of immoral movies he wrote a movie code that prohibited films from glorifying criminals, gangsters, adulterers, and prostitutes, (p. 1). Lord’s code soon became the standard of film production, it banned nudity, excessive violence, white slavery, illegal drug use, interracial marriage or cohabitation, lustful kissing, suggestive postures, and profanity uttered from the screen, (Black, G. D. 1996, p 2).
The subject of censorship was nothing new to the Catholic Church, their experience was probably the dominate reason they were so successful in their attempts to censor the silver screen. Jelen (1996) remarks “For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has taken a firm position on the issue of intellectual freedom. For much of its modern history, the church has published an Index of Forbidden Books (Index Lubrorum Prohibitorum) which was generally proscribed reading for a Roman Catholic laity, (p 39). This reformation view of teleology prompted the Catholics to have a more engaged position than did most Protestant groups. The Catholics, while being a minority were still able to provide influence for models for those of other traditions. Jowett (1990) concedes, Will Hays was an astute politician, and he was therefore aware that while the reformers represented a distinct minority opinion, they were nevertheless able to garner significant publicity for their cause to make the movies more socially responsible (Paragraph 28).
As a result of the publication of the Catholic Code of Self Censorship, the Will Hays office adopted it and used it as the standard for which it would judge and determine films on the basis of whether they were acceptable or not for viewing. The film industry had instituted the office of Will Hays to combat the growing list of problems it faced. It decided to follow the lead of ironically professional baseball, which was going through the World Series betting scandal of 1919, and professional baseball had turned to an individual. The film industry did the same, and the individual they selected was Will Hays, then the postmaster general of the Harding administration, and an elder of the Presbyterian Church, (Jowett, G. 1990 Paragraph 24). Jowett continues to say the film industry was hoping that Hays’ religious standing would assuage the pressure they were feeling from religious groups to censor their films; and were relying on Hays’ political experience gained from being Harding’s campaign manager to deal with the threats from federal censorship, and also the administrative skills necessary to organize the movie industry, (Paragraph 24). The Hays Office movie code was not only written by a Catholic (Father Daniel Lord, S.J.) but also a Catholic was hired to enforce the code in Will Hays Office, and that man was Joseph Breen, who maintained that movies did not have the same latitude as books, plays, magazines, and newspapers, in presenting alternative views on controversial topics to a mass audience. Breen upheld that no film, foreign or domestic, played in any major American theater without being submitted to industry censors who used Lord’s (the Catholic father, not the name for God) code to determine acceptable screen material (Black, G.D. 1996 p 2).
The Catholic dominance over the film industry did not fall off with the Will Hays office, or the writing of Father Lord’s code, however gaining steam with the creation of the Legion of Decency (LOD) in 1934, millions signed pledges to boycott movies judged immoral by church authorities but still allowed to be shown by the film industry (Black, G.D. 1996 p 2). In fact, after the mid 1930’s it became near impossible according to Catholic code, and LOD code to even produce a realistic version of such great literary works as Zola’s Nana, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, or Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, these novels according to the Legion of Decency were too frank in their discussions of adultery, corruption, and injustice; their screen versions were altered to make them more in tune with the conservative moral, political, and economic value system that dominated the movie censorship codes, (Black, G.D. 1996 p 6).
As mentioned above the conservative moral, political and economic value system was at the root of why the censorship codes survived and flourished up until the mid to late 1960’s. Black remarks in his book (1996) that in the 19320’s and following movies did not enjoy the same freedom of expression as the printed word or theatrical performances. Even the most democratic of art forms had to be regulated, Father Lord argued, because movies transcended social, economic, political, and educational boundaries. Movies brought millions to the theatres; and Father Lord felt that in order to protect the masses from the evil influence of the movies they had to be censored heavily, (pp 1-2). Also with the advent of media, and the popularity of newspapers it was easy for other religious groups to hop on the censorship bandwagon. While no other group ever met, or exceeded the Catholics in the quest for censorship, by the end of 1932 nearly 40 national religious organizations and educational groups had adopted resolutions calling for some form of federal regulation of the motion picture industry, (Jowett, G. 1990 Paragraph 35). Another thing that aided the Catholic code in succeeding culturally was the fact the code itself while originally drafted by members of the Catholic Church was based on the Ten Commandments, which was the basic moral unity of the Western Civilization at that time (Moley, R. 1971 p 71). A final piece to the cultural puzzle will point us in the direction of a supreme court ruling from February of 1915, as quoted in Jowett’s article (1990) the supreme court of the United States handed down a unanimous decision in the Mutual Film Corporation v Industrial Commission of Ohio, which denied the movies the constitutional guarantees of speech and press (paragraph 13); perhaps it was the supreme court ruling that allowed the code to be written in the first place. Without constitutional protection, the film industry was a sitting duck to censorship.
