1934 July 14

Catholic Legion of Decency, Protestant Churches, Launch “Clean Film” Drive

 

The Catholic Legion of Decency and Protestant churches affiliated with the Federal Council of Churches on this day ordered bulk copies of a pledge to boycott “indecent” motion pictures as part of a nationwide “clean film” campaign.

In New York City, the campaign included a pastoral letter from the Cardinal would be read in all Catholic churches the following Sunday.

The boycott of allegedly indecent films led by Catholic Church figures, had begun the year before, and had already scored a major victory with the 1934 Motion Picture Production Code, adopted on June 13, 1934. The Code involved a voluntary self-censorship process by the major Hollywood studios, and it imposed a repressive regime of censorship on American movies through the 1960s.

The last desperate attempt of Hollywood to control  “indecency” and violence was the ratings system, which rated films as G, PG, R, and for a while, X, which went into effect on November 1, 1968. But even it soon had to be modified.

Learn about “pre-Code” Hollywood films: Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934 (1999)

Read a 1934 story about the Legion of Decency here

See a timeline on film censorship in the U.S.: https://www.aclu.org/files/multimedia/censorshiptimeline.html

Read about the Legion of Decency: Greg Black,  Catholic Crusade Against the Movies: 1940–1975 (1998)

Learn more: Frank Walsh, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (1996)

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