Do Pajamas = Nudity? NYC DA Threatens Theater Prosecutions
New York City District Attorney Banton on this day threatened to prosecute theaters for “stage nudity,” which he explained meant women on stage in pajamas. He called this “the nearest thing to nudity.”
Some recent plays, he added, had contained some “rather frank situations and dialogue on sex questions,” which he regarded as possibly objectionable.
DA Banton, as reported in the New York Times, was extremely vague about what exactly breached the law, and for example, refused to give a definition of “nudity.” On the one hand he asserted, “I am not a censor,” while also declaring that “The New York stage must be rid of naked women.”
The incident was part of a censorship tradition in the early twentieth century focusing on women’s dress, particularly swimsuits, which local moralists regarded as “immoral. See, for example, February 25, 1917, when authorities ordered “modesty” in Atlantic City, New Jersey cabarets; February 7, 1919 when “society women” opposed “indecent evening gowns; July 28, 1920 when one-piece swimsuits were approved on Long Island, New York; and June 16, 1921 when New York film censors rejected a beach scene with women in swimsuits.
Standards of modesty also applied, although much less rigorously, to men. On July 16, 1936, Westchester County, NY, continued to ban men from wearing “topless” swimsuits.
Read: John H. Houchin, Censorship of the American Theater in the Twentieth Century (2003)