1953 July 8

Eeek! A Virgin! The Film “The Moon is Blue” Premiers in New York

 

The film The Moon is Blue premiered in New York City on this day and was released without a Seal of Approval in a challenge to the censorship of the Motion Picture Production Code.

At one point in the negotiations with Producer-Director Otto Preminger, the Code office said the film had “an unacceptably light attitude towards seduction, illicit sex, chastity, and virginity.” A disgusted Preminger decided to challenge the Code by releasing the film without a Seal of Approval.

After the film did well in selected releases in a few cities, United Artists released it nationwide, and it proved to be a box office success. This convinced Preminger to challenge the Code with other films.

The leaders of the film industry had adopted the highly restrictive Motion Picture Production Code on June 13, 1934.

The Moon is Blue received a “C” rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency, and was banned in Boston, Kansas, Ohio, and Maryland. In Chicago, only adults were admitted. Jersey City, New Jersey, banned the film because it portrayed the state as “indecent and obscene.”

There is some debate among film critics about whether Code officials objected to the word “virgin,” or the fact that the script made fun of the young woman because she was a virgin, or both. The Supreme Court on October 24, 1955 overturned a ban on the film by the Kansas state censorship board.

Preminger was also instrumental in breaking the Cold War Hollywood blacklist of directors, writers and actors because of their political views, when on January 20, 1960 he announced that he was hiring the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to write the script for the film Exodus.

Learn about the movie, The Moon is Blue (1953): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046094/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Learn more about Otto Preminger:  Otto Preminger, Preminger: An Autobiography (1977)

See a timeline of film censorship: https://www.aclu.org/files/multimedia/censorshiptimeline.html

Read: Foster Hirsch, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King (2007)

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