“Respectful Prostitute” Play Banned in Chicago Over Race Issues
The play The Respectful Prostitute, by the noted French philosopher and author Jean-Paul Sartre, was banned in Chicago on this day. Chicago theater and film censor Harry Fulmer argued that the play would offend African-Americans.
The play involves an incident that occurred on a train where an African-American man was falsely accused of attacking a white woman, when in fact a white man perpetrated the attack. National NAACP Director Walter White gave the play his “unqualified endorsement,” but was unsuccessful in preventing the ban.
In addition to the Chicago censorship, some people in the U.S. accused Sartre, known for his leftist politics, of being “un-American.”
The play is believed to be loosely based, or at least inspired by the famous 1930’s Scottsboro case in the U.S., in which nine young African American males were accused of rape by two white women in Alabama.
A French and French language film version of the play was released in France in 1952, although its U.S. release was delayed many years (it opened in New York City in 1975, for example). By the standards of Hollywood, the film was a very gritty portrayal of racist violence. The distributor applied for a Production Code seal of approval, but rejected the PCA’s demand for changes in the title and content and released the film without a seal. The film was banned in Kansss (for immorality and prostitution) and Virginia (for its tendency to “incite racial violence”).
Read the play and decide for yourself about its racial implications: Jean-Paul Sartre, The Respectful Prostitute (1946)
Learn more about the film version and its censorship: Ellen C. Scott, Cinema Civil Rights: Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era (2015), pp. 99-101.
Read: John H. Houchin, Censorship of the American Theater in the Twentieth Century (2003)
Watch excerpts from the play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciDmz6iYsOk
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here