Protestant, Jewish Religious Leaders Protest Film Censorship
Thirty-nine religious leaders, including Protestant ministers and Jewish Rabbis, on this day urged the New York State Board of Regents not to revoke the license of the controversial Italian film, The Miracle.
The article in The New York Times did not mention the well-known fact that leaders of the Catholic Church were leading the fight to ban the film. The controversy eventually ended at the U.S. Supreme Court when, in the landmark decision Burstyn v. Wilson, decided on May 26, 1952 and which involved The Miracle, the Court ruled that movies were a form of expression protected by the First Amendment.
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 more: Frank Walsh, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (1996)
Learn About The Miracle and the case: Laura Wittern-Keller and Raymond Haberski, The Miracle Case (2009)
Learn more about state-level movie censorship: http://moviehistory.us/introduction-to-state-movie-censorship.html
Learn more at a timeline on movie censorship: https://www.aclu.org/files/multimedia/censorshiptimeline.html