Pennsylvania Censors Orders Cuts in Will Rogers Film for Glorifying Crime and Immorality
The Pennsylvania film censorship board on this day ordered cuts to a Samuel Goldwyn-produced film, An Unwilling Hero, starring the nationally famous humorist Will Rogers because it violated the sate censorship code by glorifying crime and immorality.
The film depicted a scene of a hobo taking money from a safe and putting it in his coat; a hobo holding a gun to a man’s back and ordering, “You stick right here;” scenes of hobos setting fire to a wooden shed; and a title card (this was a silent film) reading, “If it’s only a matter of marrying somebody, why not try me?” The Pennsylvania censorship code prohibited the glorification of crime and immorality. Producer Goldwyn filed a complaint with the board about the required cuts.
Pennsylvania was one of five states that had state film censorship laws; a number of cities, including Chicago, had city film censorship ordinances. On December 24, 1908, –Christmas Eve, no less– the mayor of New York City revoked the licenses of all movie theaters in the city “to protect the city’s morals.”
The Supreme Court ruled that motion pictures were articles of commerce not protected by the First Amendment in Mutual v. Ohio, on February 23, 1915. The Court reversed itself on May 26, 1952, in Burstyn v. Wilson, ruling that films were protected by the First Amendment.
Learn more at a timeline on movie censorship: https://www.aclu.org/files/multimedia/censorshiptimeline.html
Learn About the film and the case: Laura Wittern-Keller and Raymond Haberski, The Miracle Case: Film Censorship and the Supreme Court (2009)
Read: Leonard Leff and Jerold Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code from the 1920s to the 1960s (1990)
Learn about film censorship in the 1920s and 1930s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYOm6ar716w
Read a biography of Will Rogers: Mark Carnes, Will Rogers and “His” America (2010).