Members of the Saint Contraceptua Youthful Anti-Smut League have home tickers that provide up-to-the minute reports on the Legion of Decency [St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies, 98-9].
In Strunk, Nebraska, a contingent of the The Knights of the White Sepulchre encircled a theater playing Tumid Awaking, a C film [St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies, 99].
The Legion of Decency was a Catholic organization created in 1934 to combat immoral movies, reviewing films and then rating them according to the degree of immorality. "Catholics were assured that they could go to a film knowing absolutely nothing about it but not have to worry that it would corrupt them," explains Bowen, adding it may be hard to imagine going to a film in such a state of ignorance, "but before television, lots of families did have the habit of going to the theaters and watching whatever happened to be on the screen."
Both Bowen and Myers note that congregations took a pledge to not only not attend morally objectionable movies, but to also not patronize theaters that had shown morally objectionable films. There was no penalty involved for ignoring the Legion, explains Myers, but the very public pledge in the middle of Sunday mass was a bit of strong-arming in his opinion. "Early in my childhood, I learned to keep my mouth shut during this pledge, and when I met Bellairs and we discussed the matter, I was delighted to find that he had done the same." Bowen also recalls the "wicked thrill" the first time he stood remained silent while everyone said the pledge:
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures, and those which glorify crime or criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoral films, and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise, further, to stay away altogether from places of amusement which show them as a matter of policy.
Lists of movies were posted weekly in churches throughout the country with a four-tier rating system as follows:s
- Class A1: Suitable for all audiences
- Class A2: Suitable for adults
- Class B: Morally objectionable in part
- Class C: Condemned by the Legion of Decency
A2 later became "suitable for adults and adolescents" and a new category, A3, was reserved for adults only; eventually a category A4 was added (Movies which while unobjectionable in themselves, needed further explanation), which Myers says was due to the movie Martin Luther. "It made Luther out to be a hero and show the Pope of the time to be a hedonistic, luxury-loving philanderer. All more or less true, of course, so the Church really couldn't object, although they wanted to get their two cents worth into the argument."
The list of class B films included the reason for its rating, usually "portrays suicide sympathetically", "reflects the acceptability of divorce", "suggestive costumes or situations" and the catch-all "low moral tone."
Myers says that most class C films he recalls ("those with the irresistibly fascinating phrase graven in the heart of every Catholic schoolboy") were almost all foreign films "One exception being a riveting title which remained on the list for years, after hundreds of other films had come and gone: Mom and Dad. When Bellairs and I first met at Notre Dame and started to discuss such matter, we were both amused at having been fascinated by that one throughout the years. Later I read that it was simply a shlocky skin flick parading under a sexual instruction banner."
No word on the content of Tumid Awakening, though.
"For all that, I had always felt free to see any Class B film I wanted to and simply wasn't interested in the Class C films. It was true that the Legion's list must have made more of an impression on schoolkids than adults, however. The very first Condemned film I ever saw at the advanced age of 15, my parents took me to at a drive-in theater while on vacation. It was an innocuous (and utterly valueless as far as artistic merit is concerned) romantic comedy directed by Otto Preminger called The Moon Is Blue. My mother wanted to see it and was completely unaware of its rating. I knew full well it was condemned and couldn't wait for the experience. I needn't have gotten by hopes up. It contained a couple of glib remarks about a girl possibly getting pregnant on a date and that was it - enough to embarrass the hell out of my parents, though.
"The Legion's ratings formed the basis of the Motion Picture Production Code when the studios adopted it for self-protection about 1933. Some of the stipulations of the original Production Code were ridiculous, and they are what lent films of the 1930s a particularly loopy flavor. For instance, no crime could go unpunished. You couldn't show a gun being shot and the victim being hit by a bullet in the same frame. Any mention of drugs was absolutely verboten, though I'm not quite sure how that kitsch classic Reefer Madness slipped through the net. Also forbidden was any suggestion of a man and woman, even a married couple, sleeping together. That's why you would see movies of newlyweds checking into a hotel room with twin beds. I could go on and on, but why bother. In fairness it should be noted that the Church did not set out to have its rating system become the de facto industry standard, but it was available when the industry had to do something fast to counter rising criticism of its morals from all sides. The Legion faded away in the changing moral climate of the late 1950s and 1960s and may have morphed into the National Catholic Film Office, which still makes film reviews on an individual basis, but you have to go looking for them now. The Legion's last hurrah was a major-league stink about Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll, which, like so many racy films of that era, merely seems dull now."
(also see Index Librorum Prohibitorum)
