Legion of Decency

FOUNDED: April, 1934

TYPE OF ORGANIZATION: Film-monitoring body

SIGNIFICANCE: This Roman Catholic organization’s film-rating system influenced content standards in American cinema for forty-five years

With the introduction of sound in the late 1920’s, films were perceived as a threat to moral values that the Roman Catholic church could no longer neglect. In April, 1934, Catholic film reformers formed the Legion of Decency, to condemn “vile and unwholesome moving pictures.” An estimated ten million lay Catholics signed a voluntary pledge promising to boycott films that offended decency and Christian morality. At the urging of local bishops, protesters publicly demonstrated against theaters showing films that had been condemned in church newspapers. Young Catholics checked the lists of Legion-approved motion pictures posted at Roman Catholic churches before attending Saturday afternoon shows with their friends, as attendance at such nonapproved films constituted a venial sin. By February, 1936, the Legion had instituted its own rating system: Class A included films that were morally unobjectionable (with several subcategories); Class B, those that were morally objectionable in part for all; and Class C, films that were condemned.

Unlike fundamentalist Christian groups, the Catholic church did not desire to shut down the film industry; however, it did wish to exercise its power in the marketplace. In Philadelphia, box-office receipts decreased by 40 percent following a boycott of picture houses by Catholics who were aided by several Protestant and Jewish groups. To stave off an all-out war against the industry, the Hays Office created an internal regulatory office, the Production Code Administration (PCA) to levy heavy fines against members of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America (MPPDA) that released films without PCA seals of approval. Hays expressed his welcome for the Legion of Decency “with open arms,” stating that his own office and the Legion together “created a mutual defense pact that finally made the Code a working reality.”

By 1938 not a single film made by a major Hollywood producer had been condemned since the PCA was formed. However, many people felt that the combination of government censorship and industry self-regulation suffocated American film creativity, as local censorship boards throughout the country were independently cutting film scenes of kissing, hand-holding, and anything they thought might exert unwholesome influence in their communities.

Among the films sanctioned by the Legion were Gone with the Wind (1939), which earned a B rating because of its alleged “low moral character and suggestive implications,” and Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll (1956), the tale of a Southern bigot with a child bride. Due to the Legion’s threatened crusade against Mae West for sexually suggestive performances on Edgar Bergen’s radio show, the National Broadcasting Company banned reference to her name on all its stations. Kazan was again singled out as twelve cuts (comprising three minutes of footage) from A Streetcar Named Desire were approved by its producer without Kazan’s knowledge. Despite these cuts, the film earned a B rating.

By the mid-1960’s, the film industry was in a state of turbulence, compounded by the fact that nearly half of its audience was between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four. The brief papacy of the moderate John XXIII combined with the election of Roman Catholic John F. Kennedy to the American presidency helped to bring Catholics into the mainstream of American life—a development that paradoxically weakened the Legion. In 1963, the Legion instituted a liberalized category to notify Catholics of films dealing maturely with “serious themes”: A-4, films that were morally unobjectionable for adults, with reservations.

In 1965, the Legion renamed itself the National Catholic Office of Motion Pictures. Increasingly, both foreign and national films were shown without approval by either this office or the MPPDA; Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) was an artistic and financial success despite its nude scenes and C rating. In October, 1980, the National Catholic Office closed its offices for good, citing financial reasons. In truth, it had became irrelevant. The Catholic church continued to classify films, but it moved from the role of censor to adviser, and it merged the old B and C ratings into a single category: O, morally offensive.