Cinema: Legion of Decency (Cont'd)

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Six months ago Archbishop John Timothy McNicholas of Cincinnati, one of the ablest Roman Catholic prelates in the Midwest, took the lead in forming the Legion of Decency to boycott pictures considered immoral or obscene (TIME, June ii). One day last week the benign, grey-haired Archbishop sat in white cassock and red skullcap on the porch of his Cincinnati suburban residence. With him sat the bishops of Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Los Angeles, members of his committee running the Legion. They had said mass, conferred at length. So effective had the boycott become that two potent cinemamen, Joseph I. Breen of Hollywood and Martin Quigley of Manhattan, were pleased to sit in at the Cincinnati porch conference in the hope of working out some sort of truce with the bishops.

Mr. Breen is a tall, husky Irishman, good Catholic and father of six. A one-time Associated Pressman, he has for four years been executive assistant in the Will H. Hays office and No. 1 cinema censor. His job has been to supervise the reading of scripts, watch for dirty spots, attempt to eliminate them during conferences with producers. But a producers' jury has existed which as a lenient court of appeals could undo Mr. Breen's best work.

What Archbishop McNicholas was able to announce on his porch last week was that, as a direct result of the Legion of Decency's campaign, the producers' jury would be abolished. Henceforth Censor Breen's staff will be increased, his powers widened so that his edicts can be vetoed only by the directors of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. For any producer to assemble these gentlemen in executive session will be an expensive and lengthy job.

In Manhattan, Will Hays confirmed the Archbishop's announcement. A Presbyterian elder whose solid connections helped get him his job. Tsar Hays has long mollified church people and women's clubs with bland promises of reform.

Pleased by this latest change but not overestimating its value. Archbishop McNicholas and his committee were by no means disposed to cease their labors. They approved formation of the Legion of Decency's national council, turned campaign details over to a committee of priests. Said Archbishop McNicholas : "We are not fussy and narrow about entertainment. We have not objected to many things that have worried other people. But in this matter where we touch youth, we feel that we must act to save them."

With 200,000 members in the Cincinnati archdiocese and 2,000,000 more throughout the U. S., the Legion last week made the following additional news in church and cinema worlds: Reported Variety: "The agents no longer know just what to consider dirty any more. . . . In contrast to the slow market for spicy stuff, there is a boom in interest in outdoor plots and other yarns that are spotless from a censor's view."

All Fox writers were summoned to a meeting at which Col. Jason Joy warned that any of them working on a Fox picture would be held responsible for moral criticism leveled at the final product.

Philadelphia exhibitors, whose business has been cut up to 40%, begged Denis Cardinal Dougherty to lift the boycott he had urged upon all films.