Movies: Snow Is Four Letters

As in the off-Broadway original, the film version of Jack Gelber's junkie play, The Connection, goes for verisimilitude down to the last four-letter word. One word, a four-letter dysphemism for human excrement, occurs repeatedly, since in the context of Gelber's story it is slang for "snow" —which is a euphemism for any narcotic.

New York's Board of Regents tried to censor the four-letter word as obscene. Not so, ruled the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court last week. The term is what the junkies use when they mean snow, and that makes it realism, as distinct from obscenity.

Thus, Broadway movie audiences will soon be hearing the non-obscene word from inside the movie house—instead of just overhearing it in the alley outside.