Movies: The Double Standard

The National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, which was once called the National Legion of Decency, no longer deserves to be called an old fuddy-duddy. For more than a year now, the N.C.O.M.P. has been taking an increasingly tolerant view of sexual matters on the screen (TIME, Dec. 3, 1965). For example, both Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Ulysses were granted N.C.O.M.P. approval in the A-IV classification—"morally unobjectionable for adults, with reservations."

Still, film makers have a difficult time figuring out how far they can go without getting into trouble. Only last week, 20th Century-Fox confirmed details of a go-round over their new Doris Day epic, Caprice. Seems that N.C.O.M.P. wanted Fox to slice out a 3½-sec. strip of film showing Shanghai-born Starlet Irene Tsu in a bikini. Well, not exactly in. In this sequence, Irene dives into a swimming pool, and the impact dislodges the bottom half of her bikini somewhat.

With some $4 million staked on a family-market product, Fox snipped out the footage—and thanked N.C.O.M.P. for the free advertising. But the studio could not help pointing out that the British-made Ulysses got away with displaying the bare bottoms of Buck Mulligan (T. P. McKenna) and Blazes Boylan (Joe Lynch). Well, yes, replied the Rev. Patrick J. Sullivan, N.C.O.M.P.'s director, there is a double standard—but not the one that Fox suggests.

Ulysses got away with it (as did Zorba the Greek and Georgy Girl) because the buttocks in question were male. "A brief shot of a male derriere is not going to present a problem to a normal individual," he said. But exposure of the female rear, added Father Sullivan, is "pruriently" stimulating.