Cardinal's Campaign

The Roman Catholic Church, through its Legion of Decency, began to get results last week from its boycott to drive obscenity from the screen.

In Chicago, the Legion's board of censors for the first time classified 124 recent pictures for the guidance of Catholic cinemagoers. Among the 52 found "suitable" were Operator 13, The Witching Hour, Honor of the Range, David Harum, The House of Rothschild, Wild Cargo, Melody in Spring, Harold Teen, Thirty Day Princess, The Lost Patrol, The Ferocious Pal.

"Offensive in spots" were Stand Up and Cheer, Shoot the Works (see col. 3), The Thin Man, The Constant Nymph, It Happened One Night, Tarzan and His Mate, We're Not Dressing, Little Miss Marker, As the Earth Turns.

"Immoral and indecent" were The Life of Vergie Winters, Side Streets, Dr. Monica, Road to Ruin, Little Man, What Now?, Born to Be Bad, Girls for Sale, Manhattan Melodrama, Wharf Angel, Merry Wives of Reno, Notorious but Nice, Finishing School, Sisters Under the Skin, Sadie McKee, Fog Over Frisco, It Ain't No Sin.

In Philadelphia, Warner-Stanley and Independent Motion Picture Theatre Owners Association threatened to close down their 475 theatres within two weeks unless the boycott of all Philadelphia cinemansions, proposed by Denis Cardinal Dougherty, was rescinded. Said Warner General Manager Joseph Bernhard:

"The boycott has not discriminated between pictures. ... A shutdown would entail unemployment for several thousand people. . . . We have offered Cardinal Dougherty the use of a suitable projection room where pictures may be viewed before release. This preview would enable him to prepare a black and white list which could serve as further protection for his flock."

In Rome Cardinal Dougherty told correspondents : "I am not interested in making any black or white lists and I will make no lists whatever. I will not recede from my position. ... I have fully informed the Holy Father of what I have done. He has blessed my work and encouraged to persevere. There can be no question of slackening the campaign."

In Hollywood a great to-do was belatedly made over last month's agreement between leaders of the Legion of Decency and representatives of the Hays organization in Cincinnati (TIME, July 2). Centre of the excitement was a tall, husky Irishman named Joseph I. Breen. Mr. Breen, onetime Associated Pressman, was about to become the cinema's chief censor. His job will be to read scripts before production, to send assistants to supervise production of dubious sequences, to preview finished films and mark those that pass with a "subtitle" indicating that they are fit moral fare for U. S. cinemaddicts. Pictures too dirty to pass Censor Breen will be subjected to scrutiny, not as heretofore by a friendly committee of three producers, but by a special convention of the directors of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. A producer who releases a picture without a Breen O. K. or that of the Hays directors may be fined $25,000.

Last week major production companies, who still believe that the demand for less sexy pictures comes from a noisy minority, were prepared to accept the fact that cleaner pictures are, at least temporarily, necessary. Columbia's Vice President Jack Cohn voiced the opinion of the industry to his salesmen in Atlantic City: "This violent burst of condemnation is directed against something greater than the motion picture. . . . The motion picture reflects the thing against which the Crusaders inveigh--the tendencies of the times."

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