The Nude in the Living Room

U.S. telecasters have not yet got around to writing their own censorship code, but by last week several interested parties were ready and eager to do it for them.

In Pennsylvania, the State Board of Censors (for movies) had moved to take over supervision of TV as well. In Chicago, Police Captain Harry Fulmer, currently engaged in a crusade against "lewd publications," offered to broaden his field to include TV. In Columbus, Ohio, State Senator Edwin F. Sawicki proposed that the State Department of Education "examine and censor . . . televised pictures on the same basis as films are censored today."

Against these threats, the television industry had three main arguments: 1) no one has really done anything very objectionable on TV; 2) individual stations and networks are adhering to the National Association of Broadcasters' radio code; 3) anyway, television is interstate commerce, and thus not subject to state regulation.

Comic Arthur Godfrey has probably caused the biggest uproar among would-be censors by exhibiting a miniature outhouse and describing it as his "office." But such clear-cut cases of bad taste are not the only problem. Raymond Nelson, director of Du Mont's Fashions on Parade, points to color as one difficulty: on the TV screen, dresses of certain shades of red make a girl look undressed. TV avoids negligees, slips, nightgowns and foundation garments--even on dummies. "No matter how you look at it," says Nelson, "a wax dummy on television is a nude woman in the living room."

A cocked eyebrow, a smirk, even a suggestive pause in speech can make the censorious heart skip a beat. In Chicago, NBC's Bill Ray complained: "You just can't trust nightclub funnymen. They've been pulling objectionable stuff so long, it's a habit they can't break." Old movies, which have become a TV mainstay, are also a TV headache. Made before the days of the Hays Office, such old films as The Sheik and The Son of the Sheik have a straightforward approach in their love scenes that shocks televiewers raised on tidied-up modern movies.

At week's end, the telecasters of California were holding a meeting to draw up some sort of a code for TV behavior. Sixty members of the Television Producers' Association appointed a committee to look into such controversial matters as cleavage, the time permitted for a kiss, and the proposed editing of wrestling matches to eliminate "suggestive positions."

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