National Legion of Decency
The National Legion of Decency, also known as the Catholic Legion of Decency, was an American Catholic group founded in 1934 by the Archbishop of Cincinnati, John T. McNicholas, as an organization dedicated to identifying objectionable content in motion pictures on behalf of Catholic audiences. Members were asked to pledge to patronize only those motion pictures which did not "offend decency and Christian morality". The concept soon gained support from other churches.
Condemnation by the Legion would often diminish a film's chances for success because it meant the population of Catholics, some twenty million strong at the time, would avoid attending any screening of the film. The efforts to help parishioners avoid films with objectionable content sometimes backfired when it was found that they helped draw attention to those films. Although the Legion was often envisioned as a bureaucratic arm of the Catholic Church, it instead was little more than a loose confederation of local organizations, with each diocese appointing a local Legion director, usually a parish priest, who was responsible for Legion activities in that diocese. Film historian Bernard F. Dick wrote: "Although the Legion was never officially an organ of the Catholic Church, and its movie ratings were nonbinding, many Catholics were still guided by the Legion's classifications."
In 1965, The National Legion of Decency was reorganized as the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures. In 1980, NCOMP ceased operations, along with the biweekly Review, which by then had published ratings for 16,251 feature films.
Background
From the early days of cinema, the motion picture industry made several attempts to self-regulate the content of films to avoid the creation of numerous state and municipal censorship boards. Most of these efforts were relatively ineffectual.National Board of Review
On December 24, 1908, New York City Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. revoked all moving-picture exhibition licenses in the city pending inspection of the premises due to fire safety concerns regarding the highly flammable celluloid film. He stated that due to complaints from the city's clergy and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, upon re-issuance, the licensees were prohibited from operating on Sunday. He further indicated his intention to revoke the license of any motion picture show "...on evidence that pictures have been exhibited by the licensees which tend to degrade or injure the morals of the community."In 1909, Charles Sprague Smith and about a dozen prominent individuals from the fields of social work, religion, and education, formed a committee, under the auspices of the People's Institute at Cooper Union, to make recommendations to the Mayor's office concerning controversial films. Initially called the New York Board of Motion Picture Censorship it soon became known as the National Board of Motion Picture Censorship. To avoid government censorship of films, the National Board became the unofficial clearinghouse for new movies. The Board's stated purpose was to endorse films of merit and champion the new "art of the people". In March 1916 the Board changed its name to the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures to avoid the controversial word "censorship".
National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI)
The National Association of the Motion Picture Industry was an industry self-regulatory body created by the Hollywood studios in 1916 to answer demands for film censorship by states and municipalities. The Association devised "Thirteen Points", a list of subjects and storylines they promised to avoid. However, there was no method of enforcement if a studio film violated the Thirteen Points content restrictions, and NAMPI proved ineffective.Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA)
After several risqué films and a series of notorious off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars, political pressure was increasing, with legislators in 37 states introducing almost one hundred movie censorship bills in 1921. Faced with the prospect of having to comply with hundreds, and potentially thousands, of inconsistent and easily changed decency laws to show their movies, the studios chose self-regulation as the preferable option. In 1922, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America was formed. Will H. Hays was named the association's first president. The goal of the organization was to rehabilitate the image of the movie industry in the wake of the Arbuckle scandal and amid growing calls by primarily Protestant groups for federal censorship of the movies. "Hiring Hays to “clean up the pictures” was, at least in part, a public relations ploy, and much was made of his conservative credentials, including his roles as a Presbyterian deacon and past chairman of the Republican Party."In 1924, Hays instituted "The Formula", a loose set of guidelines for filmmakers, to get the movie industry to self-regulate the issues that the censorship boards had been created to address. "The Formula" requested that studios send synopses of films being considered to the MPPDA for review. This effort largely failed, however, as studios were under no obligation to send their scripts to Hays's office, nor to follow his recommendations.
In 1927, Hays oversaw the creation of a code of "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" for the industry. This list outlined the issues that movies could encounter in different localities. Again, despite Hays' efforts, studios largely ignored the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls," and by the end of 1929, the MPPDA received only about 20 percent of Hollywood scripts before production, and the number of regional and local censorship boards continued to increase. However, a number of the items listed would become part of the later Code.
The Production Code
was publisher of Exhibitors Herald-World. Daniel A. Lord was a Jesuit priest who had served as one of the technical consultants on Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 The King of Kings. Quigley drafted Lord to write a code for motion pictures. With the blessing of Cardinal George W. Mundelein of Chicago, Father Lord authored the code, which later became known as "The Production Code", "The Code", and "The Hays Code". It was presented to Will Hays in 1930 and privately circulated by the MPPDA.The studio heads were less than enthusiastic but after some revisions, agreed to make The Code the rule of the industry, albeit with many loopholes that allowed studio producers to override the Hays Office's application of it. One main reason in adopting the Code was to avoid direct government intervention. Tasked with enforcing the code was the Studio Relations Committee, which very soon was overwhelmed by the number of films to view. The committee had a small staff and not much influence. Without the power to compel the editing of content deemed problematic, it was left with attempting to persuade the studios to make changes. From 1930 to 1934, the Production Code was only slightly effective in fighting back calls for federal censorship. The SRC was considered generally ineffective. Lord considered the code a failure.
History
Catholic bishops and laypeople tended to be leery of federal censorship and favored the Hays approach of self-censorship, and the influence of public opinion.The Catholic Legion of Decency was organized in 1934 under the auspices of Cincinnati Archbishop John T. McNicholas. Members were asked to sign a pledge promising to "remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality." The idea soon caught on with other churches. The Episcopal magazine The Living Church printed the pledge for its readers to sign. It was also promoted by the Protestant Detroit Council of Churches. As its influence spread, the organization adopted the name National Legion of Decency.
Initially, the Legion of Decency provided no official guide to good and bad films but left it up to individual priests and bishops to determine what was or was not morally acceptable. Some Catholics proposed announcing only lists of films approved for viewing so as not to publicize the names of films judged unsuitable. The Diocese of Brooklyn used a list drawn up by the Federation of Catholic Alumnae.
During the early years, the Legion established a rating system that assessed films based on their moral content. The films were graded on a scale from "A" to "C," with “A” being morally permissible and “C” being morally unacceptable, or, "condemned." One of the first foreign films condemned was the 1933 Czechoslovak erotic romantic drama Ecstasy which featured an eighteen-year-old Hedy Lamarr swimming nude and chasing naked after her runaway horse, as well as an illicit affair and a suicide. This was not a particularly difficult decision. After a Vatican journalist attended a screening at the Venice Film Festival, Pope Pius XI denounced it in the Vatican newspaper. Criticized by women's groups, it was also banned by the Pennsylvania state censor.
The Legion also published and distributed pamphlets and fliers encouraging Catholics not to view certain films it viewed as immoral. The Legion was often more conservative in its views on films than the Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code. The early thirties saw a number of exploitation film features that claimed to warn the public about various kinds of shocking sin and depravity corrupting society. These films featured lurid, taboo subjects, such as: drug abuse, promiscuous sex, venereal disease, polygamy, child marriages, etc. Some included brief nude scenes. One such film condemned by the Legion was 1935's The Pace That Kills, which dealt with cocaine addiction, amorality and prostitution.
For the first few decades, the Legion had a significant influence on the entertainment industry. Their influence stemmed from the popularity of their rating system, their skillful lobbying, and the circulation of a pledge at church services. From the 1930s through the 1960s, Catholic parishes in dioceses across the country administered yearly pledges in which millions of Catholics throughout the U.S. vowed to refuse to watch films that were condemned by the Legion. "Although the Legion was never officially an organ of the Catholic Church, and its movie ratings were nonbinding, many Catholics were still guided by the Legion's classifications."
With the Legion of Decency rating films independently, and pressure on the industry from several Protestant and women's groups, Hays, who had been in charge of enforcing the voluntary code since 1927, worried that the NLD's efforts could weaken his power and that of his office and hurt industry profits. Several states continued to have state censors, and the Archdiocese of Chicago maintained its own list of film ratings. The MPPDA created a new department, the Production Code Administration, to administer the Motion Picture Production Code. Hays appointed conservative Catholic Joseph Breen to head it.
In 1957, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Miranda Prorsus, which suggested that Catholics should be more concerned about encouraging good movies than condemning bad ones, an approach taken earlier by the National Board of Review. The Legion revised its ratings process, increased the members of its ratings panel with individuals knowledgeable in film and communication arts, and added two new ratings categories: A-III, for adults only, and A-IV, for adults with reservations.
Professor James Skinner wrote that by the late 1950s and early to mid-1960s, the Legion was beginning to lose its influence both within Hollywood and within the Catholic Church. Skinner noted that in some cases, young Catholics throughout the country saw a “C” rating as a reason to see a particular film. He argued that as a result of the Church’s liberalization after the Second Vatican Council, and a decline in the initial enthusiasm for the Legion, the Legion ceased to exist by the mid 1960s. In 1965, the Legion was restructured as the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, but scholars such as Skinner argue that the NCOMP failed to exert as much influence over Hollywood as the Legion.