The Purity Test

Ever since moviemaking became a major U.S. industry, Hollywood has trembled at the mere suggestion of outside censorship. Last week in Washington a bill introduced in the Senate gave the moviemakers a real case of the shakes.

The bill's aim: to authorize the Federal Government to police the morals of all motion picture performers. The idea came from Colorado's ex-oowpuncher Senator Edwin Carl Johnson, 66, who considers himself a friend of the cinema because he goes to the movies a lot. "Big Ed" Johnson was outraged by i) RKO's brazen exploitation of the film Stromboli in the wake of the Roberto Rossellini-Ingrid Bergman romance (see PEOPLE) and 2) the publicity given Cinemactress Rita Hayworth and her husband, Prince Aly ("Premature babies run in my family") Khan. Johnson proposed federal licensing of all movie actors, actresses, producers and distributors.

Introducing his bill with some choice cattle-country oratory, Senator Johnson told the Senate that Actress Bergman was "my own favorite actress." But he added regretfully that she was "a powerful influence for evil." He referred to her as the "common mistress" of the "vile and unspeakable" Rossellini, "a common love thief." He lumped Actresses Hayworth and Bergman as "Hollywood's two current apostles of degradation."

Licensing powers, Johnson argued, should be set up within the Department of Commerce. Under his bill, every actor and actress would be licensed at $1 a year, every producer at $100, every film distributor at $10,000. The bill's language was vague, but Big Ed's intent was clear: licenses would be revoked whenever a holder was guilty of a crime involving moral turpitude, or whenever the censors decided a film encouraged "contempt for public or private morality." In short, whenever the censors disapproved of the private life of an actor--or the content of a film itself--they could kill the movie by their license-revoking powers.

After one deep, horrified breath, Hollywood struck back. Urbane Movie Czar Eric Johnston denounced the Johnson measure as an effort to set up a "commissar of the morals of the American people." A Johnston Office spokesman called it a "police state bill." Chairman Roy Brewer of the Motion Picture Industry Council described it as "the first step toward totalitarianism." In the Los Angeles Mirror Columnist Florabel Muir asked: "I 'wonder how many U.S. Senators could pass a purity test?" In a column titled "Look Who's Talking!" the Hollywood Reporter's William R. ("Billy") Wilkerson pointed out that "Parnell Thomas is in jail for stealing Government funds . . . Andrew May is in jail for accepting bribes ..."

Not at all displeased by the to-do he had stirred up, Senator Johnson saw to it that his bill was referred to the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, which he happens to head, for a mid-April hearing.

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