Backdoor Censorship

Colorado's Senator Edwin C. Johnson, who once asked the U.S. Government to police movieland's morals (TIME, March 21 et seq.), was still pitching rocks at Hollywood. Brushing aside the problems of the Korean War last week, Johnson stepped onto the Senate floor and heaved another: a resolution warning exhibitors against showing "motion pictures produced or directed by Nazis, Fascists or Communists." The resolution, approved unanimously by the Senate, has no legal effect. But its purpose, said Big Ed bluntly, "is to put the industry on notice. If ... they do not heed the thing--then we'll have to see what else we can do about it."

Johnson thought his not-so-subtle attempt at backdoor censorship would do the trick. In his resolution he had even lined up some examples of the men he was talking about. Topping the senatorial rogues' gallery: Hollywood's "Unfriendly Ten" (Screenwriters Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson et al.) and Italian Director Roberto (Open City) Rossellini, who, according to ex-Bergman Fan Johnson, had been "an apostle of Fascism ... an active Nazi collaborator ... a narcotic addict . . ."

In Venice for the International Film Festival, Rossellini shrugged off the missiles with the air of a matador dodging a flying pop bottle. He was stalking bigger game. Charging that RKO had ruined his Stromboli, the film that got Ed Johnson's dander up in the first place, Rossellini withdrew it from the Venice competition and pressed a whopping damage suit against the company. RKO, said Rossellini, had destroyed Stromboli by bad cutting and had damaged its box-office appeal by "improper" advertising (sample: "Raging Island . . . Raging Passions"). Cried Rossellini: "I feel like I'm living in the fable of the wolf and the lamb. In this case I'm the lamb."

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