The Censors

P: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the state's censorship law (part of the Puritans' 300-year-old Sunday blue laws) is unconstitutional, "void on its face as a prior restraint on the freedom of speech and the press." The decision resulted from a suit by Brattle Films, Inc. when state censors refused to allow Sunday showings of Sweden's Miss Julie. ("The girl in it is illegitimate; how would you like for your sister to see a film about an illegitimate girl?" a censor asked a theater manager.)

P: The U.S. District Court in Atlanta ruled that City Censor Christine Gilliam overstepped her authority when she banned The Blackboard Jungle apparently because the film depicted white and Negro students attending the same school.

P:Distributors Corp. of America, producers of the film version of I Am a Camera, John Van Druten's 1951 stage play about a frankly promiscuous girl, was holding its pocketbook and its breath, waiting for a seal of approval from Hollywood's Production Code Administration. Filmed in England, the picture stars Julie Harris, who is called upon to utter such lines as "I might not be exactly what some people consider a virgin . . . but I've been chaste--chased by every man," and "What shall we do first--have a drink or go to bed?" Said the Distributors Corp. "We. hope that the Johnston office will realize that this is just part of a psychological study of a mixed-up girl and should be shown."

P:M-G-M is trying to clean up the homosexual theme in Tea and Sympathy by making the young hero--who suffers doubts about his manhood--simply "offbeat," i.e., nonconformist. However, Cinemactress Deborah Kerr is already reported as saying that she will walk out on the picture if the consummation scene with the hero is not left in.

P: MGM's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, will be fixed up by Studio Boss Dore Schary. Schary's fix: the relationship of the younger brother to a homosexual football captain will be changed to simple hero worship.

P: Producer Otto Preminger, working on Nelson Algren's Man with the Golden Arm (about a drug addict), announced that he may release his film without the Production Code seal. Explained one Hollywood observer: "You can't reduce a narcotics addict to an offbeat type."

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