National Legion of Decency  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 08:59, 23 April 2007; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

The National Legion of Decency, also known as the Catholic Legion of Decency, was an organization dedicated to identifying and combating objectionable content in motion pictures. For the first quarter-century or so of its existence, the legion wielded great power in the American motion picture industry.

The Legion was founded in 1933 as the Catholic Legion of Decency (CLOD) in response to an address given by apostolic delegate Amleto Cicognani at the Catholic Charities Convention in New York City. Cicognani warned against the "massacre of innocence of youth" and urged a campaign for "the purification of the cinema".

Though established by Roman Catholic bishops, the Legion originally included many Protestant and even some Jewish clerics. It was renamed in April of 1934, substituting National for Catholic. By the 1960s, however, the organization had become an exclusively Catholic concern. In 1966 it was renamed the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures. Eventually, the entity was subsumed into the United States Catholic Conference, which in 2001 was incorporated into the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Responsibilities for reviewing and rating films were transferred to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting.

Mae West, an early target of the Legion, may have had the Legion in mind as the model of the fictional Bainbridge Foundation in her satire on censorship, The Heat's On (1943).[1] [Apr 2007]

Personal tools