National Legion of Decency
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The National Legion of Decency, also known as the Catholic Legion of Decency, was an organization dedicated to identifying and combatting 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 in which he warned against the "massacre of innocence of youth" and urged a campaign for "the purification of the cinema".
Mae West, an early target of the Catholic Legion of Decency, 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).
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