Book description
At the turn of the twentieth century, the proliferation of movies
attracted not only the attention of audiences across America but also
the apprehensive eyes of government officials and special interest
groups concerned about the messages disseminated by the silver screen.
Between 1907 and 1926, seven states-New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Virginia, Kansas, Maryland, and Massachusetts-and more than one hundred
cities authorized censors to suppress all images and messages considered
inappropriate for American audiences. Movie studios, hoping to avoid
problems with state censors, worrying that censorship might be extended
to the federal level, and facing increased pressure from religious
groups, also jumped into the censoring business, restraining content
through the adoption of the self-censoring Production Code, also known
as the Hays code. But some industry outsiders, independent distributors
who believed that movies deserved the free speech protections of the
First Amendment, brought legal challenges to censorship at the state and
local levels. Freedom of the Screen chronicles both the evolution of
judicial attitudes toward film restriction and the plight of the
individuals who fought for the right to deliver provocative and relevant
movies to American audiences. The path to cinematic freedom was marked
with both achievements and roadblocks, from the establishment of the
Production Code Administration, which effectively eradicated political
films after 1934, to the landmark cases over films such as The Miracle
(1948), La ronde (1950), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1955) that paved
the way for increased freedom of expression. As the fight against
censorship progressed case by case through state courts and the U. S.
Supreme Court, legal authorities and the public responded, growing
increasingly sympathetic toward artistic freedom. Because a small,
unorganized group of independent film distributors and exhibitors in
mid-twentieth-century America fought back against what they believed was
the unconstitutional prior restraint of motion pictures, film after 1965
was able to follow a new path, maturing into an artistic medium for the
communication of ideas, however controversial. Government censors would
no longer control the content of America's movie screens. Laura
Wittern-Keller's use of previously unexplored archival material and
interviews with key figures earned her the researcher of the year award
from the New York State Board of Regents and the New York State Archives
Partnership Trust. Her exhaustive work is the first to discuss more than
five decades of film censorship battles that rose from state and local
courtrooms to become issues of national debate and significance. A
compendium of judicial action in the film industry, Freedom of the
Screen is a tribute to those who fought for the constitutional right of
free expression and paved the way for the variety of films that appear
in cinemas today. Laura Wittern-Keller is visiting assistant professor
of history and public policy at the University at Albany (SUNY) and the
recipient of the New York State Archives Award for Excellence in
Research. She also lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with her
husband.
