With this week’s big Oscar win for Spotlight, an unsparing look at the Catholic Church’s cover-up of clerical sex abuse, it’s hard to fathom that Hollywood once lived in fear of the Catholic Church and its movie watchdog, the National Legion of Decency.
The Legion of Decency was founded in 1934 as part of a campaign for the “purification of the cinema,” the church’s response to the growing popularity of movies—especially gangster pictures that glorified violence and the widespread portrayal of the free-and-easy sexual attitudes of the Roaring 20s. Catholics were urged to pledge to “remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality.”
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