Word: binfords
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Lloyd Tilgham Binford, dour, dogmatic chairman of the Memphis Board of Censors, has long prided himself on being able to whiff a movie innuendo or spot a suggestive line even before it is suggested. Since 1928, 76-year-old Mr. Binford has kept the Lower Chickasaw Bluff pure by dooming or doctoring many a movie...
Last week Censor Binford banned The Southerner, which critics call one of the best movies of many a year (TIME, May 21). His reason: it portrays Southerners as "common, lowdown, ignorant white trash...
...Censor Binford was making Memphis as famed for prudery and intolerance as Boston. The son of a Southern infantry colonel, he left school after learning long division, became a railway postal clerk at 16. He went to Memphis, became an insurance company president, and also a staunch Baptist, Mason, champion of Southern womanhood and white supremacy...
Since he became the dominant member of Memphis' censor board, Hollywood has quietly fumed at his autocratic czardom. Last week, David Loew, producer of The Southerner, mobilized for a court fight. Cried he: "Binford must have been sniffing too many magnolias...
Confederacy endorsed The Southerner as portraying "courage, stoutheartedness and love of the land." The Memphis Commercial Appeal editorialized: "Under Mr. Binford's reasoning, few of the great reformers of history would have been allowed to write and speak. Jesus Christ, Himself, on occasion shocked and shamed people to better things...