Word: censorships
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...cities of Massachusetts could not grant such a license without a censor's written approval that the film was in keeping with the character of the day. Even the State government got into the act; the Commissioner of Public Safety had to see the picture, too. All this censorship machinery, however, came to a sudden halt last summer. On July 6, 1955, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled the Sunday censorship law unConstitutional...
...Sunday censorship was only one of the famous "blue laws" which have been part of the State's statutes since colonial days. Yet they were not an American invention. All "unnecessary work" on Sundays has been forbidden in England since 1678. Colonial lawyers only expanded the British precedent with typical thoroughness, among other things, forbidding a man to kiss his wife on the Lord's Day. Since the no-kissing days, chapter 136 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the blue law code, has been amended many times. Censorship of entertainment grew out of one of these amendments...
...during their long history the blue laws have seldom been attacked in court. Although censorship was resented, it was never seriously challenged until 1954. Then the attack came from the owners of the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square...
...week. Sunday alone had restrictions. "But Sunday is our best day," Halliday points out. "Many of our films are foreign, and on Sunday people from all over the Boston area come to see the pictures which they can't see anywhere else. Furthermore, we felt that the censorship law was clearly unConstitutional and was hurting the motion picture industry throughout the state, so we decided to test it in court...
...legal battle began in the Middlesex County Superior court. William C. Brewer, lawyer for Brattle Films, Inc., drew up a brief demanding that the Commissioner of Public Safety permit Miss Julie to be shown and asking for a decision on the Constitutionality of the Sunday censorship law. Assistant Attorney General Arnold H. Salisbury opposed this claim with a demurrer, a legal technicality which stated that Brattle Films could not prove any real damage, and that the blue law was Constitutional anyway. The judge agreed, and tossed the case out of court...