Word: pit
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When Hollywood's Producer-Director Anatole Litvak and Producer Darryl Zanuck gambled on filming The Snake Pit (TIME, Dec. 20), they knew that it might never be shown in Britain-a risk that could make the difference between profit and loss. They took the long shot that the movie would get by the British censorship ban on scenes within insane asylums. Last week, the gamble began...
...British had wrangled over whether the picture should be shown. A critic who saw it in Brussels urged that its exhibition be restricted to such professionals as doctors and magistrates. Published stills stimulated organized squeamishness; 140 London nurses petitioned the board of film censors to keep The Snake Pit off British screens because it showed "mental hospital nurses as harsh, unemotional and often cruel...
...both versions. Last week the censored version opened at London's Odeon and broke all attendance records. From the critics it drew more compliments than quibbles. Sample from the Daily Express: ". . . The finest thing Hollywood has ever done . . . When the end came . . . I was crying." But The Snake Pit's finest tribute came in a censor-dictated line in the British foreword: "Remember-all the characters you see on the screen are played by actors and actresses...
Muscovites stood by disconsolately as their beloved cathedral with its huge golden cupola was razed to the ground. Workmen dug a gigantic pit, began to sink piles. Then suddenly they found that the ground was unsuitable, and suspended operations. That was some 15 years ago, and last week the gaping pit was still there. No matter what their press told them, Muscovites presumably still knew the difference between a skyscraper and a hole in the ground...
...Snake Pit. A hair-raising exploration of mental illness, with Olivia de Havilland (TIME...