CHAPTER SIX
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC LEGION OF DECENCY

The Legion Comes into Being

By 1933 it was obvious to Lord, Quigley and Breen that the Code was not succeeding in achieving their purposes. People were angry at the immorality of the movies – and not just Roman Catholics. They felt that Hays had failed to keep his promise to prevent dirt in the pictures. Clearly, the Code was not being enforced as the Jesuits, other Papists and even non-Papists wanted it to be. Something had to be done.

Breen persuaded Romish bishop John Cantwell to put pressure on bankers (other than Jewish bankers) to in turn put pressure on the film industry to clean up their films. 1933 was a difficult year for Hollywood financially, and also because of Hitler’s rise in Germany, which made the Hollywood Jews uneasy about their position in American society. This meant that they were more open to changing their ways than they would otherwise have been. Cantwell warned that America’s Romish bishops might release a joint pastoral letter condemning Hollywood. Hollywood listened. Most of the studio heads said they would stick to the Code, with Paramount going so far as to appoint a Roman Catholic as a studio censor, and MGM asking Cantwell to recommend someone whom they could take on in a similar capacity. But men such as Breen and Quigley suspected that, as usual, the Jewish studio bosses made all the right noises at all the right times, but would soon revert back to their old ways. They felt that more needed to be done to keep the studios in line.

As we have seen,in 1933 abookwaspublished entitled Our Movie-Made Children, by Henry James Forman, summarising publications written by respected academics, in which films were blamed for corrupting the youth of America. This of course was (and still is) very true, as anyone with eyes in his head can see. And the book’s publication was fortuitous for the Roman Catholics Lord, Quigley and Breen. Quigley realised that Hollywood was, as a result, now more open than ever to pressure, and so he campaigned for more Roman Catholic involvement in the control and censorship of the industry. The pope of Rome’s new representative in the USA, the Romish monsignor Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, met with Quigley and Breen and, in a speech in which he included a draft statement prepared by Quigley, called for Roman Catholics to take a strong stand against immoral movies. “Catholics are called by God, the Pope, the Bishops, and the priests,” he said, “to a united and vigorous campaign for the purification of the cinema, which has become a deadly menace to morals.” ¹⁷⁸ It was a declaration of war. America’s Popish bishops had been rallied to the cause, and they could not ignore it. And this is how, in that same year of 1933, the powerful Roman Catholic Legion of Decency was founded as well, by both bishops and Romish “laymen”, as we shall see.

Breen continued to meet with influential Papists to drum up support as the bishops’ annual meeting drew closer. As ghostwriter for a report Cantwell was to “write” on the movies for Ecclesiastical Review, Breen got Cantwell to end the report by recommending that the bishops form a committee to study the issue of movies. This, as Breen remarked, was “to keep the Jews worried”, for such a committee would “keep suspended over the heads of the producers the sword which is now threatening to decapitate them.” ¹⁷⁹

At the conclave of bishops in Washington in that year Cantwell gave a speech, saying that the movies, which had always been vulgar, were now also being used to educate people in a “sinister and insidious” philosophy of life. They attacked marriage and the family as being outdated, they condoned such sins as divorce, sexual sins, and even inter-racial marriages (which he held was race suicide). They thereby lowered public and private morals.

Biblically, there is no sin in inter-racial marriages, but this was a commonly-held view of those times. Cantwell was however right about the lowering of moral standards via films. He called for strong action.

When the report was published, many bishops professed to be shocked at just how immoral the movies were, and a committee was formed to study the matter. Its head, the archbishop of Cincinnati, John T. McNicholas, had Cantwell’s report printed and distributed to “Church” leaders across America. The Roman Catholic co-chairman of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Carleton Hayes, felt that Cantwell was endorsing anti-Semitism in his report. Cantwell denied this, correctly stating that the plain fact of the matter was that Jews ran Hollywood. Another result of the Cantwell report was that Romish journals took up the cause, strongly criticising the film industry. And Romish cardinal, William O’Connell of Boston, branded movies “the scandal of the world”. Clearly, Roman Catholic opposition to Hollywood was now in high gear.

And all this came in the wake of a growing realisation among America’s Romanists that they were now a force to be reckoned with on the national stage. This was articulated by a priest in New York, Owen McGrath, who said that in the past, because it was a minority religion in America, the “Church” of Rome had not spoken up while Protestantism and paganism had taken America down a slippery slope to the present state of immorality, allowing immoral movies to corrupt children. But things had changed, and the “Church” of Rome was now much more powerful in America; and therefore, McGrath declared, “In the name of God let us see the battle to its glorious triumph.” A similar sentiment was voiced by a bishop named John Noll, who said, “We must lay aside our inferiority complex and decide that we can do this job.” He believed it could be done because one in five Americans was now Roman Catholic, and in most large cities east of the Mississippi River this proportion rose to one in two or one in three. ¹⁸⁰

An Episcopal Committee on Motion Pictures (ECMP) was appointed by the bishops, in order to “clean and disinfect” the industry; and Cantwell and two other bishops were requested to co-ordinate a “Catholic Legion of Decency”. With Quigley guiding them, these men decided that this Legion would create a pressure group, boycott offensive movies, and support self-regulation and conformity with the Production Code. ¹⁸¹ In other words, the Legion would be at the forefront of nothing less than a national Roman Catholic assault on the film industry. And this was no idle threat: as pointed out above, one fifth of the American population was Roman Catholic by religion, and most of these were massed in the great cities, with Chicago and Boston being essentially 50% Roman Catholic, and very large Romish populations in various other influential cities, among them New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and Pittsburgh. The power of Rome in the United States was immense, through its own publications or those it controlled (such as Catholic World, America, Sign, Thought, Catholic Digest, Commonweal), through the pulpits in thousands of Roman Catholic “churches” throughout the country, through radio (such as the national programme, The Catholic Hour), etc. A national Roman Catholic news bureau in Washington provided newspapers with a Romish take on the news. It was very evident to the Jewish studio bosses that a Papist boycott of the movies would seriously hurt the film industry financially. And this was the Depression era. The studios could not afford that kind of financial pain.

The Legion of Decency sought to ensure that Roman Catholics promised not to watch immoral movies. It had no legal power to make changes to movies, but as it spread like wildfire across America it became extremely powerful, rating every film, publishing “black lists” of objectionable films and “white lists” of the ones it considered acceptable. Almost every Romish diocese saw the formation of Legion campaigns. Lists of forbidden movies were supplied to the people by their priests. Movie houses which showed objectionable films were boycotted.

Romish archbishop, McNicholas, wrote a Legion pledge for Romanists to sign; ¹⁸² and once a year during Sunday mass, Roman Catholics across the United States were obliged by their bishops to stand and recite it in unison: “I unite with all who protest against them [vile films] as a grave menace to you [Christ], to home life, to country and religion. I condemn absolutely those debauching motion pictures which, with other degrading agencies, are corrupting public morals and promoting a sex mania in our land. Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality.” Printed pledges were distributed at Romish gatherings and even outside movie theatres. Although totally accurate figures are not available, a report by the U.S. bishops suggested there could have been over five million pledgers by 1934, while another estimate from that year gave the figure as eleven million. ₁₈₃ According to Variety magazine, “fully half of the U.S. Catholic population of 20,000,000 can be counted upon as enlisted crusaders.” ¹⁸⁴ No wonder the movie bosses were scared. They saw the future, and the future meant dwindling profits.

The bishops never actually came out directly and said so, but it was commonly believed, by the people in the pews who signed the pledges, that it was a mortal sin to watch an immoral movie, and the bishops were certainly not going to correct that assumption for it played right into their hands.

As for the priests themselves, the bishops warned them to stay away from the movies (for many of them flocked to watch them), thereby setting a good example to their flocks. In addition, a letter was prepared by Breen, Quigley and Cantwell and passed on to the country’s bishops, who were to send it to the theatre managers in their dioceses to persuade them to do something about immoral movies by contacting the studios about them. And furthermore, the Episcopal Committee also sent a questionnaire to every parish in the United States, requesting the names of the banks which were used by local theatres, whether there were any mortgages against theatre properties, and who held these. Clearly, this was a massive, no-holds-barred Roman Catholic campaign against the film industry.

The 1934 Roman Catholic Boycott: How Irish Romanism Came to Dominate Hollywood

In his first two months at the helm, Breen rejected six movies. The producers accepted his judgment with regards to four of them, but appealed his decision with two of them, and Breen was over-ruled by the Producers Appeal Board. When he rejected the 1934 film, Bottoms Up, the three-man producer trio (all Jewish) of the Producers Appeal Board over-ruled him, but the movie’s producer himself decided to voluntarily delete the scene Breen had found unacceptable, realising that he would have to constantly deal with Breen in the future.

The other film Breen rejected but the producers upheld was the 1933 film, Queen Christina, starring Greta Garbo. Breen demanded that the bedroom scenes be cut, and said that sexual immorality was portrayed in the film as attractive and beautiful, which violated the Code. The AMPP producers’ jury, however, over-ruled him, and he fumed at the lack of real authority he possessed to prevent such films from being shown. He could only suggest, but no more. As he put it: “Our machinery calls for the right of appeal to a jury made up of three producers, brothers-in-arms to the guy whose picture I may reject. This jury, you may be certain, is not likely to concur in any decision of rejection.” ¹⁸⁵

It was a battle between the Roman Catholic censor and the Jewish movie producers, and both sides were determined to win. Breen well knew that if he was ever to have real power over what could be depicted in movies, things had to change. The regulators had to have the real power, not the producers.

The vast and powerful machinery of the American Roman Catholic “Church” was set in motion, to teach the Hollywood producers a lesson where it would hurt most – in their pockets. Cardinals issued warnings to their flocks not to go and watch immoral movies; at least one said they should not go to any movies at all. The Legion pledge was recited by millions of Papists. It was a nationwide Papist boycott that had producers shaking in their boots. The opposition was so intense that Hollywood would ever afterwards remember it as “the crisis of 34” or “the storm of 34.” According to Billboard magazine at the time, “One of the amazing features of the boycott campaign is the amount of publicity given the move by daily papers throughout the country. It is doubtful any similar move ever received the unanimous cooperation of the press as this boycott.” ¹⁸⁶ This shows the immense power Popery exerted over the media at the time.

Roman Catholic blacklists of objectionable movies began to appear, even though at first the bishops were divided over their effectiveness. Some felt that they should just issue whitelists of good films, and ignore the bad, while others felt a far stronger approach was needed, with blacklists being issued as well. A move towards a single, national blacklist was started. In 1934 Daniel Lord wrote a pamphlet entitled The Motion Pictures Betray America, in which he accused Hollywood of “the most terrible betrayal of public trust in the history of our country”, and stated: “It is no longer a matter of single scenes being bad, of occasional ‘hells’ and ‘damns’, or girls in scanty costumes,” but rather “a whole philosophy of evil…depicted with an explicitness that [has] excited the curiosity of children and the emulation of morons nd criminals.” ¹⁸⁷ Lord, after seeing the film She Done Him Wrong, told Hays that he had written the Code precisely to prevent a film like this from being screened. He demanded that Roman Catholic youth boycott the film. ¹⁸⁸

What was the point of whitelists, he reasoned, since good films were so few and far between that all such films could be listed “on the back of a postage stamp and have room left over for the Declaration of Independence.” ¹⁸⁹ Lord’s campaign made waves: letters of protest against immoral films poured into Hollywood from individual Roman Catholics, from chapters of the Knights of Columbus, and from various “Church” organisations. But even so, Lord’s campaign shocked Quigley, Breen and Cantwell. They felt he was going about it the wrong way and was doing more harm than good.

The top Popish players in the campaign against Hollywood were thus clearly divided as to how best to proceed. The Episcopal Committee, influenced by Quigley, supported a whitelist and did not support the IFCA’s reviews of films, believing that that women’s organisation was too lenient and that anyway it was too close to the Hays Office. Both Lord and Quigley had issues with the IFCA’s work. But Ford parted with Quigley over whether to issue only a whitelist (as Quigley desired), or a blacklist as well (as desired by Ford).

Then on May 23, 1934, the Romish cardinal Dennis Dougherty took a strong stand against Hollywood. On this day he issued a call for all the Roman Catholics in Philadelphia to boycott all movie houses, and this call was read out at all masses. He branded films as the “greatest menace to faith and morals in America today”, and then he went even further: he declared that the boycott was “a positive command, binding all in conscience under pain of sin.” This galvanised Roman Catholics into action. Millions began to stay away from the movies. The media now sat up and took note of the Fegion of Decency as well, giving it reams of publicity.

In fact, the massive boycott certainly became an ecumenical boycott to a large extent. At a time when Protestants did not co-operate with Roman Catholics and by and large viewed Rome (correctly) as a false religion, this Romish campaign against the movies was enthusiastically supported by many Protestants and Jews. This is because Protestants and Jews could also see the great immorality of Hollywood. The Christian Century made it clear that the Roman Catholic system was providing the leadership in the crusade against Hollywood, but that Protestants and Jews had responded to that leadership and to a large extent joined forces with Rome.

Not all Protestant ministers were favourable to this Romish campaign, however. As an example: in Jacksonville, Florida, printed sermons favouring the Legion were ripped up by two ministers when a member of the Ku Klux Klan said the campaign against the movies was a Popish propaganda plot. ¹⁹⁰ He was not wrong.

It is one thing when, as citizens of a country, people all work together for the common good. It is quite another thing when professing Christians join forces with other religions to do so. The Christian is not to fight in social causes with those of false religions, as such. This is a tactic Rome has used ever since, with devastating effectiveness, to break down barriers and get Protestants to view Romanism as “just another Christian church”: one simply has to think of the modem anti-abortion campaign. Rome uses an evil like abortion to rally non- Romanists to its side, and thus a major step towards acceptance of Rome as Christian is taken. ¹⁹¹ Likewise with what happened all those decades ago, in 1934.

Breen, naturally, was ecstatic and sure of victory, saying, “We have them on the run”, although admitting they still had a long way to go. ¹⁹² Nevertheless, by June of that year it was clear that the Romish boycott in the big predominantly Romish American cities was hurting the movie producers, and hurting them badly.

Will Hays, watching the boycott bite deep into the film industry, saw this as an opportune time to increase the authority of the Hays Office by alligning it with the “Church” of Rome. Thus in May 1934 he met with Quigley for this purpose and said that Hollywood’s leaders were willing for Joe Breen to be placed in charge of the Studio Relations Committee. John McNicholas, the archbishop of Cincinnati, was going to invite Hays to a meeting of the Episcopal Committee, but Jesuit priest Dinneen said to him, “[Hays] is a foxy boy and will promise anything to stop the campaign…. My advice is to stall him off until after the meeting…. You will have them on their knees in another sixty days.” ¹⁹³ So Quigley and Breen were invited to represent Hollywood instead. Dinneen’s suggestions of a national boycott of Hollywood and a national blacklist were rejected by the committee, who listened to Quigley when he presented Hays’ plan, which was to strengthen the effectiveness of the Code. The result was (as shown earlier) that the MPPDA board of directors unanimously passed a resolution to replace the Studio Relations Committee with a new enforcement agency, the Production Code Administration (PCA), headed by Breen, for that very purpose – the strengthening of the Code’s effectiveness. According to this, all the major studios (which were members of the MPPDA) and any producers using the MPPDA’s distribution facilities (i.e. independent studios) would first have to get a movie approved by the Production Code Administration, obtaining its certificate of approval, or face a large fine and forfeit financing and bookings for their movies. Furthermore, the Producers Appeal Board was scrapped, so that it was now impossible for the producers to take care of one another and overrule Breen’s decisions. From now on, a PCA decision could only be appealed to the MPPDA board of directors.

Breen, the Irish Papist, was acceptable to both the Romish hierarchy and to the moviemakers because he kn ew the movie business. He was now virtually all-powerful, the supreme inspector general of American cinema, as his biographer called him. He became known by various unofficial titles: the Hitler of Hollywood, the Mussolini of American films, the dictator of movie morals. Hollywood could hardly operate without him, and it knew it. As Harry Warner told his own studio, “If Joe Breen tells you to change a picture, you do what he tells you. If any one fails to do this – and this goes for my brother – he’s fired .” ¹⁹⁴ Non-Papists sent Breen letters calling him an “agent for the Pope” and a “spy for the Papists ”. ¹⁹⁵ They were right, for he was certainly there to do Rome’s work.

How true the words of Will Hays when he said, “At last we had a police department, or at least a civilian defense force .” ¹⁹⁶

It was given to Breen and Quigley to get the Romish bishops, at a bishop’s conference to be held a few days later, to accept this and to lift the boycott. Hays actually told the two men, “the Catholic authorities can have anything they want” – such was the power of Rome within the United States to economically cripple the movie industry. Breen, again, was ecstatic, saying, “The stage is set for a magnificent piece of worthwhile Catholic action and achievement.” ¹⁹⁷ He well knew what he hoped to achieve – nothing less than making use of the powerful medium of film to influence America for Roman Catholicism. “If we could provide some means for Catholic story tellers to tell – and write – stories based upon Catholic philosophy,” he stated in 1934, “is it unreasonable to expect that here, again, we shall see the influence of the movies showing itself upon audiences?” ¹⁹⁸

The victory was Rome’s, and Jewish Hollywood was now under Irish Roman Catholic domination. As one has correctly written, “In cloth and in mufti, the coreligionists approved a censorship regime that ceded dominion of Hollywood cinema to Irish-Catholic theology for the next twenty years.” ¹⁹⁹

By the end of 1934, after a massive publicity campaign, it was believed that between seven and nine million Roman Catholics had taken the Legion of Decency’s pledge. One priest accurately said that the Legion was “Catholic Action’s big opportunity.” American Roman Catholicism knew now that it was extremely powerful. In the Popish paper, Our Sunday Visitor, one writer declared triumphantly, “The Catholic church could put anything through it wished, and could crush anything.” This was not far off the mark. In Port Huron, Michigan, students in a Roman Catholic school were enlisted, and forced the local commissioner of police to close a film which the Romish press had condemned, and in Chicago some 70 000 students marched through the streets, holding up banners which said: “An admission to an indecent film is an admission to hell”; “Films we must see, but clean they must be.” ²⁰⁰

As Breen’s authority began to be felt and films began to be edited and altered in accordance with his demands, he came in for increasing criticism from some quarters, especially from those who wanted more sex, not less, in movies. According to the New York Times, moviegoers in large numbers actually hissed and booed whenever the Production Code seal appeared at the start of each film. Many people believed, and rightly as we have seen, that the Roman Catholic “Church” was now essentially in charge of Hollywood. Newspaper editorials spoke out against the Legion of Decency. But even so, as pointed out by the chairman of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, Roy Howard, “most newspapers are frightened to death of church sentiment and especially of Catholic church sentiment”. And in support of his statement, the Hays Office discovered, when it surveyed 172 editorials concerning the Legion in early July 1934, only twenty disapproved of what the “Church” was doing. ²⁰¹

Communism Creeps into Hollywood

In 1934 Maurice Rapf, son of an MGM executive, Harry Rapf, a Jew, toured the Soviet Union while still in his teens. This of course was just a few years before the outbreak of World War Two, and Hitler’s Nazism and anti-Semitism was of increasing concern to Jews, even American Jews. The young Rapf was deeply impressed by how anti- Nazi the Soviets appeared to be, and how apparently tolerant of Jews. So impressed, in fact, that he returned to Hollywood a pro-Communist radical.

His father sent him to people he knew in Hollywood in the hope that they would get him to change his mind. Harry Warner said to him, “I don’t want to talk to no [expletive deleted] Communist. Don’t forget you’re a Jew. Jewish Communists are going to bring down the wrath of the world on the rest of the Jews.” ²⁰² This was the same Harry Warner who for a time supported the liberal closet Communist, Franklin Roosevelt. Harry’s brother Albert said to Rapf, “Don’t come into my office and start spouting any of that.” And Louis B. Mayer told him, “Everybody thinks that Jews are Communists,” and that Rapf owed it to the Jews to have nothing to do with Communist radicalism. Why this reaction?

The top Jewish elite of tinsel town knew what being suspected of Red sympathies would do to them, their careers, and even Jews in America generally. They knew what Nazism was about, they knew also that Communism was anti-Nazi and tolerant of Jews, but they lived in America and desired to be accepted with the cream of upper-class American Gentile society, and they certainly did not want to rock the boat by being seen to be supportive of Communism in any way. This could best be expressed in the words of another Hollywood Jew, David Selznick, who despite reading Communist literature himself advised Rapf: “Be a radical. Think anything you [expletive deleted] please. But don’t wear it on your sleeve. Don’t go around talking about it all the time because it’s going to get in the way of your career. If you want to be a moviemaker, that’s all you can do.” ²⁰³

Still, the Communistic radicalisation of Hollywood had begun, and it would gather momentum in the years ahead. Hollywood’s Jewish executives were – at times perhaps for pragmatic reasons – against Communism; but Hollywood’s Jewish writers were not. These writers – playwrights, novelists, journalists – had mostly come from the eastern United States (in particular, New York) to Hollywood, and many of them were Socialists or Communists. In the words of one of them, Milton Spring: “My father read the Forward [the Jewish Socialist newspaper]. He was a member of a union. And my grandfather was a member of a union. The Jews in New York were Socialists. They were old-country Socialists… and unions and left-wing thinking of that simple sort that was so Jewish in those days was translated to their children.” ²⁰⁴

Those were difficult times, the Depression and post-Depression years, and that worldwide economic collapse played into the Communists’ hands. They used it to get people to reject Capitalism and embrace Marxism. And those young Jewish writers began to write plays for the New York stage in which they railed against the real and perceived injustices of the American Capitalist system. And of course, the growing threat of Nazism played right into the Communists’ hands as well. As Nazi anti-Semitism grew in Europe and found many sympathisers in America, Jews became increasingly frightened. And thus the very real danger of one radical “ism” pushed many Jews into the arms of another radical “ism.”

When, therefore, those Jewish writers moved to Hollywood, they took their radicalised. Red ideology with them, and transferred it into their writing for movies. It was estimated that at this time, “probably 70 percent of the writers, directors, actors, and so on were liberally inclined”. ²⁰⁵

The Legion of Decency’s Power

At this time (1934/35) there was often a lot of animosity and rivalry between the different Roman Catholic players involved in movie censorship, usually caused by the fact that some supported the movie list issued in Chicago, and others the list issued in New York. Films approved by Joe Breen were often condemned by the Legion of Decency, priests disagreed over which films should be condemned and which should not, Martin Quigley and Jesuit priest Parsons were accused of being propagandists for Hollywood who were adversely affecting the Legion’s work, Jesuit priest Dinneen referred to Quigley and Parsons as traitors who were sowing division within the Romish camp, the friendship between Dinneen and Lord almost ended, and Lord and Quigley – the co-authors of the Code – were fiercely opposed to each other. This enmity between the two caused Quigley to tell a friend at one point, “I hope… to keep as far away from the clergy as possible, except on Sunday mornings.” ²⁰⁶

With two lists circulating, Roman Catholics were under the impression that they were free to decide for themselves which films to see and which to avoid, which was utterly unacceptable to the hierarchy. Clearly something had to be done to save the Legion campaign.

In 1935 the Romish bishops again assembled in Washington, D.C., and again they discussed movies and the movie industry. Romish archbishop John McNicholas, chairman of the ECMP, told the assembly that the Roman Catholic “Church” had successfully improved the content of Hollywood movies during the past year, and that in his judgment the Production Code Administration had been a success. He also called for Legion of Decency activities to be centralised in New York, and to issue a single Roman Catholic film viewing guide for all Roman Catholics in order to put a stop to all the arguing and fighting between the supporters of the different viewing guide lists, and between the supporters of the various approaches to classifying movies. McNicholas was supported in this by the bishop, John Cantwell. New York, they believed, should be the location because, although movies were made in Hollywood for the most part, they were usually first played in New York. The bishops agreed. The National Legion of Decency would be established in New York, under the guidance of Romish cardinal, Patrick Hayes.

Hayes appointed priest Joseph Daly as the Legion’s executive secretary. Daly was also a professor of psychology. Martin Quigley moved his publishing concerns to New York so that he could give guidance to the Legion. It was administratively under the direction of priest Edward Robert Moore.

As for who would be charged with actually determining a movie’s moral values, this was given to the IFCA, the Roman Catholic women’s organisation. The IFCA had been carrying out this work for years already, ever since 1922 when it had created a Motion Picture Bureau and followed the practice of praising good films and ignoring bad ones in its published film reviews. The head of the Motion Picture Bureau of the IFCA was Mary Looram. She was made its head in 1930 and held that position for over thirty years. But there were over a hundred women acting as film reviewers. The East Coast group was under the direction of Jesuit priest Francis X. Talbot, and the West Coast group was under priest John Devlin.

At first the IFCA women were sidelined once the Legion came into being, under the control of priests, because the IFCA was considered to be a puppet of the Hays Office by some; and because it followed the policy of praising good films but ignoring bad ones, this was seen as permitting Hollywood to continue producing bad ones. But after the IFCA agreed to issue a “condemned” category of movies as well, the bishops’ conclave agreed to make this women’s organisation the Legion’s official reviewing body.

Yet again, we see the i mm ense grip the Jesuits held over the entire censorship business in the United States, assisted by other priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and many ordinary but staunch Roman Catholics. It was a Roman Catholic stranglehold on the film industry, and it would last for decades.

The Legion created a rating system for the classification of films. There were four categories: A1 (Unobjectionable for general patronage); A2 (Unobjectionable for adults); B (Objectionable in part); and C (Condemned). Roman Catholics were forbidden to see “C” films, which were the worst kind and held by the Legion to be dangerously immoral.

Even though these Legion ratings were not part of ecclesiastical law as such, to ignore them was viewed in a very serious light by the religious leaders of the “Church” of Rome. Certainly most Roman Catholics believed that if they went to watch a film rated “C”, they would be committing a mortal sin, and the bishops were perfectly content to let them think so.

With regards to films rated as “B”, the waters were a lot muddier for the average Roman Catholic. Most priests tended to take the position that such films were hardly any better than “C” films, but still, for the average Romanist trying to figure it all out, it was not easy. In addition, what about the reviewers themselves? They had to watch indecent movies in order to decide on how each one should be rated; were they not committing sin by so doing? To this dilemma, Cantwell responded that no, they were not – for they were women of “virtue and judgment”. Hardly a satisfactory answer! But typical of how Roman Catholic leaders have always slithered out of such moral issues. It again just goes to show how subjective all such attempts at censorship and regulation are, when the Bible is not the standard.

Over at the Breen Office, the man was highly regarded by the “Church” hierarchy, overall, for his work in cleaning up Hollywood. Films, the bishops believed, were now far better than they had ever been. And because of Breen’s efforts at the PCA, the Legion of Decency was able to endorse the vast majority of PCA-approved films. Thus the working relationship between the PCA and the Legion was greatly improved.

The Legion became so powerful that film studios would even attempt to send their films to the Legion’s reviewers before they were released, so as to learn what the Legion considered to be objectionable in them! They knew the Legion’s power, and would delete entire scenes, change dialogue, and make all kinds of other alterations to their films just to achieve the Legion’s approval. Thus, although the Legion had no authority from the government to enforce any changes, it effectively censored films anyway merely by threatening to condemn a film of which it did not approve. ²⁰⁷ It had become the moral guardian, not only of American Roman Catholics, but of all American moviegoers. ²⁰⁸ Such was the power of Popery in Hollywood during this time! The Papal institution in America literally controlled the film industry.

Amazingly, even many of the Jewish studio bosses and other Jews in Hollywood accepted the work of the Legion and co-operated with it. Reason: they wanted profits, and profits would only be made if people went to see the films; and the vast Roman Catholic moviegoing audiences would not attend if the films were objectionable to them. It was all about money. “The mere threat that the more than twenty million Catholics would join in unison against a single film made the Hollywood executives quake with fear.” ²⁰⁹ What frightened Hollywood producers more than anything was the Legion’s “C” rating for a film – meaning the film was condemned and thus forbidden viewing for all Roman Catholics. This meant huge financial losses for the industry bosses, as Roman Catholics in their droves would stay away from the film. Producers would therefore bend over backwards to avoid a “C” rating. To do this, they had to enter into negotiations with the Legion, and if they agreed to remove anything in their films that the Legion found offensive, it would then re-classify the film, thereby allowing Roman Catholics to attend. ²¹⁰

In the second place, the Jews preferred a situation where the film industry itself was acting as watchdog over the films being made, than the one that existed in England, which was regulated by the government. Jewish artists and intellectuals did not like the Code because to them it stifled “creativity” and suchlike nonsense, but on the ground many Jews supported the Legion of Decency. In fact, the Council of Jewish Women and the Sisterhood of Temple Emmanuel in Denver, Colorado, actually signed up a thousand pledgers! There was, yet again as so often in Hollywood history, a working alliance between Roman Catholics and Jews. Jewish middle-class women fought for decent movies just like Roman Catholics did, and supported Roman Catholic efforts because they saw them as working for a co mm on goal. At this time both Romanists and Jews were still viewed, overall, as religious foreigners in the United States, and this collaboration in regulating Hollywood was an attempt to promote themselves as full citizens and part of the mainstream. ²¹¹

The Legion’s power did not go unnoticed by many Protestants. There were Protestants who supported the Legion’s work simply because they hated the immorality of Hollywood; but there were others who realised the danger. They saw that Hollywood was now not only promoting immorality, but being controlled by the “Church” of Rome. They rightly viewed this as gravely dangerous to the United States. ²¹²

But by this time, Protestantism in America had already changed much. It was not what it had been at the turn of the century. Liberalism had engulfed much of it. Many Protestant churches were in disarray, floundering doctrinally and full of uncertainty morally. Romanism, on the other hand, was flourishing. There were Roman Catholic schools, hospitals and orphanages, and the parish priests were exerting an evergrowing influence over their people. Irish Roman Catholic immigrants were no longer simply the underdogs of society, but were rising up the social structure. “Irish American Catholics, especially middle- class women and priests, claimed the moral high ground vacated by Protestants. In doing so, they hoped to demonstrate their superiority over other urban dwellers that included African Americans, Jews, socialists, as well as fellow Catholic Italians and Poles whose devotional life felt alien to the Irish. By claiming to be the final arbiters and enforcers of morality in filmmaking, Irish American Catholics assumed a powerful place in defining how Americans would see themselves.” ²¹³

Thus the era of Irish Roman Catholic domination of Hollywood had begun in earnest, not of control of the studios themselves (for these were mainly in Jewish hands), but of the kinds of films that the Jews would be allowed to make. It would in time be replaced by Italian Roman Catholic dominance, but for now, Hollywood was dominated by Irish Papists. And Roman Catholics would control the movie industry’s “morals” well into the 1960s. Furthermore, Jesuitism was always present, lurking quietly in the background, pulling the strings.

Thus: “For more than three decades, from 1934 to the late 1960s, the Catholic church, through its Legion of Decency, had the power… to control the content of Hollywood films. The Catholic church’s Legion of Decency could, and did, dictate to Hollywood producers the amount of sex and violence that was allowable on the screen. The producers meekly removed any scene that offended the church.” ²¹⁴ That was power!

As the Legion was not a government censorship body and had no legal power, its Papist supporters loved to point out that it only classified movies, grading them on moral values; it did not censor them. But this was an outright lie. Of course the Legion had the right to rate films for Roman Catholic audiences, and to call on Roman Catholics to stay away from films, as it often did. This is not censorship, it is a segment of society staying away from a film because it believes it to be offensive; and this is fine. And the Popish press, and priests behind their pulpits, also had the right to condemn a particular film as being unsuitable for Papists to attend; and this too was something that was often done. But when the Legion “demanded that offending films be altered to Catholic tastes before the Legion would bless them”, and furthermore “demanded that Hollywood not exhibit any print of the film anywhere in the world other than that approved by the Catholic Legion of Decency”, ²¹⁵ this was censorship.

Many Protestants were outraged at the Legion’s power to censor movies for everyone, non-Romanists as well as Romanists, for the Legion’s classification system meant that the entire public was affected by the changes studios made to movies in order to please the Legion. As the Nation put it, “What the non-Catholic moviegoers are entitled to decide is whether they wish to have their films censored in advance by the Catholic church.” ²¹⁶ This was precisely what was happening. The Roman Catholic “Church” was controlling who saw what emanating from Hollywood. It was extremely powerful, and “even the Legion’s supporters would admit that it was the most powerful pressure group in the film business, relying on the studios’ dread of a nationwide Catholic boycott of objectionable films.” ²¹⁷ As Geoff Shurlock of the PCA put it, Hollywood was so afraid of “the Catholics… that there was no room left to be scared of anyone else.” And the Literary Digest stated: “What scared the movie makers as they had never been scared before was that the Catholic Church, like the American film, is universal [and] the Catholic bishops can make shots which will be heard around the world.” ²¹⁸ Here is the plain fact of the matter: “A third of all movie seats in the early 1940s were located in the forty-nine cities with populations greater than 200,000, and most of these were heavily Catholic.” ²¹⁹ No wonder the Hollywood Jews were scared of the power of the Legion!

The Censorship Process

But how exactly was the censoring done? Well, usually the Legion would first threaten to condemn a film privately, not publicly. Officially, scripts were first reviewed by the Production Code Administration; the Legion did not officially review scripts. If the PCA felt the film could pass, it issued its seal of approval. But before the film was duplicated and distributed, the Legion would review the final print, and demand a change in the film if it saw fit. If there was anything offensive to the Legion, it would inform the producing studio, which would then make the necessary changes in accordance with Legion (and thus Roman Catholic) wishes. If the changes were acceptable to the Legion, the film would be re-classified so that Roman Catholics could attend. And the Legion’s power was immense: “Here the Legion moved away from its role of moral judge to that of censors: Legion priests negotiated with studios to eliminate certain scenes, reshoot or cut others, change dialogue, or add a prologue or epilogue to a film to make it acceptable to the Catholic church. This action turned the Legion into a national board of censorship.” ²²⁰

If a film was condemned by the Legion and yet was still shown by any theatre, that theatre would be boycotted by Roman Catholic organisations such as the powerful Knights of Columbus. The purpose, of course, was to cause the film to bomb at the box office.

In 1936 the Legion issued its first New York list of films. No films received a “C” (Condemned) rating, and Martin Quigley was angry with priest Daly of the Legion for being too liberal and kind to the movie industry. Quigley was trying to take full control of the Legion. He told McNichols, the archbishop, that he believed Daly was undermining the Legion, and Daly was fired. This sent the message that the Romish hierarchy was in disagreement over the Legion, so the cardinal, Hayes, swiftly appointed a young priest as the new Legion director. His name was John J. McClafferty, and he had been the assistant director of the Division of Catholic Action at the Catholic Charities of New York. He was recommended to McNicholas because he was willing to take advice. He easily came under the influence of Martin Quigley – which was entirely to Quigley’s liking. ²²¹ He also worked well with Breen and the movie producers, and played a large part during the following years in making the Legion so influential within Hollywood. ²²²

The 1936 Papal Encyclical Endorses the Legion of Decency

In this year the pope, Pius XI, issued Vigilanti Cura, a papal encyclical on the movies, which strongly endorsed the Legion of Decency, calling it a “holy crusade”, and called on Roman Catholics in other countries to establish similar organisations. He said that it did not seem practical to have a single movie list for the whole world, and he also gave the bishops the authority to apply stricter ratings than the Legion.

It is believed that Martin Quigley played a major part in the issuing of this encyclical. ²²³

The Working Relationship Between Breen’s PCA and the Legion of Decency

The Legion of Decency was really a confederation of local organisations, and each local Legion director, who was in most cases a priest, was responsible for the work of the Legion in his diocese. Naturally, then, the Legion’s work was very strong in some dioceses, and weak in others. It all depended on how committed to the Legion each bishop and priest was. “A majority of the bishops,” in fact, “paid very little attention to the Legion and gave nothing more than lip service to its activities. Churches gave members the Legion pledge once a year in early December, and posted the Legion’s classifications.” ²²⁴ That was pretty much all they did, many of them. But in Los Angeles, priest John Devlin, who was the guide of the West Coast group of the IFCA. was very committed to the Legion. Not only that, but he worked very closely with Joseph Breen of the PCA, and with Hollywood studio bosses themselves. Knowing the power of the Legion to cripple them financially, studio bosses readily sent their scripts to Devlin prior to beginning production on a film. Even Breen himself would often forward a script to Devlin for advice.

Thus Breen’s Production Code Administration, which was the movie industry’s official censorship board, and the Legion of Decency, had an extremely close working relationship. This is not surprising, given the Roman Catholic influence over the PCA from its very inception. The two worked in tandem to keep any movies that they deemed to be a danger to the “Church” of Rome, or immoral, from being seen by audiences. At times, in fact, they were virtually one and the same, constantly in contact with each other. “For twenty years, from 1934 until the retirement of PCA director Joseph I. Breen, the PCA and the Legion were linked so closely that it is next to impossible to separate them.” ²²⁵ When the PCA received a movie script for review, it would send it to the Legion and request an “unofficial” opinion. The Legion would then return the script with its “opinion”, which was often a warning that the film needed to be changed if the Legion was to be kept happy.

The two organisations did not always agree over what was immoral, but this did not alter the close collaboration between them. At times the Legion acted independently of the PCA and even took Breen to task if it believed he had passed something that in the Legion’s opinion should not have been passed. But for the most part “there were only occasional differences of opinion between” the two organisations. ²²⁶ Overall, the hierarchy of Rome in the United States, the Jesuits, and the Legion of Decency were very satisfied with Breen. His friends at the Jesuit publication America declared, “The greatness of Joseph I. Breen’s performance lies in this: not only has he wiped the slate clean of obscenities, but also – and the Legion believes this to be far more important – he has scotched the teaching of moral heresy. If the Catholic press, like Time, were picking the man of the year, it would doubtless hasten to name Joseph I. Breen, the enforcing agent of the Code.” ²²⁷

A Jewish Business Selling Papist Theology to Protestant America

Thus Hollywood was in the hands of the “Church” of Rome. “Catholic control over Hollywood was complete: a Catholic censor, Joe Breen, rode roughshod over Hollywood and, in New York, the Catholic Legion quietly approved his moral judgments.” ²²⁸ And the films produced during this era reflected Rome’s absolute dominance of the industry, with Papist directors, Papist actors, and Papist film plots everywhere. Furthermore: “If Catholics on screen were close to legion, Catholics behind the screen were nearly almighty. One of the more curious phenomena in the history of American popular culture, the dominion of the minority religion [Romanism] over the mass medium was achieved by a web of Catholic faithful, ordained and lay, whose long tentacles and precision coordination might confirm the darkest Protestant suspicions about Romanish intrigue: Daniel A. Lord, coauthor of the Production Code, a Jesuit priest; Martin J. Quigley, creator and defender of the Code, a graduate of Catholic University; and Joseph I. Breen, Jesuit- educated from boyhood, Jesuit-related by blood (his brother Francis was a Jesuit priest), and Jesuit-fixated by inclination”. ²²⁹

Another quote which sums up what happened in Hollywood in the second half of the 1930s: “Priests were to become major heroic figures in crime films; shoulder to shoulder with FBI men, revenue agents, and other agents of morality, they became part of a phalanx for truth, justice, and the American way. Super-padre would be bom around the time Superman came crashing down from Krypton, and for years a few Latin mumblings and a breviary could quiet the most savage beast and transform the most hardened heart. Every priest became an amalgam of Father Flanagan and Father Coughlin, of Bing Cosby and Pat O’Brien; the new armament was moral, the new weapons rosary beads, chapels, and poor boxes.” ²³⁰

It was not a situation that pleased many Protestants, or indeed many other Americans, and in 1937 Breen said in a letter to Lord, “I am constantly being charged with being ‘an agent of the Pope,’ ‘a spy for the Papists,’etc.” He called such people “anti-Catholic bigots.” In 1940 the Protestant Digest declared: “The minority control of the most vital amusement source of the nation is one of the most astounding things in the history of the United States.” The secular press’ New Republic complained that Breen, “a Catholic of Irish descent, is the one-man censor of the movies”, and declared that “the Catholic machinery” had “stampeded the Protestants” and “captured the movies.” ²³¹

Indeed it had. And from 1934 until about 1953, no major Hollywood studio was prepared to stand up to Rome. Its grip on Hollywood was total.

Truly, Hollywood was “a Jewish-owned business selling Roman Catholic theology to Protestant America”! ²³²