Race, Gender, and Movie Censorship in the New South, 1922--1965
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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2005 Screen strife: Race, gender, and movie censorship in the New South, 1922--1965 Melissa D. Ooten College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons, United States History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Ooten, Melissa D., "Screen strife: Race, gender, and movie censorship in the New South, 1922--1965" (2005). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623484. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-ne3a-h180 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SCREEN STRIFE Race, Gender, and Movie Censorship in the New South, 1922-1965 A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Melissa Dawn Ooten 2005 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPROVAL SHEET This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Melissa Dawn Ooten Approved by the Committee, November 2005 LeisaD. Meyer, Chair »wel] Arthur Knight Kimberjy L. Phillips i-A it Andrea FriedmpiednVn Washington University ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements iv Abstract v Introduction. Movie Censorship and Virginia. 2 Chapter I. The Project of Censorship: Debating the Movies in 1920s Virginia 36 Chapter II. Censorship in Black and White: The Struggle to Maintain Racial Hierarchies at the Movies, 1920s-193 Os 87 Chapter III. The Cultural Politics of Race and the Cold War 143 Chapter IV. The Search for Sexual “Deviance:” Regulating and Contesting Depictions of Female Sexuality On-Screen 188 Epilogue 246 Appendix A 264 Appendix B 266 Appendix C 268 Appendix D 270 Bibliography 272 Vita 282 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the many individuals who devoted their time - and considerable effort - to making this dissertation a reality. My dissertation advisor, Leisa Meyer, has offered invaluable comments time and time again over the years, but most importantly, she has been a continual source of encouragement throughout the entire process of graduate school. It is only with her support that I would have pursued my interests in women’s history. Thanks to Judith Ewell, who kindly agreed to serve on my dissertation committee after her official retirement from the College. Kim Phillips, a scholar I had the fortune to work with from the very beginning of my graduate training, also offered invaluable insights, as did Arthur Knight, who brought a much needed cinematic analysis to my historical study. Years ago, I read Andrea Friedman’sPrurient Interests and knew it was a model I hoped to one day emulate. While my dissertation does not begin to compare to her study, I appreciate her willingness to read and comment on this work. While not directly related to my dissertation, Jim Whittenburg has been a wonderful source of support throughout my graduate training, and Suzanne Raitt, director of Women’s Studies, gave me the opportunity to jump head first into teaching Introduction to Women’s Studies, a truly intense and incredibly important experience. Many fellow graduate students have read portions of my dissertation, and I thank you! It is a better work because of your analysis. Also, and as importantly, I want to thank my fellow graduate students who kept me sane during the often trying production of a dissertation. I especially would like to thank: Sarah Trembanis, who I sorely miss, for inviting me to my first social outing as a graduate student here to watch the Super Bowl on an icy Sunday in January at her apartment when she wanted but did not yet have a dog and a baby - 1 am happy to report she now has both. Scott Ebhardt, who keeps me in good humor, good spirits, and is always up for new experiences. Becky Wrenn, who shares my love of British animated clay and margaritas. And to Beth Kreydatus, who has dealt with an incessant amount of hysteria and hilarity from me over the years and always dealt with it in the most appropriate of ways - by supplying me with as much chocolate as possible! I have always treated your home as mine - no knocking, little notice of arrival - and I appreciate your unending support. My thanks also go to many friends and colleagues, including Jeni Oast, Carly Herbert, Amy Howard, Jonita Ashley, and the Elliotts, who will always be my “Williamsburg family.” Also, thanks to my roommate of six years, John Elliott, since apparently no one else will live with either of us. To Kevin for teaching me some invaluable lessons I did not necessarily want to initially learn, but I am a better person for them. And finally, I would like to express my appreciation to my family for their support and indulging my love of books and chalkboards for as long as I can remember. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT In 1922, Virginia’s General Assembly created a Motion Picture Censorship Board, which viewed every movie seeking legal exhibition in Virginia until 1965. This cultural regulation of popular culture complemented other economic and political policies of the state designed to buttress the power of white, middle-to-upper class elites within the state. To this end, the censors, empowered by the authority of the state, were particularly concerned with regulating certain images of African Americans and female sexuality on-screen. Yet the process of censorship was a contested, fluid practice, and individuals and community groups protested formal censorship decisions. Furthermore, filmmakers whose films were not allowed to play in the state often took more covert methods to get their films show. African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux continually worked with theater owners to get his officially censored fare shown to Black communities despite a state ban against them. While censorship decisions, despite contestation, stood unimpeded in the 1920s and 1930s, by the end of the World War II, many Virginians no longer accepted the cultural authority afforded the censorship board. A wide variety of groups protested the board’s censorship of the anti-Klan filmThe Burning Cross in 1947. With rising civil rights protests, waning movie profits, and federal court decisions which continually expanded First Amendment protections to the movies, the work of the censorship board was continually constricted until, by the early 1960s, the censors only had the legal authority to censor ambiguously-labeled “obscenity” from the screen. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “a priori” censorship which determines whether a movie is or is not suitable prior to its exhibition, was unconstitutional. As a result, Virginia’s censorship board disbanded, and the General Assembly officially dissolved it in early 1966. Virginia’s moviegoers enjoyed a brief interlude in which most any material could be found on some theater screens, including the hardcore pornographic Deepfilm Throat (1972). In 1973, however, the U.S. Supreme Court returned jurisdiction over such material to local authorities inthe Miller v. California ruling. Thus film and other cultural offerings could be deemed acceptable in some locales yet forbidden in others. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. SCREEN STRIFE: RACE, GENDER, & MOVIE CENSORSHIP IN THE NEW SOUTH, 1922-1965 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION: MOVIE CENSORSHIP AND VIRGINIA In the 1910s, Virginians joined the throngs of Americans streaming into nickelodeon, vaudeville, and motion picture theaters. Richmond alone supported two locally-published magazines devoted to motion pictures.1 Although the censorship of films by a state-supported board of authorities was still nearly a decade away, commonwealth and city officials already policed the boundaries of cinema. In 1914, Richmond police chief Werner stopped the exhibition ofThe Vampire at two city theaters after the president of the Richmond United Daughters of the Confederacy complained to the chief of the film’s “indecency.”2 By the mid-1910s, an informal committee had been created in Richmond to view newly released films that addressed sexuality, and it decided to ban, by the authority of the police to confiscate films deemed potentially disruptive to public order, a small number of films from the city and cut scenes from others.3 But such censorship was carried out on an “ad hoc,” infrequent, and informal basis. It was not until 1922 that Virginia’s Assembly members voted to establish a formal censorship board to screen and then issue or deny a license of exhibition to each movie seeking entrance into the commonwealth. The censorship board thus was established as a cultural method to round out political and economic ones for Virginia’s officials to maintain hierarchies of race, gender, and class that many of the state’s citizens contested and 1 Elisabeth Dementi and Wayne Dementi, compilers. Written by Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Celebrate Richmond Theater (Richmond: Dietz Press, 2001), 240. 2 Several films with similar titles were released in the early 1910s so it is difficult to determine which film was censored. However, most dealt with a predatory woman dubbed a “vamp” or vampire.