[citation needed] From the early days of cinema, the motion picture industry made several attempts to self-regulate the content of films to avoid the creation of numerous state and municipal censorship boards.
He stated that due to complaints from the city's clergy and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, upon re-issuance, the licensees were prohibited from operating on Sunday.
"[5] In 1909, Charles Sprague Smith and about a dozen prominent individuals from the fields of social work, religion, and education, formed a committee, under the auspices of the People's Institute at Cooper Union, to make recommendations to the Mayor's office concerning controversial films.
However, there was no method of enforcement if a studio film violated the Thirteen Points content restrictions,[8] and NAMPI proved ineffective.
[9] After several risqué films and a series of notorious off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars, political pressure was increasing, with legislators in 37 states introducing almost one hundred movie censorship bills in 1921.
Faced with the prospect of having to comply with hundreds, and potentially thousands, of inconsistent and easily changed decency laws to show their movies, the studios chose self-regulation as the preferable option.
[11] "Hiring Hays to “clean up the pictures” was, at least in part, a public relations ploy, and much was made of his conservative credentials, including his roles as a Presbyterian deacon and past chairman of the Republican Party.
"[11] In 1924, Hays instituted "The Formula", a loose set of guidelines for filmmakers, to get the movie industry to self-regulate the issues that the censorship boards had been created to address.
Again, despite Hays' efforts, studios largely ignored the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls," and by the end of 1929, the MPPDA received only about 20 percent of Hollywood scripts before production,[10] and the number of regional and local censorship boards continued to increase.
Without the power to compel the editing of content deemed problematic, it was left with attempting to persuade the studios to make changes.
Catholic bishops and laypeople tended to be leery of federal censorship and favored the Hays approach of self-censorship, and the influence of public opinion.
Members were asked to sign a pledge promising to "remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality.
Initially, the Legion of Decency provided no official guide to good and bad films but left it up to individual priests and bishops to determine what was or was not morally acceptable.
[20] During the early years, the Legion established a rating system that assessed films based on their moral content.
"[21] One of the first foreign films condemned was the 1933 Czechoslovak erotic romantic drama Ecstasy which featured an eighteen-year-old Hedy Lamarr swimming nude and chasing naked after her runaway horse, as well as an illicit affair and a suicide.
The early thirties saw a number of exploitation film features that claimed to warn the public about various kinds of shocking sin and depravity corrupting society.
In reality, these films were cynical, profit-motivated vehicles that wallowed in lurid, taboo subjects, such as: drug abuse, promiscuous sex, venereal disease, polygamy, child marriages, etc.
[24] Their influence stemmed from the popularity of their rating system, their skillful lobbying, and the circulation of a pledge at church services.
[28] In 1957, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Miranda Prorsus ("The Remarkable Inventions"), which suggested that Catholics should be more concerned about encouraging good movies than condemning bad ones, an approach taken earlier by the National Board of Review.
[29] Professor James Skinner wrote that by the late 1950s and early to mid-1960s, the Legion was beginning to lose its influence both within Hollywood and within the Catholic Church.
Columbia Pictures removed fifteen lines of dialogue from This Thing Called Love and the Legion revised the rating to "B".
[3] By the late fifties, films considered "problematic" were viewed by the Legion two or three times; first by the staff and then by consultants who provided written evaluations.
[citation needed] In 1938, the league requested that the Pledge of the Legion of Decency be administered each year on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8).
[citation needed] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting was an office of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and is best known for the USCCB film rating, a continuation of the National Legion of Decency rating system begun in 1933 by Archbishop of Cincinnati John T. McNicholas, OP.
[34] The Office of Film and Broadcasting worked to review every movie in the United States still adhering to the original rating system.
[40] On 4 May 2022, Catholic News Service announced that it would cease its operations in the United States on 31 December 2022 due to a decision of the USCCB.