Films That Once Shocked Viewers

Are Now Casually Accepted on TV

By W. Ward Marsh. The very movies that 10 years ago stirred indignant papas and screaming mamas to get on the phone or write letters to Ward-Marsh-YouDirty-Dog are being shown

censors-shudda-took-care of film that it couldn't play one

in the movies in theaters. There was hot stuff in

"David and Bathsheba" with Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. Anyway, it was hot in 1951, But the other day it had cooled sufficiently to

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week on the big screen.

pull his sex punches, put Hitchcock, never known to plenty of them in "To Catch and Grace Kelly. Those who a Thief" with Cary Grant could make something of

black-and-white telescope. Sex can be flaunted, me via the movies to get me ribbed and passed along to called a dirty name, but have cited do as much really, none of the instances harm-unless parents are

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in living rooms these days go out over the air. Maybe symbols knew that Hitchshushing and telling the kid-

with never a raurmur.

Your TV set is now showing pictures that were censored in Ohio before 1955, when censorship went out of

business here. The versions on television are not the cen-

sored versions that brought complaints when shown on the big downtown screens.

STILL, today there are no complaints about the movies on television, although blasts still come in with bitter tidings about something-the-

it's the upsteenth time David has had his affair with Susan in films on TV, but no one called me a name because it was shown in the living

rooms of the nation. Just lately Tea and Sympathy" was aired. Here is a fine drama, but when one viewed it on the stage one also wondered whether it could be filmed.

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DEBORAH KERR and John Kerr did film it, and it was a good picture, but there are millions living today who

can remember that such words in the parlor as homosexual, impotence and cheating would have turned the black horsehair sofa red.

Now it is possible for a married women to prove that fine young man, although his classmates wonder, is not queer and break her marriage vows doing it. And. right in your living room, too. And I never hear a whimper of protest.

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Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe carried on their hijinks in "River of No Return” but who shut off his TV set when it was shown? And, say, what about. "Some Like It Hot?"

The other night I saw picture which I enjoyed tremendously when it was first shown in 1957. It is "The Sun Also Rises." Errol Flynn is at his best, and on the screen never sober. Ava Gardner was one of the most attractive expatriates I have ever seen. Golly, the goingson in the film. It should get an early return play date.

"STROMBOLI," probably the worst and perhaps the hottest picture Ingrid Berg-man ever-made (She had

just hot-footed it off to Italy with Rossellini) seems to have been viewed by the ether program makers as good enough to be split. At any rate, Parts I and II were shown during different weeks. It was such a lousy

cock was having TV fun.

BOB HOPE and Lucille Ball had an extramarital sex ball in "The Facts of Life," making it forever unnecessary to tell the birds-beesand-flowers story again in

this lifetime.

But lovely ones have come into the living room, too. "The Quiet Man" and "Wee Geordie" were pleasant to see even if viewing them again was like looking through the wrong end of a

dies not to look-or as much damage as a seemingly harmless picture.

For example, "The Bridge, Bridge," a tremendously moving and tragic tale of school boys being turned into

cannon fodder by Hitler. Children, even more than adults, project themselves into stories. Tragic deaths in "The Bridge" could really hurt a kid who probablyknows more about sex than the screen can teach him, anyway.