Freedom of the screen: The legal challenges to state film censorship, 1915--1981

Responding to a moral panic over the content of movies, the legislatures of seven states enacted film censorship statutes between 1911 and 1923. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, Maryland, New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts censored all films shown within their state borders, ceasing only when state or federal courts overturned the statutes as unconstitutional. Such prior restraint was not practiced on other media: only films were subject to review prior to reaching the public "marketplace of ideas." While the major Hollywood studios acquiesced in such censorship, some independent film distributors and exhibitors challenged the state censors in the courts. The earliest challenges, in 1915, all met defeat with the U.S. Supreme Court handing down a landmark decision specifically denying motion pictures any rights to protection under the First Amendment. Succeeding legal challenges faced a hostile judicial atmosphere until the legal culture began to evolve after World War II. As the U.S. Supreme Court more closely scrutinized state laws infringing on speech, the film distributors began to make headway against the censor boards. The post-war film distributors won a major victory in 1952 as the Supreme Court brought film under the protection of the First Amendment for the first time. But, since the Court declined to rule all film censorship statutes unconstitutional, censorship continued. The legal challenges also continued. In the 1950s, the Supreme Court began to whittle away at state film censorship statutes, but the Justices never declared any unconstitutional. In 1965, however, a Maryland case caused the Justices to place so many restrictions on the methods of censoring films that all-remaining censoring states (except Maryland which continued until 1981) gave up. This dissertation details the legal challenges to the state film censorship statutes and examines the legal arguments made by the distributors who refused to accept censorship's restrictions. As the legal culture evolved, the arguments against the prior restraint of motion pictures changed. The independent film distributors and exhibitors who chose to fight the state film censors unwittingly became free speech advocates, and the cases they brought made significant contributions in the evolution of free speech jurisprudence.