Censorship in the American Theatre

Censorship in the American Theatre. Although the settlement of America coincided with the flourishing of both Jacobean and Restoration playwriting in England, the relatively small number of settlers and their general religious bent precluded the emergence of real theatre during the 17th century and much of the early 18th century. Certainly the New England Puritans, the Dutch in New Amsterdam, and the Quakers in Pennsylvania were all vehemently opposed to theatricals of any sort. Even in the somewhat liberal atmosphere of cavalier Virginia, what may have been the first American play, The Bear and the Cub (1665), was performed at a court hearing after a public performance led to charges of licentiousness. The actors were acquitted, but the trial was the harbinger of nearly three centuries of court battles and other harassment of American theatre by authorities. In the late 18th century many colonies and later many states passed laws banning theatricals. However, by this time a number of cities had grown sufficiently populous that the demand for theatrical entertainments could no longer be ignored. Men such as David Douglass were politic enough to persuade authorities to permit the erection of playhouses and the production of plays, although even where licenses were granted they were frequently precariously held and just as frequently revoked. Inevitably, as with any prohibition, not only were appetites whetted but also means of circumvention were found. Plays were often advertised as “concerts,” “lectures,” or “dissertations.” No national office equivalent to that of the English Lord Chamberlain was ever established to censor plays in advance. Instead, censorship was left to cities or, occasionally, to states. Actually very few localities ever resorted to advance censorship, the most notorious exception in the late 19th and early 20th century being Boston. But pervasive Victorian concepts of morality conditioned the writing and presentation of many plays, as well as something so seemingly slight as the naming of playhouses. For much of the 19th century, when opera never shared the opprobrium of drama, countless theatres were called opera houses, although they were given over primarily to the presentation of drama and rarely, if ever, offered real operas. Many theatres were also called “halls,” and in a few major cities theatres often had additional space devoted to exhibitions and so were called “museums.” The most famous of the latter were Barnum's American Museum and the Boston Museum. These appellations allowed many publicly prudish people to have the best of both worlds by attending the theatre and retaining their respectability.

Perhaps because most performers, writers, and producers seemed to share the moral consensus, there was little outright censorship in the 19th century. Men such as Augustin Daly appeared to understand precisely how far they could go in handling what was deemed touchy subject matter. Moreover, most drama critics shared contemporary pruderies and were frequently quick to denounce the slightest overstepping of implicit limitations. Much of the outcry against theatre continued to come from the clergy, who often deplored all theatricals as a matter of principle, and from newspaper editors, who may have agreed with the narrow strictures of the day or who, more likely, were simply seeking to increase circulation with shrill attacks. The Black Crook (1866), with its long line of girls in flesh‐colored tights, and Ada Isaacs Menken's Mazeppa (1861), in which she appeared to ride nude on a horse, typified productions that scandalized, while Daly's treatment of divorce in the play of the same name exemplified the use of subject matter that many thought should not be treated. It is to the credit of the better dramatists, producers, and critics of the day that they were able gradually to broaden the scope and depth of American playwriting in the face of the prevalent morality. In the very late 19th century the coming of Ibsenite realism and Shavian farce, both of which, in their disparate ways, touched on many matters previously considered unbroachable, infuriated many conservative critics, playgoers, and lawmakers, so that by the early 20th century the hue and cry for censorship rose to heights unknown before. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, and sometimes later, overt censorship and repression led to frequent and often highly publicized battles between authorities, who were responding to puritanical wailings, and the theatre, which was determined to apply increasingly open standards of honesty and permissibility. One of the most famous cases concerned Clyde Fitch's Sapho (1900), in which a courtesan begs to be seduced and is carried up a flight of stairs to her bedroom in the arms of her latest lover. Goaded by the outcries of clergy and of such yellow journalists as William Randolph Hearst, who wrote, “We expect the police to forbid on the stage what they would forbid in streets and low resorts,” New York authorities closed the show and arrested its star, Olga Nethersole; her leading man; and the manager of the theatre. They were acquitted in court. Among the other distinguished plays of the era to be closed or banned in New York or elsewhere were Mrs. Warren's Profession, The Easiest Way, and Monna Vanna. The last was allowed to proceed after Mrs. Fiske grudgingly capitulated to the demand for revisions, but The Easiest Way was not allowed to play Boston and several other cities.

After World War I, when films had lured away the lowest level of playgoers, and when the postwar perception of new freedom and enlightenment prompted playwrights and playgoers to demand a theatre more truly reflective of modern society, the battle intensified. Such fine American plays as All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924), Desire Under the Elms (1924), The Firebrand (1924), They Knew What They Wanted (1924), and What Price Glory? (1924) were all either forced to make revisions or were closed in New York or elsewhere. So were more patently tawdry but still theatrically interesting works such as Mae West's Sex (1926), The Shanghai Gesture (1926), and Lulu Belle (1926). In 1927, responding to the agitation for censorship, New York City enacted the Wales padlock law, which not only enabled authorities to arrest the producer and actors in any offensive play, but to deprive the theatre housing the play of its license for one year. The law was not rescinded until 1967. However, the most extreme instances of censorship continued to come from Boston, and to a lesser extent from Chicago, both of which required submission of plays in advance. Thus, many of Eugene O'Neill's works and, indeed, many of the productions of his producer, the Theatre Guild, were not allowed to play Boston, so were booked into suburban theatres instead. Strange Interlude (1928) was the most celebrated instance of this exclusion. Almost inevitably the battle between conservative advocates of censorship and liberal proponents of freer speech took on a political coloring in the 1930s. While many of these confrontations remained local, some assumed a national scale because they involved the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), which had been established and funded by Congress. Thus, the Department of State attempted to censor and finally was able to force the cancellation of the FTP's projected mounting of the anti‐Mussolini play Ethiopia. Ultimately extremists on both sides prevailed, the FTP by producing plays filled with increasingly left‐wing propaganda and the ultra‐conservatives in Congress by killing the whole Federal Theatre Project. However, moral considerations still figured heavily in censorship, so it was in this decade that New York's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia finally succeeded in closing that city's burlesque houses, and Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour (1934), with its whispered accusation of lesbianism, was banned in Boston and Chicago. Censorship for military reasons became accepted during World War II, although strenuous objections were raised when the military frequently extended its grip and banned plays and performances on moral grounds. Nor were regular plays in regular theatres free from interference. The Shuberts were threatened with invocation of the Wales law when they mounted a sleazy burlesque‐style revue, but, more importantly, another serious study of lesbianism, Trio (1944), was closed when its playhouse was faced with loss of its license.

From the 1950s on, serious contretemps gradually faded, especially in New York, and those that did occur usually had a comic touch to them. For example, when 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, John Ford's three‐hundred‐year‐old classic, was revived in New York, the city refused to allow public billboards to display the last word, and the supposedly liberal New York Times refused to accept advertisements unless the word was omitted. Twenty years later there was little objection to the title The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, except when the producer placed advertisements on buses using only the word “whorehouse.” In the 1970s, Supreme Court decisions confirmed what had been time‐honored practice when it agreed that local authorities were the ones with the right to censor entertainments. However, by this time the road had shrunk to the point where it was all but nonexistent, and censorship was invoked primarily against films and books. Self‐appointed vigilantes and clergy, especially Southern fundamentalists and the Roman Catholic Church, still were able to prevent regional productions, but censorship had all but disappeared in New York. Ironically, the abolition of the Wales padlock law and the virtual disappearance of the slightest theatrical censorship in New York coincided with the explosive freedoms and social turmoil of the 1960s, so that it was significant and not unexpected that the theatre burst forth with the greatest display of obscenity ever seen. Not only did the formerly unspeakable become commonplace, but the most crass nudity and the depiction of everything from bestiality to urination was offered, especially in the Off Broadway theatres, but on Broadway as well. By the early 1980s a reaction had begun to set in. Happily it has not taken the form of a return to public censorship, but rather of a realization on the part of many playwrights, directors, and producers that excesses have been self‐defeating and that restraint and suggestion are usually more effective in making a point than careless vulgarity. All the same there were some productions that tested the most liberal of times. Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi (1998), an allegory that depicted Jesus and his disciples as homosexuals, riled enough citizens that death threats and police protection accompanied its opening night Off Broadway. And the New York Times, once again justifying its nick name as the “good gray lady,” refused to print the titles of Shopping and Fucking (1998) and Fucking A (2003). But these were isolated incidents and hardly point to a trend. Still the theatre must go on living with the unsettling knowledge that there are those who would, for a number of reasons, still rejoice in the revival of censorship.