Red Lights for Blue Laws

Any game, sport, play, or public diversion, including, specifically, miniature golf, is forbidden by law on Sunday in Massachusetts. This same law also once closed the doors of movie theaters, unless their owners could get a city license to show a picture. But the cities of Massachusetts could not grant such a license without a censor's written approval that the film was in keeping with the character of the day. Even the State government got into the act; the Commissioner of Public Safety had to see the picture, too. All this censorship machinery, however, came to a sudden halt last summer. On July 6, 1955, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled the Sunday censorship law unConstitutional.

Sunday censorship was only one of the famous "blue laws" which have been part of the State's statutes since colonial days. Yet they were not an American invention. All "unnecessary work" on Sundays has been forbidden in England since 1678. Colonial lawyers only expanded the British precedent with typical thoroughness, among other things, forbidding a man to kiss his wife on the Lord's Day. Since the no-kissing days, chapter 136 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the blue law code, has been amended many times. Censorship of entertainment grew out of one of these amendments in 1908.

Court Challenge

But during their long history the blue laws have seldom been attacked in court. Although censorship was resented, it was never seriously challenged until 1954. Then the attack came from the owners of the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.

Cyrus Harvey '47, and Bryant Halliday '49, co-proprietors of the Brattle applied in February of last year for the usual license, in order to show Miss Julie, a film based on Stindberg's play about a fallen woman. The Cambridge city manager, who issued one of the permits, gave them no trouble; but the State Commissioner of Public Safety turned their application down. He felt he could not approve the picture after just a few cuts because the central theme of the film was an illicit love affair.

Miss Julie was not the first of the Brattle's films which the Commissioner failed to approve. The Young and the Damned, Volpone, and Desires, a German picture about drug addiction, all met with frowns and rejections. Others, like Pepe le Moko and Jean Cocteau's The Eternal Return, passed only after cuts.

The Brattle could, of course, exhibit any film on other days in the week. Sunday alone had restrictions. "But Sunday is our best day," Halliday points out. "Many of our films are foreign, and on Sunday people from all over the Boston area come to see the pictures which they can't see anywhere else. Furthermore, we felt that the censorship law was clearly unConstitutional and was hurting the motion picture industry throughout the state, so we decided to test it in court."

Initial Failure

The legal battle began in the Middlesex County Superior court. William C. Brewer, lawyer for Brattle Films, Inc., drew up a brief demanding that the Commissioner of Public Safety permit Miss Julie to be shown and asking for a decision on the Constitutionality of the Sunday censorship law. Assistant Attorney General Arnold H. Salisbury opposed this claim with a demurrer, a legal technicality which stated that Brattle Films could not prove any real damage, and that the blue law was Constitutional anyway. The judge agreed, and tossed the case out of court.

But Harvey, Halliday, and Brewer were not defeated. They prepared to appeal the Superior Court decision before the the State Supreme Court. Brewer drew up a new brief, a 51-page document which cites over a hundred precedents and references, and on May 5, 1955, he argued his case before the full panel of the Court.

Pressing Issue

Brewer chose to attack the Sunday censorship law on the grounds that it transgressed the right of freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment. To do so, be first had to prove that motion pictures were indeed a form of the press, but a number of decisions in courts throughout the country had indicated that such an assumption was acceptable before the law.

The Brattle lawyer did not try to assault the whole structure of the blue laws. He concluded that laws prohibiting some activities on one day of the week could be defended, as they had been in the past, on the grounds that one day of rest each week was a health measure which any state could rightly force its citizens to observe. "But," he added, "to impose censorship of ideas in the guise of a law dedicated to rest and recreation is an abuse of the underlying Constitutional power. No law which assails our great Constitutional freedom on Sunday is either appropriate or valid."

One of the great weaknesses of the law which established the censorship machinery was the vague terms which it gave as a criterion for the censor to follow. All law had to say on this subject was that entertainment to be licensed must be "in keeping with the character of the day and not inconsistent with its due observance." In the famous "Miracle" case, the United States Supreme Court condemned a New York movie censorship law which forbade the showing of "sacrilegious films, as too vague to be enforced. Brewer argued that the same judgment applied equally well to the Massachusetts law.

Sunday No Exception

The court did not hand down its decision until July 6. But when it came, it said in blunt language that Brattle Films, Inc., had won without trouble. Justice Wilkins wrote in the decision, "We think that (the Sunday censorship law) is void on its face as a prior restraint on the freedom of speech and of the press guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments...It is unthinkable that there is a power, absent as to secular days, to require the submission to advance scrutiny by governmental authority of newspapers to be published on Sunday, or sermons to be preached on Sunday, or public addresses to be made on Sunday."

On the day that Brewer pleaded the Brattle's case, the State Supreme Court also heard the arguments in a similar suit brought by the Times Film Corporation. This firm was the distribtor of the French film The Game of Love and the controversial Swedish picture One Summer of Happiness, which the Beacon Hill Theatre in Boston wanted to exhibit. The lawyers for Times Flms used some arguments similar to those Brewer had employed. But they also tried to attack the blue laws as an infringement upon freedom of religion. Chief Justice Qua ruled that such arguments were irrelevant and ordered the counsel to sit down. The final decision of The Times case, however, depended on the Brattle ruling, stating that this precedent was "enough to dispose of this matter for all practical purposes."

When the Supreme Court of Massachusetts finished talking, the press started. "Censorship is dead," one Boston editorial announced. Associated Press stories proclaiming the victory over prudery ran in papers all over the country. But not all the reaction to the court decision was so noisy. The Commissioner of Public Safety, who never seemed too happy about acting as a censor anyway, quietly dismantled his screening room and went back to his main business of inspecting buildings. And without much fanfare, the Brattle Theatre finally showed Miss Julie.

If the Brattle's reaction was one of quiet, well-mannered relief, the management of the Beacon Hill Theatre made more flamboyant use of all the free publicity it had received. "I don't think the Brattle managers handled their publicity correctly," Benjamin Sack, owner of the Beacon Hill Theatre, explained. "I think Miss Julie deserved a longer showing." He himself proceeded to sign a contract with Times Films to exhibit The Game of Love, One Summer of Happiness, Manon, Le Plaisir, and Gigi--all of which are noted for their censorable subject matter.

The Boston city government took the loss of its censoring power with little grace. Under the police power of the morals code, the city still retains the right to stop the showing of any "lewd, indecent, or obscene" picture, to confiscate the film, and to fine the exhibitor or revoke his license. But before these powers can be exercised, the film must have been shown publicly at least once. Accordingly, on the night when The Game of Love opened a delegation from city hall, including the mayor, was on hand to debate the picture's obscenity. After some days of soul-searching, the mayor announced that he would let the showing continue.

Sneaking Censor

Sometime after Christmas, Sack will show One Summer of Happiness, a beautifully photographed and delicate film about a tragic summer romance. The theme of this movie is not particularly objectionable, but it does contain a nude bathing scene of the kind Sweden easily takes in stride. A sneak preview of the film was shown several weeks ago, and the Boston city censor came to the performance. Afterwards, he only commented to the Beacon Hill Theatre owner, "You will hear from me."

While the Boston city government is waiting to decide what action to take on any further objectionable films, the State legislature is already trying to re-insert a watered-down version of the Sunday censorship law. A bill now before Massachusetts Senate aims to revitalize the statute, but specifically excepts motion pictures from any pre-censorship. Apparently, Sunday censorship is still not quite dead, even though the screening room of the Commission of Public Safety no longer echoes to the snips of cutting scissors. "I could drive to the Commission blindfolded, I've been there so often," Halliday once said. He had better not forget the way completely