Film Condemned By Cardinal

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28154, 18 December 1956, Page 15

Film Condemned By Cardinal

(Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK, Dec. 16. Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York, made an unprecedented attack on a motion picture from the pulpit of St. Patrick’s Cathedral today. He described the film “Baby Doll” as “evil” and ‘‘immoral,” and forbade Roman Catholics to see it “under pain of sin.” The film is to have its world premiere in New York on Tuesday. It was the Cardinal’s first speech from the pulpit in nearly eight years. The last such statement was an attack in February, 1949, on the Communists in Hungary for the imprisonment of Cardinal Mindszenty. Cardinal Spellman threw his full support behind the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency which has condemned the Tennessee Williams story as “morally repellent” and “grievously offensive to Christian standards of decency.” A spokesman for Elia Kazan, director of “Baby Doll,” denied that there was anything immoral in the film, and said that there was only one kiss in the entire two-hour picture. “Baby Doll” received the approval of the Motion Picture Association of America before the association revised its code last week. The single kiss in “Baby Doll” violates the new code, which has placed a ban on “openmouth kissing.”