MovieChat Forums > Baby Doll (1956) Discussion > Reality is stranger than fiction...

Reality is stranger than fiction...

posted 11 years ago by eagle79-1
2 replies | jump to latest

When BABY DOLL came out in '56, it was "condemned" by the Catholic Legion of Decency. The Catholic Archbishop of New York, Francis J. Spellman, reportedly slammed the film as "revolting" and "morally repellent" from his pulpit and forbade Catholics in the archdiocese to see the film.

Spellman defended Senator Joseph McCarthy 1953 investigations of Communist subversives in the federal government and was an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War.

Those "in the know" have whispered for decades (and almost published - but a more extensive disclosure by one of his biographers was thwarted) that Spellman was homosexual and carried on a relationship with a male member of the chorus in the Broadway revue One Touch of Venus. Even one of J. Edgar Hoover's biographers said that Hoover's files had "numerous allegations that Spellman was a very active homosexual".

Spellman's alleged nickname by those "closest" to him was "Franny".

I didn't make this stuff up. Like Madonna replied when asked what she meant when she called Lady Gaga "reductive":

"Look it up"

;)

[–] benGsboat 10 years ago

Well, I looked it up. It was actually condemned two days before its release, and twenty million Catholics protested around the country to keep it from being shown.

See, they figured it would "exert an immoral and corrupting influence on those who saw it" and if one chose to, it would be "under pain of sin".

77% of theaters wouldn't show the film, and it made only $600,000. We can only hope the people who saw it didn't suffer too much.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_loaau1ijlT1qiyyhbo1_500.gif

[–] solex10 10 years ago

To add more to this; IIRC, one of Spellman's lovers in the 1940's was the infamous playboy heir Jimmy Donahue, and one night in New York sometime in the 1940's, Spellman came to a party of Donahue's in a ball gown.