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A 1952 ruling gave films free speech protection
The Supreme Court reversed its earlier view that cinema was mere entertainment In 1952 the Supreme Court struck down a New York ban on the film The Miracle, ruling that motion pictures were protected expression under the First Amendment. The decision reversed a 1915 ruling that had called film a business pure and simple. Censorship boards could still act, but they now faced a higher legal bar. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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John Cage wrote a piece made of silence4'33" was first performed in Woodstock, New York, in 1952A voluntary ratings system replaced the Code in 1968Jack Valenti introduced the G, M, R and X categories to guide parentsThe NC-17 rating replaced X in 1990The change aimed to separate serious adult films from pornographyThe British film censor dates from 1912Local councils still hold the legal power over cinema admissionsShowing drug dealing sympathetically was off limitsThe Code required crime to be punished and never shown as attractiveThe Production Code policed Hollywood for three decadesFrom 1934 studios needed a seal of approval before a film could be released
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Tags: censorship, 1952, law
A 1952 ruling gave films free speech protection: the short answers
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- The Supreme Court reversed its earlier view that cinema was mere entertainment. The figure is taken from National Archives, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a movies & tv fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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