Condemned by the Legion of Decency

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This is a list of films condemned by the Legion of Decency, a United States Catholic organization, and its successor (from 1965), the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures. The condemned (or C) rating was issued from the time of the Legion's formation in 1933 until 1978, when the C rating and the B rating were merged into the new O ("morally offensive") rating. In 1980, the NCOMP film office was shut down, along with the biweekly Review, which had published ratings on 16,251 feature films.

The Legion's ratings were applied to movies made in the United States (which were subject to the Production Code until 1967) as well as those imported from other countries. Beginning in 1968, the ratings were applied in addition to any rating assigned by the MPAA film rating system.

Legion-organized boycotts made a C rating harmful to a film's distribution and profitability. Accordingly, for the majority of years that the rating was applied, most condemned films were made outside of the United States, where their producers didn't have as much to fear from the condemnation. Of the 53 movies the Legion had placed on its condemned list by 1943, only Howard Hughes' The Outlaw came from a major US studio, and it had not been approved by the Production Code or distributed widely.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire and Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch did not receive C ratings. Rather, Kazan's film was cut by 4 minutes to avoid condemnation, while Wilder's film had to cut scenes from the original play to be approved by Legion of Decency. [wikipedia]