New York City will implement “play juries,” which will determine whether plays are dirty or not. There’s a jury pool of 130 persons, I forget how it was chosen, from which juries will be picked (in secret) by the police chief. They won’t have direct enforcement powers, but if they find a play unduly salacious, Actors Equity will pull its members from the production. District Attorney Joab Banton is trying to extricate himself from the machinery of censorship, saying he’ll no longer make announcements about individual plays, like he did about Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms,” but if any press agent uses complaints for publicity, he might retaliate by bringing their plays before the Grand Jury. The producers of “Desire” are happy that the play jury might actually see the play before making a decision on it, unlike Banton, who didn’t even bother to read it (he says he based his decision on reports from “seasoned playgoers” and others).
As NY book publishers are developing their own self-censorship program, in France the Baudelaire Society demands the retraction of the 1857 censorship of his “Fleurs du Mal.” The cops recently seized a first edition which was to be sold by auction on the grounds that it should have been destroyed 68 years ago.
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