Ohio Film Censorship

Sources

Primary Sources

Films

M. Directed by Joseph Losey. Superior Pictures, 1951. Restored 2015. Youtube.com.
Miracle on 34th Street. Directed by George Seaton. 20th Century Fox, 1947. Archive.org.
Shanghaied. Directed by Charlie Chaplin. Essanay Studios, 1915. Restored by the Chaplin Essanay Project, 2014. Archive.org.
The Outlaw. Directed by Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes Productions, 1943. Archive.org.

Newspaper

"Censorship Board is Legal." Greenville Journal. (Greenville, Ohio), 09 April 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Chairman Williams' Claim." Democratic Banner. (Mt. Vernon, Ohio), 06 Feb. 1917. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Eight Big Laws in Effect in August." Mahoning Dispatch. (Canfield, Mahoning County, Ohio), 18 July 1913. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Exhibition of Film is Refused." Fulton County Tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio), 08 Oct. 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Legalize Sunday Shows." Greenville Journal. (Greenville, Ohio), 04 April 1912. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"May Bar Pictures of the Johnson-Willard Fight." Democratic Banner. (Mt. Vernon, Ohio), 27 April 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"May See Picture." Greenville Journal. (Greenville, Ohio), 12 Oct. 1916. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Movie Films will be Censored." Fulton County Tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio), 17 April 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Movie Referendum Fails." Greenville Journal. (Greenville, Ohio), 09 Sept. 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Moving Picture Men Object." Perrysburg Journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., Ohio), 05 Sept. 1913. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Ohio Censors will be Busy." Fulton County Tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio), 30 April 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Student under Gov. Willis." Greenville Journal. (Greenville, Ohio), 25 March 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Test Validity of Censorship Act." Celina Democrat. (Celina, Ohio), 31 Oct. 1913. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Very Sore on the Gov. are Motion Picture Men all over the State." Democratic Banner. (Mt. Vernon, Ohio), 04 Jan. 1916. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
"Will Paint Word Picture." Mahoning Dispatch. (Canfield, Mahoning County, Ohio), 04 Sept. 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.

Secondary Sources

Barson, Michael and Harold Erickson. "Charlie Chaplin: British Actor, Director, Writer, and Composer." Encyclopedia Britannica. Last modified April 12, 2019. Accessed April 30, 2019.
Boyer, Paul. Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.
Brownlow, Kevin. Behind the Mask of Innocence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Butters, Gerald. Banned in Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship 1915-1966. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007.
Carmen, Ira. Movies, Censorship, and the Law. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966.
Geltzer, Jeremy. Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures: Film and the First Amendment. Austin: University of Austin Press, 2015.
--------.Film Censorship in America: A State-by-State History. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2017.
Harpole, Charles, ed. History of American Cinema. Vol. 3, An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928. Edited by Richard Koszarski. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990.
Hunker, Henry L. Columbus, Ohio: A Personal Geography. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000.
IMDB. "M (1951)." Accessed October 28, 2019.
IMDB. "Shanghaied (1915)." Accessed April 30, 2019.
IMDB. "The Outlaw (1943)." Accessed October 28, 2019.
Kitch, Carolyn. The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
May, Lary. Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
--------. The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
McEwan, Paul. "Lawyers, Bibliographies, and the Klan: Griffith's resources in the censorship battle over The Birth of a Nation in Ohio." Film History 20, no. 3 (2008): 357-366. Accessed January 31, 2018.
McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920. New York: Free Press, 2003.
Ohio History Central. "Cincinnati, Ohio." Accessed April 12, 2018.
Ohio History Central. "Early Industrialization." Accessed April 12, 2018.
Ohio History Central. "Urbanization." Accessed April 12, 2018.
Sheridan, Phil. Those Wonderful Old Downtown Theaters. Columbus: Sheridan, 1978.
Shull, Michael. Radicalism in American Silent Films, 1909-1929. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2000.
Sklar, Robert. Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Tindall, George Brown, and David Emory Shi. America: A Narrative History, Vol. 2. 8th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.
Wirt, Frederick. "State Film Censorship with Particular Reference to Ohio." PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1956. Accessed February 7, 2018.
Wittern-Keller, Laura. Freedom of the Screen: Legal Challenges to State Film Censorship, 1915-1981. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008.
--------."The History of Film Censorship: 1895-1990." fire.org. Accessed August 13, 2019.

Digital Humanities Resources

Borner, Katy and Polley, David E. Visual Insights: A Practical Guide to Making Sense of Data. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 2014.
Gardiner, Eileen and Musto, Ronald G. The Digital Humanities: A Primer for Students and Scholars. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Graham, Shawn, Milligan, Ian, and Weingart, Scott. Exploring Big Historical Data: The Historian's Macroscope. London: Imperial College Press, 2016.
Rockwell, Geoffrey and Sinclair, Stefan. Hermeneutica: Computer-Assisted Interpretation in the Humanities. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 2016.

Visualizations

Overview

Figure 1: Trends: Dialogue/Subtitle
Figure 2: Censorship Decisions: Categories

Nomenclature

Figure 3: Ngram: All Terms, 1890-1955
Figure 4: Ngram: "Moving" and "Motion" Picture, 1890-1955
Figure 5: Trends: Word Used for Film

Bulletins

Close Reading: 1915-1916

Figure 6: Summary
Figure 7: Word Cloud
Figure 8: Trends: Line
Figure 9: Trends: Columns
Figure 10: Collocates
Figure 11: Contexts
Table 1: Spreadsheet
Figure 12: Columns
Figure 13: Pie Chart

Censorship Topics

Figure 14: Summary
Figure 15: Trends: Eliminate/Cut
Figure 16: Trends: Over 200 Eliminations
Figure 17: Trends: Kiss/Fight
Figure 18: Trends-Raw: Soldier
Figure 19: Trends-Rel: Gender
Figure 20: Trends-Raw: Gender
Figure 21: Collocates: Girl
Figure 22: Collocates: Girl - Sexual Content
Figure 23: Contexts: Gender

Specific Examples

Figure 24: Trends-Raw: Alcohol
Figure 25: Trends-Raw: Intoxicate
Figure 26: Miracle 1
Figure 27: Miracle 2
Figure 28: Trends: Major Topics Expanded
Figure 29: Trends-Raw: Rob/Police
Figure 30: Trends: Religion
Figure 31: Contexts: Minister 1
Figure 32: Contexts: Minister 2
Figure 33: Contexts: Race
Figure 34: Contexts: "Nuts"

Case Studies

Shanghaied

Images: Censored Content

Figure 35: Mallet 1
Figure 36: Mallet 2
Figure 37: Mallet 3
Figure 38: Mallet 4
Figure 39: Unconscious 1
Figure 40: Kicking 1
Figure 41: Kicking 2
Figure 42: Bomb 1
Figure 43: Bomb 2

Images: Not Censored Content

Figure 44: Chaplin Kissing
Figure 45: Chaplin Smoking
Figure 46: Unconscious 2
Figure 47: Crushed 1
Figure 48: Suspended 1
Figure 49: Fighting 1
Figure 50: Fighting 2
Figure 51: Fighting 3
Figure 52: Fighting 4
Figure 53: Chaplin Bomb 1
Figure 54: Chaplin Bomb 2
Figure 55: Chaplin Bomb 3
Figure 56: Chaplin Bomb 4
Figure 57: Bomb Fuse
Figure 58: Bomb Throwing
Figure 59: Bomb in Boat
Figure 60: Bomb Exploding
Figure 61: Chaplin Kicking Father
Figure 62: Chaplin Celebrating

The Outlaw

Figure 63: Barn 1
Figure 64: Barn 2
Figure 65: Barn 3
Figure 66: Bed 1
Figure 67: Bed 2
Figure 68: Bed 3
Figure 69: Bed 4
Figure 70: Bed-Exposed 1
Figure 71: Bed-Exposed 2
Figure 72: Bed Sex 1
Figure 73: Bed Sex 2
Figure 74: Bed Sex 3
Figure 75: Bed Sex 4
Figure 76: Implied Sex - Aggressive 1
Figure 77: Implied Sex - Aggressive 2
Figure 78: Tied 1
Figure 79: Tied 2
Figure 80: Tied 3
Figure 81: Tied 4
Figure 82: Exposed - Ad Nauseum 1
Figure 83: Exposed - Ad Nauseum 2

Figure 84: Children 1
Figure 85: Children 2
Figure 86: Children 3
Figure 87: Children 4
Figure 88: Inciting 1
Figure 89: Inciting 2
Figure 90: Inciting 3
Figure 91: Inciting 4
Figure 92: Inciting 5
Figure 93: Inciting 6
Figure 94: Police 1
Figure 95: Police 2
Figure 96: Police 3
Figure 97: Police 4
Figure 98: Police 5
Figure 99: Police 6
Figure 100: Police 7
Figure 101: Police 8
Figure 102: Perversion 1
Figure 103: Perversion 2
Figure 104: Perversion 3
Figure 105: Perversion 4
Figure 106: Perversion 5
Figure 107: Perversion 6
Figure 108: Perversion 7
Figure 109: Perversion 8
Figure 110: Ending 1
Figure 111: Ending 2
Figure 112: Ending 3
Figure 113: Ending 4
Figure 114: Ending 5

The Obscene Moving Image

Primary Sources

Archive

Films

Newspaper

Secondary Sources

Digital Humanities Resources

Visualizations

Overview

Nomenclature

Bulletins

Case Studies