The Catholic Crusade against the Movies, 1940-1975 by Gregory D. Black (review)

332BOOK REVIEWS endeavored to draw the line against further change by maintaining strong channels of church hierarchy, which they themselves headed. This is the context into which Bender came into adulthood, and it marked him accordingly. As a young progressive, his choices were either exile, or a pragmatic acceptance of the possibilities that could be achieved within the limits imposed by conservative control. Bender was temperamentally suited for the latter course; Keim summarizes his "regard for decorum and authority, his instinctive search for a middle-ground, his aversion to risk-taking ... his comfort with conventional orthodoxy , his persistence, and his intellectual prowess" (p. 1 18). By the 1950's, such character traits had helped to establish Bender at the apex of upwards of fourteen major Mennonite church institutions or church bureaucracies. This rise was made possible both through his adept mastering of church politics and through the compelling vision he mapped out for the church. Keim carefully explores the development and intellectual power of Bender's fundamental "Anabaptist Vision"—a conception that, says Keim, emerged as Bender's ultimate contribution to his church. Keim's Bender is not without flaws, however. Goshen College faculty colleagues found him "pushy and impetuous" (p. 226); as faculty dean and chair of Mennonite Central Committee, he moved people around like chess pieces. He guarded his own authority jealously, unwilling or unable to delegate it, Keim shows. Not surprisingly, he repeatedly ran into personality conflicts with other titanic egos of his church who did not defer to him. Also a result of such tendencies , Bender's life was terribly overloaded, and he paid the price in other ways: in his teaching effectiveness (pp. 342-343), and perhaps, Keim hints (p. 409), his own inattention to his family life. Keim might have taken these critiques further. As the fundamentalistmodernist dispute divided his church, Bender remained safely on the sidelines, but performed a cheerleading role for the purposeful and directed smears of his father-in-law, the leading anti-modernist crusader John Horsch. Bender's relentless drive for power had a darker side. Nonetheless, Keim has done a masterful job in summarizing the complexities and contributions of this Mennonite leader in a manner that sheds much light on the story of his people in the historical context of twentieth-century America. Perry Bush Bluffton College The Catholic Crusade against the Movies, 1940-1975. By Gregory D. Black. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xi, 302. $59.95 cloth; $17.95 paperback.) In The Catholic Crusade against the Movies, 1940-1975, Gregory Black (professor of communication studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City) book reviews333 continues the story he began in his 1994 work, Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. In the earlier work, he chronicled the events that led to the 1934 adoption of the Motion Picture Production Code and the formation of the Production Code Administration (PCA). In The Catholic Crusade against the Movies, he documents the work of the PCA over the next four decades, focusing in particular on its relationship with what Black describes as "its alter ego," the Legion of Decency. Black begins by summarizing the pressures and compromises that brought the PCA into being (Chapter 1), then goes on to document postwar challenges to the Production Code (Chapter 2), challenges from foreign films (Chapter 3), and various attempts by the Legion to continue functioning after the 1952 Supreme Court decision extending First Amendment protection to motion pictures definitively altered the status of movie censorship nationwide (Chapter 4). The book's final three chapters describe battles over challenges to the Production Code in the 1950's and 1960's, changes in the personnel and approach of the Legion, and the eventual abandonment of the Production Code in favor of an age-based ratings system. Like Black's earlier book, this one is primarily a series of case studies, chronicling the negotiations among Hollywood producers, the staff of the PCA, and the Legion of Decency concerning the relatively few films over which the groups disagreed—Duel in the Sun, ForeverAmber, A Streetcar Named Desire, Iolita, Baby Doll, Tea and Sympathy, and Suddenly Last Summer, among others . It presents ample archival...