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BOOK REVIEWS 

DeGrazia, Edward and Newman, Roger 
K. Banned Films: Movies, Censors & The 
First Amendment. New York: Bowker, 
1982. 455p. $24.95 cloth, $14.95 paper. 
LC82-4314. ISBN0-8352-1509-1cloth, 0-
8352-1511-3 paper. 
In recent years, the censorship of films 

has not attracted quite so much attention 
as the banning of books. One reason is 
that the censorship of motion pictures has 
become very much a part of the American 
scene in a way that the censorship of 
books has not. Film censorship as we 
know it takes many forms: classification 
(similar to "labeling" of books), review 
and editing by censorship boards, self-
censorship, and perhaps least frequent of 
all, banning and censorship by lawsuit. 

"Birth of a Nation," which was first 
shown in 1915, has gone down in history 
as the most-banned motion picture. But 
film censorship was already well on its 
way to becoming a solid American tradi-
tion. As early as 1908, the mayor of New 
York closed all six hundred motion picture 
theaters in the city. He cited safety rea-
sons, but also threatened to revoke the li-
censes of any that showed movies tending 
"to degrade or injure the morals of the 
community.'' The same city saw the es-
tablishment in 1909 of the National Board 
of Censorship of Motion Pictures which, 
by 1915, was reviewing virtually the entire 
output of the industry prior to public 
viewing. Its motto strikes a familiar note: 
"Selection, not censorship." This was 
merely the first of many such groups es-
tablished by state and local government 
and the industry itself. The efforts of such 
bodies were encouraged by a 1915 deci-
sion of the U.S. Supreme Court that mov-
ies were not entitled to constitutional 
guarantees of freedom of speech and 

press. This decision stood for thirty-five 
years. 

DeGrazia, a Yeshiva University law pro-
fessor and First Amendment lawyer, and 
Newman, a historian and biographer of 
civil libertarians, have given us a book on 
film censorship that is both a survey and a 
reference work. The first 151 pages are 
given over to a concise account of movie 
censorship in American life. The second 
section, and most of the book, consists of 
the censorship histories of 122 American 
and foreign films banned from 1908 to 
1981 for political, moral, or sexual reasons 
which have resulted in court cases. They 
are dealt with in chronological order to 
"reveal individually the nation's chang-
ing life-styles and social concerns." They 
are cross-referenced by case name and 
also by movie title in a straight alphabeti-
cal arrangement. Additional features such 
as a glossary of legal terms and lists of ac-
ronyms and abbreviations aid the layman 
in the use of this book. There is also a good 
index. 

Banned Films is a well-written and com-
pact one-volume guide to the history of 
film censorship in America as well as a ref-
erence book on banned films. It is difficult 
to imagine an academic library that would 
not benefit from the addition of this vol-
ume, especially if the focus of the collec-
tion includes the liberal arts, law, or 
filmography.-Laurence Miller, Florida In-
ternational University. 

Com paine, Benjamin M. and others. Who 
Owns the Media? 2d ed. White Plains, 
N.Y.: Knowledge Industry Publica-
tions, 1982. 529p. $45 cloth . LC 82-
13039. ISBN 0-86729-007-2. 
Who Owns the Media? in its 1979 edition, 

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