FORUM: Illtyd harrington: ‘as i please’

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Published: 10 March, 2011
by ILLTYD HARRINGTON

MRS John Calvin Peoples died last month aged 89 in her Beverley Hills mansion. 

Mrs Peoples in her day caused something like a Bermuda hurricane across the world.

Dire and horrific predictions were made about her afterlife and any other simple soul who enjoyed her public displays of lasciviousness.

From many a pulpit the creaking gate of hell was heard. 

Sermons were more full of sulphur than incense.

Her first film, The Outlaw, took some 10 years to reach the wider public. 

And it jolted the American Legion of Decency into vigorous action.

Mrs Peoples (as she was at the time of her death) was, of course, Jane Russell in those days and her poses in the hayshed caused many sexual stirrings among the  ordinary people of the world. Her ample bust drew larger crowds than the Venus de Milo in the Louvre. 

The Catholic Church in its alarm responded with a flood of anodyne films depicting everyday life in Catholic parishes. 

Big Crosby and Ingrid Bergman were sharing joint celibacy in The Bells of St Mary’s. Bing – a well-known child-beater – was a good solid Roman Catholic priest and Sister Bergman was a nun and just as chaste.

A tougher look at life had been seen when Spencer Tracy played Father Flanagan, the founder of Boy’s Town. He  had a very wholesome relationship with the uncontrollable Mickey Rooney – nothing to fear there. For in real life Tracy was to enjoy an adulterous affair with Kathryn Hepburn.

The Pope went on to encourage us to look at The Song of Bernadette – a tale enacted by Jennifer Jones in the title role being ill-treated by the old British actress Gladys Cooper as the Mother Superior until Our Lady put in an appearance in a rock cave.

The church was very hot on what should and should not be read. It had kept an Index from Pope Paul IV 1559 to Paul VI 1966. On the proscribed list were the works of Kepler, Copernicus or Galileo. Hitler’s gift to humanity, his rant Mein Kampf was not listed as forbidden. 

John Milton, that great master of English and the Republic (1649-1660) not only visited Galileo but in a work that every journalist should read – Areopagitica – he challenged his own government to extend the freedom of expression and yet only after the swinging 1960s did Kenneth Tynan become the first person to utter the F word on British television.

Astonishingly Marta Orbach was the first person on US television to use the word “pregnant” only 30 or 40 years ago. At the same time in New York I saw a newscast reporting the birth of quintuplets in New Jersey in which the joyful announcer said: “We cannot show the photographs because the quins are not wearing diapers.” 

So much for the American TV then.

There is a very serious argument in all of this. Who controls what we the public are allowed to read see or hear? Technical changes are moving towards a dangerous monopoly which Tony Blair made the first concession to in the early years of his government.

When I met Rupert Murdoch in the 1970s I was struck by the smile on his face which resembled that of a dyspeptic crocodile. After his encounter with Blair in the 1990s, his tabloid the Sun chose to champion Labour. 

This is a dangerous man who makes Citizen Kane look small beer.

Pleasant to recall now after its furore of Mrs Peoples’ bosom. Hollywood has reconstituted itself as the home of pornography. 

And there was I spending one summer reading everything on the Dead Sea Scrolls but denied access to anything in the Vatican library

And you may care to know that in 1971 I was a film censor for the Greater London Council. After we voted to grant a licence to Bonnie and Clyde, myself and another censor who happened to be the Queen’s haematologist, a Tory member of the GLC named Patterson, were suddenly and melodramatically confronted by a senior Catholic. He told the doctor hissing like a snake: “Patterson, you will rot in Hell. Harrington you will burn in Hell.”

I couldn't quite understand his powers of judgment. Although for me Mrs Peoples aka Jane Russell and her bosom was just a storm in a large D cup .

And so the world goes on…