Our family had a subscription to the Catholic newspaper The Advocate, and as a child I’d excitedly check every week to see what movies the Legion of Decency was giving their Condemned rating to. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in these things that made it an actual sin to even witness one, although I’d start finding out as soon as I could.
The fact that I can remember Baby Doll from these listings is a tribute to how it must have been getting re-released periodically as things loosened up in the 60’s. Apparently on its first release (1956) the archbishop of New York forbade Catholics to see it (from the pulpit of St. Patrick’s Cathedral!) and Jack Warner pulled it from circulation after only a week.
Plainly it still makes some people antsy…the DVD is rated R! I had thought Psycho was the earliest film to attain a Restricted rating but this has it beat by four years. And with no nudity, no sex, no violence, and no swearing! Plenty of innuendo and humidity, and a couple of offhand uses of “nigger” (not by a likable character), but still…
Elia Kazan directed from a Tennessee Williams screenplay and some of this is very funny. Eli Wallach is the Sicilian businessman who inserts himself between farmer Karl Malden and childlike wife Carroll Baker, and I’ve never seen Wallach having so much fun - you can see why, it’s a great role.
15 years down the road, all of the principals would be making giallos in Italy - Baker particularly was in numerous films as the imperiled blonde whose males are trying to kill her or drive her insane - but, sadly, not together.
When the Legion of Decency was dissolved in 1980, their very last flurry of condemnations included Dressed to Kill. De Palma must have cherished that.
What I learned from this film
Don’t let a Sicilian with a riding crop near your wife, particularly if you’ve yet to consummate the marriage.
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