Movies Fit for Catholics

First of all, before this article begins, I would like to thank all of you who responded to my wife's rebuttal to my earlier article about men-women relationships.
The response has been so positive that Mary Ellen and I are considering starting up a blog dealing with "He Said, She Said" topics. I'd like your reponses on that, if you please.
Now, without further ado, the article at hand -

Back in the late fifties and early sixties, after the usual Saturday morning television fare of Bugs Bunny cartoons, Roy Rogers, Jungle Jim and My Friend Flicka, my friends and I would often take our allowance money and ride our bikes the six miles to the Palace Theater or the Capitol Theater in Middletown, CT. (Both of these establishments stood side-by-side on Main Street, Middletown, and they were both owned by Mr. Adorno, who lived four streets down from me.)

For less than a buck each, we would spend the entire afternoon in the theater taking in movies and buying popcorn, Pom Poms, Sugar Babies, Sugar Daddies and a boxes of JuJuBes.

However, before that could take place, my mother would check the movie titles in the Catholic Transcript, which was the weekly newspaper put out by the Catholic Diocese of Norwich, CT.

There was a column in that paper that rated all of the movies that Hollywood released that month. It put each film into categories, the headings of which were: Acceptable for All, Objectionable for Children, Objectionable In Part For Children, Objectionable In Part for All, Objectionable for All, and the Queen Mother of them all, CONDEMNED.

These were the ones that would curdle milk and turn your toenails green. They pissed God off so much that , if you saw them, He would condemn you to a life without chocolate or Playboys, and, when you died, He would throw your soul into the dirty laundry chute that emptied into the bin marked HELL.

I kid you not. Those were the headings.

My mother would check out every single movie that we wanted to see, even Disney flicks. And I remember even some of those we rated "Objectionable in Part for Children." (I think it had something to do with the length of Tinkerbell's pixie dress.)

For some reason, and I really don't know why this sticks with me, I remember that the original Alfie with Michael Caine was rated "Objectionable in Part For All" because there was a scene in it where Michael Caine was swimming nude in a pool, and you actually saw his bare butt. (That was one of the only times when I agreed with the Catholic Transcript on a movie rating. Even the thought of Michael Caine's bare butt filling up a big screen is enough to turn my stomach. Definitely objectionable.)

Back in those days, you didn't just go a movie. You went to two. Every theater had a double feature, and for the price of one admission ticket, you saw two movies, a newsreel, and a couple of cartoons. Now, it's not that both of the movies were destined to be classics or anything like that. Far from it. Chances are one movie was the one that you actually wanted to see, the one that drew you into the theater. The other one was the "B" movie, the dog.

(Records were like that too. Records, for those of you still in diapers, were the precursors of CD's. They were made of vinyl, and, in my youth, they came in two varieties, LP's and 45's. The LP's were Long Playing records that had about twelve songs on them, six on one side and six on the other. (Yes. You had to flip them over.) 45's were smaller records that spun on your turntable - the record playing machine - at 45 revolutions per minute. The 45's only had two songs on them. The "A" side contained the song that you wanted to hear. The "B" side had the song that you never played.)

SOOOoooooOOOOOO, because of these double features in the movies, Mom would then have to see what other movie was playing along with the one that I wanted to see and check them both out. Both of them, of course, had to pass muster with the Catholic Transcript. If they didn't, I was just out of luck. If they did, then mom would check the movies that were playing at the other theater, which, as I've already said, was right next door to the first one. If they both held up well under the magnifying glass of Christian scrutiny, my friends and I were off to the movies on our bikes. However, if just one of the movies at either theater was in any way "objectionable," mom would get us all in the station wagon, drive us to the theater, watch as we bought the tickets and entered the correct theater.

The movies would let out around 4 or 4:30. From the theater, we would all then go to the church and go to confession.

The next day, we'd all go to Mass with our perspective families and go to Communion with lily-white souls and clear consciences, thanks, in large part, to the Catholic Transcript.