Censoring Saffron and Woo

Radio networks loved entertainment, so long as it was innocuous entertainment. Making fun of Bing Crosby’s horse was okay. Making fun of anything that someone might get indignant about wasn’t. And that list was pretty long. So networks stepped in to stop it before it happened.

Insightful columnist John Crosby put together an eight-part series on radio censorship in 1946. We aren’t going to post all of it here; for now, we’ll give you the first part. Crosby began his series with a look at satirist Fred Allen. Satire was something suspicious and fearful to radio executives, so Allen was continually battling to air material that was even tame by 1946 standards. This was before things reached a climax in 1947 when an NBC functionary ordered master control to fade out about 25 seconds of Allen’s show because it dared to make fun of NBC functionaries.

This appeared in print on July 29, 1946.

Censorship on the Air
A new procedure in the Army used to originate in the ranks, where it would start as a good plan to correct, let us say, a current abuse. In its progress from higher authority to still higher authority, the plan would be modified by each man who got his hands on it, until, by the time it reached the War Department, the original plan had lost much of its original meaning and acquired a lot of new and useless trimmings. One incorporate into the Army doctrine, this new, distorted plan would start downward toward the ranks again, this time acquiring different interpretations at every step. By the time it reached the starting point, the ranks, the plan would have little to do with the original abuse or anything else. Still, it was inflicted on the man as gospel and the men wearily accepted it as another sample of Army snafu.
Censorship on the air is pretty much the same routine, the misuse of an originally sound purpose. The broadcasters, quite understandably, don’t like to offend individuals, minority groups, religious orders, advertisers or members of other nationalities. There is nothing particularly wrong with the desire to please except that in many cases it is pursued to such lengths that radio programs are robbed of much of their vitality. The intentions are good but the administration is ridiculous.
● ● ●

Possibly the most censored man in radio is Fred Allen. Allen gets his ideas from the current news. His jokes are invariably pointed, and pointed jokes usually sting somebody. As a result, Allen’s fourteen years in radio have been an almost continuous battle with censors and he has lost many an engagement. After fourteen years of this, Allen is a little bitter toward radio censorship. Recently he left for a vacation in Maine and in his suitcase was a collection of notes he refers to as his “white paper” and which he plans to turn into a “Saturday Evening Post” article during his vacation.
Before he left, Mr. Allen graciously let me run through that part of his notes concerning censorship, and, as a sort of preview of that “Post” article, with Mr. Allen’s permission, I should like to give you some examples of the jokes that have been cut out of Allen’s scripts and the reasons they were cut out. This should give you some idea as to why humor on the air is usually as bland and innocent of the life around us as an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.
Let us first consider salaciousness. Off-color jokes are not allowed on the air and that, in itself, is a good idea. However, the man who censored Allen’s scripts at the National Broadcasting Company—let’s call him Pincus, although that’s not his name—pursued this noble aim with a zeal which would have alarmed even Savonarola. Mr. Pincus suspected any word he didn’t understand, particularly in a boy-girl context, or being a dirty word.
Allen, for example, had a terrible time getting the adjective “saffron” on the air because Pincus suspected it had sexual connotations. With the aid of Funk & Wagnalls, Allen got the adjective approved. On another occasion a character in an Allen show called Bear Mountain a “strip tease crag.” Mr. Pincus was horrified, and it took hours of arguing to convince him “strip tease” could hardly be offensive when applied to a mountain.
Pincus also objected to the phrase “pitch a little woo.” Believe it or not, he’d never heard it before and Allen had quite an argument convincing him that the phrase was current usage among young folks. Although he yielded on that point, the censor refused to budge on another phrase about “pizzacating” a woman’s lavaliere. It brought up a distressing mental image, said Pincus.
A decent respect for religion on the air is hardly open to comment. Still, Mr. Allen’s censor took it to lengths which any sensible minister would consider rather silly. Once Allen brought in a gag about a judge, recently deceased, “going to a higher court.” The joke was blue-pencilled. “Higher court” implied heaven and you can’t make cracks about heaven. Then there was a joke about a man named Stickney S. “for Stickney” Stickney who got that name because the minister who baptized him stuttered. It was cut out, too. Mustn’t make fun of ministers.
Another Allen line read “she promises to love, honor and lump it till death do them part.” Absolutely not, said Pincus; the marriage ceremony is not a suitable topic for comedy.
● ● ●
Allen has complained for years because he is unable to mention or even hint at the existence of another network. “Darn,” he said once, “is a word invented by N.B.C., which doesn’t recognize either hell or the Columbia Broadcasting System.” Here again the ban is invoked to incredible lengths. For instance, Allen once spoke of smoking “that cigarette that grows hair, fixed up your nerves and fumigates the house.” N.B.C. objected to the phrase “fixes up your nerves” because I sounded a little like Camel’s current advertising campaign. At that time, the Camel show was on C.B.S. and not even by so remote a connection as a single vague phrase did N.B.C. want to call attention to its powerful network rival.

Now, a look at Crosby’s columns from the previous week, July 22 through 26. The most interesting is from July 23rd, where radio commentator Drew Pearson got booed by a crowd in Alabama for promoting racial tolerance. Pearson was hardly a raving leftie. Broadcasting magazine, in its issue of July 29, 1946, pointed out it out it cost an estimated $20,000 for Pearson to speak out against the Klan from the steps of the State Capitol—including $1,000 for insurance and $5000 for ads in two newspapers. Pearson’s sponsor, Lee Hats, supported the broadcast on ABC.

The July 22nd column deals with a couple of public service shows on the NBC New York City station, July 24th looks at “Suspense” and the clichéd lines on an ABC Sunday night mystery show, July 25th talks about quality programming, while Crosby chides the BBC on its monopoly. The July 26th column has some odds and ends, including a story about sound effects. The “sound of screeching tires” effect that Crosby talks about could be one of two that got overused, one with a collision (which doesn’t sound like one) and one without. The latter can be heard on the Jack Benny radio show and seemingly endless numbers of Terrytoon cartoons.