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"Banned in Boston" was a phrase employed from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, to describe a literary work, song, motion picture, or play which had been prohibited from distribution or exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts. During this period, Boston officials had wide authority to ban works featuring "objectionable" content, and often banned works with sexual content or foul language.
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Early instances of works being "banned in Boston" extend back at least to the year 1651. That year, William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts—Massachusetts' great settlement in the Connecticut River Valley—and the former treasurer of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote a book criticizing Puritanism entitled, The Meritous Price of Our Redemption. Boston, founded by Puritans and, at that time, ruled as a de jure theocracy, banned Pynchon's book and pressed him to return to England. He did so in 1652, which nearly caused Springfield to align with the nearby Connecticut Colony.
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History
Boston was founded by the Puritans in the early 17th century, who held strict moral standards. Boston's second major wave of immigrants, Irish Catholics, began arriving in the 1820s and also held conservative moral beliefs, particularly regarding sex. The phrase "banned in Boston", however, originated in the late 19th century at a time when American "moral crusader" Anthony Comstock began a campaign to suppress vice. He found widespread support in Boston, particularly among socially-prominent and influential officials. Comstock was also known as the proponent of the Comstock Act, which prevented "obscene" materials from being delivered by the U.S. mail.
Following Comstock's lead, Boston's city officials took it upon themselves to ban anything that they found to be salacious, inappropriate, or offensive. Aiding them in their efforts was a group of private citizens, the Boston Watch and Ward Society. Theatrical shows were run out of town, books were confiscated, and motion pictures were prevented from being shown; sometimes movies were stopped mid-showing, after an official had "seen enough". In 1935, for example, during the opening performance of Clifford Odets' play Waiting for Lefty four cast members were placed under arrest.
This movement had several unintended consequences. One was that Boston, a cultural center since its founding, was perceived as less sophisticated than many cities without stringent censorship practices. Another was that the phrase "banned in Boston" became associated, in the popular mind, with something lurid, sexy, and naughty. Commercial distributors were often pleased when their works were banned in Boston—it gave them more appeal elsewhere.
Prominent literary figure H. L. Mencken was arrested in Boston in 1926, after purposefully selling a banned issue of his magazine, The American Mercury. Though his case was dismissed by a local judge, and he later won a lawsuit against the Watch and Ward Society for illegal restraint of trade, the effort did little to affect censorship in Boston. The interracial romance novel by Lillian Smith, Strange Fruit, was also banned by the Watch and Ward Society. And in 1929, Boston's mayor and the city censor banned Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Strange Interlude.
Similarly, during this era, there were periodic "purity campaigns" on radio, as individual stations decided to ban songs with double-entendres or alleged vulgar lyrics. One victim of such a campaign was bandleader Joe Rines, who in November 1931, was cut off in mid-song by John L. Clark, program director of WBZ, for performing a number called "This is the Missus," whose lyrics Clark deemed inappropriate. Rines was indignant, saying he believed Clark was over-reacting to a totally innocent song, but Clark insisted he was right to ban any song whose lyrics might be construed as suggestive.
The Warren Court (1953–69) expanded civil liberties and in Memoirs v. Massachusetts and other cases curtailed the ability of municipalities to regulate the content of literature, plays, and movies. The last major literary censorship battle in the U.S. was fought over Naked Lunch, which was banned in Boston in 1965. Eventually the Watch and Ward Society changed its name to the New England Citizens Crime Commission, and made its main emphasis against gambling and drugs and far less on media.
Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, a red-light district called the Combat Zone formed in Boston, with many businesses that would have been criminally prohibited only decades before. Also, by the end of the 1970s, the city had developed a much more liberal reputation.