Wifely Chore

Last week Mrs. Henry Morgenthau Jr. performed an official chore for her husband when she sat through ten reels of a foreign film and pondered for the Secretary of the Treasury the question of whether or not its public showing in the U. S. would damage the morals of the nation. Last November a print of Extase had been seized by customs inspectors under the indecency provisions of the Tariff Act when an attempt was made to import it in Manhattan. But when the time came last week to preview the picture in Washington, Secretary Morgenthau found himself so busy that he sent his wife to help render a decision.

Extase was made in Prague in 1933. With almost no dialog, it tells the erotic story of a woman (Hedy Kiesler) who deserts her impotent husband, goes swimming naked, loses her clothes when her horse runs away, spends a night with the young man who catches the horse. The picture's title derives from the closeup scenes showing hero & heroine together in a cabin. Even French critics found these shots "extremely audacious" and Fritz Mandel, Austrian munitions maker and husband of Hedy Kiesler, was so outraged that he used all his might and money to have the film suppressed throughout Europe. Last summer Extase drew enormous crowds when it was exhibited at the International Film Exposition in Venice. Pope Pius was so disturbed by its apparent popularity that he had his Vatican newspaper denounce it (TIME, Aug. 27).

That such a film should eventually reach the U. S. was a foregone conclusion. Its importer is one Sam Cummins, whose Eureka Productions have released such films as Man of Courage and War Is a Racket. Whether or not he would get it into the country depended last week on what Mrs. Morgenthau, the General Counsel to the Secretary of the Treasury, the General Counsel for the Customs Bureau, and Huntington Cairns, a Baltimore lawyer and critic who is morals arbiter for the Treasury, thought of what they saw at Extase's first private screening. Before she went home to tell her husband about it, Mrs. Morgenthau agreed with her co-censors that "the photography was superb." Six days later Secretary Morgenthau ordered Extase excluded as indecent and morally dangerous.

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