To See Is to Sin

Catholics struck hard last week at Greta Garbo's new film, Two-Faced Woman.* The Legion of Decency condemned it as "immoral and indecent," and Archbishop Francis Joseph Spellman of New York had his pastors tell their Sunday congregations that it is "an occasion of sin and . . .dangerous to public morals." Other bishops followed suit, and censors in strongly Catholic Boston and Providence banned it.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, makers of Two-Faced Woman, stood their ground and said they would not change the picture, pointed out that it had been approved by the Motion Picture Production Code Administration and had passed all the State censorship boards with only a few slight alterations.

In Two-Faced, Woman Garbo, after marrying Melvyn Douglas, poses as her own twin sister and tries to seduce him in order to test his love. The plot has been used many times before and just as suggestive films have gone by without such strong protest. One guess why Two-Faced Woman has been singled out for condemnation: next week Catholics will be asked to take their annual pledge "to abstain from witnessing indecent motion pictures and promise to do everything possible to strengthen public opinion against the showing of immoral films." Right now a rousing condemnation of a sure-to-be-talked-about Garbo film will fix that much more attention on the Legion of Decency pledge.

* To be reviewed in TIME when it appears generally, about three weeks hence.

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