"I've planted a bomb to blow up Baby Doll," cried an anonymous telephone caller to Hartford, Conn, police one night last week. The police shepherded 1,500 moviegoers into the street, searched the theater for an hour and a half but found nothing more explosive than the film itself, Playwright Tennessee Williams' sullen drama of degeneracy in the South (TIME, Dec. 24).
Denounced from the pulpit by New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman as "revolting" and "morally repellent."* Baby Doll ran into its biggest snarl in Providence. The police snipped half a dozen scenes before they would permit it to be shown. Warner Bros.,...
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