Cinema: Trend Toward Laxity?

A widening breach between the 25-year-old Hollywood Production Code, which has recently relaxed its taboo list, and the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, still the nation's most powerful box-office pressure group, is gradually becoming more obvious. Items:

¶James Francis Cardinal McIntyre, Archbishop of Los Angeles, dispatched a "special statement" to the pastors of 267 churches in his archdiocese, instructing that "caution be issued to all your people, but particularly to the young" about "an obvious trend toward laxity in some of the motion picture productions—and in the advertising of them as well."

¶Howard Hughes's Son of Sinbad, approved by the Hollywood...