Disgusting, offensive filth! That's what Turner Classic Movies spotlights on Friday night. Movies so vile, they were condemned!
In the 1950s, that is.
The Moon Is Blue (8 p.m. ET), The Man With the Golden Arm (10 p.m. ET) and Baby Doll (12:15 a.m. ET) challenged the movie industry's mid-century content requirements by dealing with (gasp!) virginity, (horrors!) drug addiction, and (trash!) a thumb-sucking bride hot for action.
They formed a sort of "adult" triumvirate in which directors like Otto Preminger (the first two films) and Elia Kazan (the third) pushed the boundaries of what Hollywood officialdom then deemed allowable, in an era when all movies were supposed to be suitable for everybody.
Their early daring would lead to even more explicit '60s films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which finally forced the industry to create a content-ratings system -- G, R, X -- so stories intended for grown-ups could be truly adult.
Count on TCM host Robert Osborne to put it all in a smart historical context Friday night.
Or go online to this TCM web page to read more about the films that put the screws to Hollywood's long-limiting Production Code.