The Golden Age of Smut is On The Air

Oh, the smut and filth pouring out of the radio into the family living room in 1948!

What’s that, you say? You’ve heard lots of old-time radio and it’s all squeaky clean? Yes, that’s my opinion, too. Especially considering network censors went to ridiculous levels to blue-pencil dialogue (Jack Benny’s writer Milt Josefsberg recalled how someone at CBS tried to delete a scene containing a limerick merely on the basis that “all limericks are dirty”—even though the language was gibberish). But it appears there are people in every generation who get offended over the innocuous, and such was the case in 1948.

Here’s a piece from the Chicago Tribune’s radio columnist published January 4, 1948. See what you think of the findings.

CHICAGO GIRL STARTS DRIVE TO CLEAN AIR
150 Schools Join R.A.P. Poll
BY LARRY WOLTERS
Many of the student critics who participate in the so- called radio poll took their ballot sheets home with them and kept right on rating comedians during their holiday interlude. A group of students from St. Joseph's of Indiana, where the voting from all over the country in tabulated, from Rosary, Mundelein, Mount Mary, and Chicago Teachers college interrupted their dance last Sunday evening at the Morrison hotel to check the Fred Allen show.
The R.A.P. has grown into a big organization. More than 1,500 students on more than 150 campuses--Catholic, Protestant, non-denominational and state institutions among them--each week rate about a score of comedy shows for acceptability. More schools are being added almost every week and some 200 colleges will be involved in the operation within a couple of months, it's expected.
Seeks To Ban Smut
The R.A.P. grew out of an idea of Marilyn Malone, 18, of 8117 S. Marshfield av. a student of Marycrest college, Davenport, Ia. Miss Malone, youthful listener, had encountered offensive material on comedy shows. She thought college students might do something to get rid of smut on the air if enough students would help out in checking the major comedy shows each week. She told her friends about her plan and got an enthusiastic response from every direction.
St. Joseph's offered to do the tabulating. A group of its students sacrificed part of their holiday recesses to keep the poll machinery going. Many Catholic schools joined the R.A.P. and then the leaders of the movement set out to enroll Protestant, private and state colleges so that the result might be as representative as possible. Students may give only a day to listening or as much 20 half hours a week. After a week of listening others are recruited. Thus different students' reactions are clocked week by week.
Fibber Is First
After nine weeks of listening the R.A.P. has issued a cumulative or composite rating. Fibber McGee and Molly with an average of 78 per cent were first. Theirs was the only show winning the accolade of "highly acceptable." Henry Morgan is second with 71.5.
Then in order came: Burns and Allen, 65.3; Jimmy Durante, 65; Jack Benny, 64; Charlie McCarthy, Baby Snooks and Red Skelton, tied at 63; Fred Allen, 61.5; Duffy's Tavern, 56; Jack Carson, Bandwagon with Phil Harris and Alice Faye, Eddie Cantor, 53.5; Milton Berle, 47; Abbott and Costello, 42.5; Jack Paar, 39; It Pays to be Ignorant, 32.5; Jim Backus, 31.5; Bob Hope, 31.
Poll Still Growing
The poll is still being expanded and other shows being added. Joan Davis, Judy Canova, Amos and Andy are among the group that has not been evaluated to date. All the above have fallen within "the acceptable" classification altho some gags have been rated as unacceptable.

Supporting players on shows are rated, too. Phil Harris gets the lowest rating of any one on the Benny show and his wife, Alice Faye, by 18 points on their Bandwagon show. Bob Hope's guests rate higher than he does Vera Vague invariably is given low ratings but Lulu McConnell does still worse. Many of the ballot sheets include comment such as: "Lulu McConnell is rough and vulgar; she's given to double meaning jokes." Jim Backus also is down for "off color remarks jokes that could easily confuse adolescents."
While the networks have made real progress in the last year or two in keeping offensive material off the air, complaints do come in regularly to this department that smut comes out of the loudspeaker (Often it isn't in the script but is ad-libbed). If this movement helps to keep violators of good taste out of the family circle all broadcasters will cheer self-appointed critics from the campus.

Apparently this would-be nanny group had a problem with women wanting a man. That’s what the Vera Vague character was based on. Barbara Jo Allen’s dialogue had nothing to do with 50 shades of grey or male sex organs. At best maybe she wanted to get smooched, at most married (horrors!). But, like Lulu McConnell, she was noisy about it. How unlady-like, the prudes apparently felt. The Backus reference is just downright puzzling. At the time, he was best known for playing the upper crust Hubert Updike the 3rd. His jokes generally revolved about his insane amount of wealth. And I can only imagine Morgan’s reaction to being highly-ranked by self-appointed censors.

Tastes today have changed, but offendees remain. If the Benny show were broadcast today, I suspect someone would get upset at the stream of fat jokes directed at Don Wilson. And I won’t even go into Amos ‘n’ Andy.

For some reason, none of the self-appointed lobbyists over the years have ever proposed the following solution—shut off the radio or TV if you don’t like what’s on the air. If there’s not a big enough audience, it’ll be taken off the air. But that would eliminate their raison d’être—to force their will on others on what to think and do.