[OutRage, June 1997]
In July 1969 three actors stood in the dock of the Melbourne Magistrates' Court, charged, on the information of officers of the Vice Squad, with using obscene language in a public place. John Krummell, John Norman and Charles Little had uttered this obscene language in the course of performances of Mart Crowley's play, The Boys in the Band, at the Playbox Theatre in Melbourne. The obscene language was, of course, the f-word and the c-word, which appear a number of times in the play. The play's homosexual content was not an issue in the case, although it may have influenced police and judicial attitudes.
When the Magistrate found the charges proved but then dismissed them on the grounds they were 'trifling,' the Vice Squad successfully appealed to the Supreme Court. In September Justice Little ruled that "In my opinion the offence of obscene language in a public place cannot be regarded as of a trivial or minor nature." He said it was clear that Parliament took a serious view of the offence. "The most objectionable word was used by one actor more than once," he concluded.
If the words were so objectionable, it seems curious that no-one actually objected to them. Harry M Miller, who had brought The Boys in the Band to Australia, pointed out that 72,000 people had seen the play since its opening in June, and not one had complained. "To my certain knowledge no-one complained to to members of our staff, the switchboard or the Vice Squad," he testified. Elsewhere he was quoted as saying that the only complaint he had received was from an elderly lady who wanted to know why God Save the Queen was not played before each performance (as was then the custom in theatres and cinemas).
The Vice Squad was then at the height of its powers, under the protection of Victoria's Chief Secretary, Sir Arthur Rylah, one of the stranger characters in the rather strange world of Victorian politics. Rylah had an obsession with "smut" that bordered on the unhealthy. Peter Blazey, in his 1972 biography of [Victorian premier] Sir Henry Bolte, reports that Rylah kept girlie magazines in his desk drawer which he would show journalists. Blazey suggests that Rylah's peculiarities were linked to the failure of his marriage and an "emotional disintegration" born of his frustration that Bolte had passed him over as his heir.
Rylah rather plaintively protested that the play had not been banned. There was, said Sir Arthur, no censorship in Victoria. "I have never called for a script for the purpose of censoring any part of it, nor have I censored any part of any play," he told Parliament. Strictly speaking, Rylah was correct. Although the Theatres Act gave him the power to ban any theatrical production, he had never done so. Instead, he had relied on the Vice Squad to prosecute booksellers, theatre and cinema managers and printers for obscenity. This was the first time, however, that actors had been prosecuted.
What is striking about the case, though, is that the subject matter of the play, male homosexuality, was never directly raised, either by Rylah or by the press. If the play had not contained the two words in question, it would apparently not have been molested. Press accounts were on the whole sympathetic, though not as warm as those in The New York Times, which recognised the play's political importance. Howard Palmer, reviewing it in The Sun, dealt gingerly but not unfairly with the Crowley's lacerating material: "I feel this play, while part of a pendulum swing in morals, also indicates a permanent shift in attitudes. In the high drama of the second act. . . things get so tough that tragic pity involves the audience with the four pairs of friends."
The case of The Boys in the Band was an important step in the breaking down of Australia's archaic censorship laws. Australia had always had one of the most rigid censorship regimes in the western world, and authors, publishers and theatre people had long chafed under its strictness, illogicality and unpredictability. In the 1920s and '30s, it was mainly political in intent. The works of Marx and Lenin were prohibited imports, as were many serious works on communism. Books and pamphlets promoting birth control were also banned. In a notorious case in 1937, federal Attorney-General Robert Menzies banned Clifford Odets's anti-Nazi play Till the Day I Die at the request of the German Consul-General.
In the postwar years, however, censorship was increasingly directed at sexually-explicit or suggestive material. Books of serious literary merit such as Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Mary McCarthy's The Group were banned in the 1960s by the federal Customs Minister, Senator Malcolm Scott, and state ministers of all parties routinely banned films and plays. Nineteen sixty-nine was a vintage year, with Hair, O! Calcutta, I Love You Love, Norm and Ahmed, and many others joining The Boys in the Band in the dock. (Norman Staines's play Norm and Ahmed came under fire for the expression "fucking boong": today no-one would turn a hair at "fucking," but "boong" would land one in court for racial vilification.)
The Boys in the Band case brought the issue to a head. Banning films and books coming from overseas was one thing, but the prosecution and conviction of Australian actors was too much for many people to stand. On 30 October a demonstration organised by Actors' Equity was held, with 150 actors and supporters marching from the Playbox to Parliament House. They carried a petition signed by 1,000 people and were applauded by the crowds of shoppers as they passed up Bourke St. They were addressed by the Opposition Leader, Clyde Holding, but Rylah was "unavailable" to receive a deputation.
This case and others like it led to a serious effort by Australian intellectuals to break down the censorship regime. "Court action against The Boys in the Band has demonstrated the inanities of the present censorship laws," wrote John Tasker (who directed the play) in The Australian. "A decision to ban a play or modify a performance is usually founded on the advice of one or two men, constables who last visited the theatre 15 years ago, or for whom The Sound of Music is the acme of theatrical experience. Perhaps one should feel pleased that the police are now such staunch theatregoers."
The Age, then in the process of shaking off the musty conservatism which had marked it during the 1950s, also weighed in, though its strictures were rather mild in the circumstances. "What is needed," it editorialised, "is a recognition that the context in which allegedly obscene words and phrases are used is of importance, too. If this principle were recognised, then policemen might be less prone to rush into theatres, shorthand notebooks poised, ready to play the part of ex officio censor. Only then would Sir Arthur be fully justified in his 'no censors' claim."
In retrospect, 1969 can be seen as the old-time wowsers' last stand. In 1971 Rylah retired and was succeeded as Deputy Premier and Chief Secretary by Dick Hamer, who embarked on a cautious liberalisation of the censorship regime. Soon after, the election of the Whitlam Government with Lionel Murphy as customs minister saw the effective end of arbitrary federal censorship. It was not till the end of the 1970s that the backlash against the sexual revolution, marked by the rise of the feminist anti-porn movement, put censorship back on the political agenda.