A Very Censored Movie About Sailors -- Except One Time

1955 was supposedly in the dark depths of the "Hays Code" which censored pretty much all levels of sex, profanity and violence in movies. Things would slowly change in the sixties leading up to the R rating of 1968 and after, but it was meant to be pretty "pure" in the 50s.

Not to say there weren't some assaults on the censors in the 50's. Otto Preminger chose to release The Moon is Blue without studio backing to allow the word "virgin" to be spoken on screen, and at the very end of the fifties -- 1959 -- enlisted no less a clean liver than Jimmy Stewart to play the lawyer lead in "Anatomy of a Murder," about a murder trial where the victim is posthumously accused of rape.

But Mister Roberts was made in 1955 and -- unlike Preminger's films -- aimed at a family audience.

Which made things pretty damn false, fake, and wrong in that movie.

You've got this all-male shipboard society and nobody CUSSES. I mean the term "swearing like a sailor" MEANS something.

And so we get euphemisms like "What is all this crud?" "What is this slop?"

That said, I caught a sexual line(I think) that seemed to sail right past the censors:

The men are discussing some Navy nurses who will be around for awhile. And while they make some fairly suggestive comments, one guy starts reading from a...farming manual?

And reads aloud something like: "For the planting season, make sure to plow your seed deep." Or something like that.

Its so hilariously direct about the real topic at hand...but I'm guessing that the censors simply missed it and focused on the farming aspects.