# Was the word "rape" basically taboo on TV during the fifties? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 5, 2024, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730 "2024-11-05T16:50:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/21 "2024-11-05T22:19:59Z")
I remember it being extremely controversial when the movie Anatomy of a Murder (1959) was shown on TV in the 1960s because it was about a rape. I don’t know the exact year, though. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/22 "2024-11-05T22:20:53Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Because children could be watching, and they wanted to avoid parents’ having to answer “Mommy, what’s ‘rape’?” Sorry, off topic, but I couldn’t help mentioning this, in that it supports the helplessness adults felt in those days, in the face of awkward questions. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, which would have been around 1956 or 57, and was studying in the kitchen after dinner to learn and memorize the 10 commandments for Sunday School. My mother was nearby, just finishing cleaning up after dinner. “Mommy, what’s ‘adultery’?” ::crickets:: After a couple of awkward minutes, I gave up on expecting an answer, and turned back to my book. In fact, my parents never talked to me about sex, as I’m sure their parents never talked to them about sex. I just thought it was ironic that there was a word they couldn’t talk about in the 10 commandments. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/23 "2024-11-05T22:26:23Z")
Sometimes you’ll see “assaulted” or even “seduced” instead of rape. When I was a graduate student, I wrote a paper on one of the last big lynchings we had here in Arkansas. It all started with the murder of an eleven year old girl named Floella McDonald. She went missing on her way home from the library in March and her body was discovered in the belfry of the First Presbyterian Church in late April, 1927. She had been beaten to death, but the newspaper reported that due to advanced decomposition, it could not be determined whether she had been assaulted. It took me a little bit to add 2 and 2 together and figure out they meant sexually assaulted. These days, thanks to algorithims, you’ll see commentators on YouTube avoid using words like murder, rape, sucide, etc., etc. Someone might refer to a person as “unaliving” themself instead of sucide. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/24 "2024-11-05T22:38:02Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#): > > , actually “Edith’s 50th Birthday” wasn’t even the first attempted rape on that show. Hey, tell it to Wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/25 "2024-11-05T22:42:10Z")
Are we going backwards? I’ve seen F??K spelled out on the screen when you can literally hear someone screaming “Fuck” on the vid. What the heck is that about? ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/26 "2024-11-05T22:43:38Z")
I remember two movies from that era in which we know what happened to the women but the word rape was not used. One was a Western titled _Westward the Women_. In the film a big group of women are traveling to California to be wives to the all male settlers. Two women on the trip were dance hall girl types, and one is attacked and murdered, off screen, by one of the men escorting the women. When confronted about it he says _“Didn’t anything happen to her that didn’t happen before”._ He’s promptly shot to death by the expedition leader(Robert Taylor) Then there was the movie _Panic in the Year Zero_, about atomic war. A family has left LA for a camping trip in the mountains, and behind them the city gets nuked. The family sets up shelter in a cave, working out what to do. One time the teen daughter leaves the cave while her father and older brother are away, and she is attacked by two young men. Dad comes back and finds her sobbing in her mother’s arms, and wants to know what happened. The mother’s fiece reply is “What do you think?” Father and son go out, find the two men, and shoot them. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/27 "2024-11-05T22:46:50Z")
James Stewart, famously went to _visit the panther_ in that big Western. (That I can’t think of the name of, right now) I’ll think of it laying in bed tonight. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/28 "2024-11-05T22:49:12Z")
The one where he inherited a brothel? _The Cheyenne Social Club_? ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/29 "2024-11-05T23:10:11Z")
> [@StarvingButStrong](#): > > Hubby parks the car, follows the man into a hotel, and proceeds to kill him in his room without anyone noticing. Then he goes back to the car and suggests to his wife that they continue to drive, maybe to the next town, maybe have lunch or something, and she replies with vague 'that would be nice" type replies, as she’s been giving all along since the attack. Did the husband rape the man in the gray suit? Is there any chance that the wife was a ghost? Using ‘killed’ as a euphemism is pretty weird. If they couldn’t use the term rape, couldn’t they just have have said ‘attacked?’ ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/30 "2024-11-05T23:21:47Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > (southern tv stations would simply refuse to carry episodes with black actors, or else the screen would conveniently go black on a variety show) Really that far? I’ve got to believe they carried _Amos & Andy_ back then. Conformed to their stereotypes just fine. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/31 "2024-11-05T23:50:25Z")
Oh, yeah, definitely. I know Lena Horne, for one, was edited out of some TV show when it was aired in the south. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2024, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/32 "2024-11-05T23:59:15Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > one of John Wayne’s most intense roles. > > His God-daughter was kidnapped by Indians. Wayne almost goes crazy pursuing them for years. It wasn’t to save her. He felt it was more merciful to kill her. Rather than have her be defiled by her captures. > > [. . .] > > The woman did have indian children when she was found. Confirming what occurred without ever saying she was raped There is so much wrong with that, I can’t even. Does Wayne’s character kill the woman and her kids? ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2024, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/33 "2024-11-06T00:04:19Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#): > > Did the husband rape the man in the gray suit? > > Is there any chance that the wife was a ghost? Using ‘killed’ as a euphemism is pretty weird. If they couldn’t use the term rape, couldn’t they just have have said ‘attacked?’ No, he just beat his head in with a wrench he’d gotten from his sleeve before going into the room And no, the women wasn’t a ghost – she talked to by the sheriff(?) and another cop, as well as her husband, and he’s picked her up and hugged her so she’s corporeal. My guess, if using ‘killed me’ wasn’t a usual euphemism, was that that it served two purposes for the producers – avoiding the ‘forbiddden’ word AND giving the viewers a clue (that they might only notice retroactively) to her mind being disturbed and maybe what she said shouldn’t be taken as gospel. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2024, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/34 "2024-11-06T00:05:12Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#): > > One episode was called “Manon”. On that episode, Manon’s supposed to be an invincible gunfighter. Kitty tells Manon that Matt Dillon is better at sex than he is. This rattles Manon so much that Matt wins the gunfight. Great episode, with an amazing performance by Steve Forrest as the title character. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2024, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/35 "2024-11-06T00:11:40Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > Even as a kid I thought that seemed really stupid. So apparently “Devil” was a bad word, at least on TV back then, unless you’re talking about deviled eggs. And I imagine devil’s food cake was probably ok as well. In the _Twilight Zone_ episode “One More Pallbearer”, Paul Radin (Joseph Wiseman) angrily tells a minister to “go to the Devil”, and is castigated by his former commanding officer. So still a bad word, but not as bad as some. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2024, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/36 "2024-11-06T00:19:31Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > There is so much wrong with that, I can’t even. > > Does Wayne’s character kill the woman and her kids? There is a disturbing amount of racism in the movie. As well as the implied sexual abuse of a child. Spoiler alert. He changes his mind at the last minute. This movie was based on the true-life story of [Cynthia Ann Parker](https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpa18). As a nine-year-old girl, Parker was abducted by Comanche Indians from her prairie home in 1836 Texas. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2024, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/37 "2024-11-06T00:25:29Z")
From the link (not a spoiler, because the movie apparently had almost nothing to do with the reality): > Cynthia remained with the Native Americans for almost twenty-five years, forgot Anglo ways, and became thoroughly Comanche. It is said that in the mid-1840s her brother, [John Parker], who had been captured with her, asked her to return to their Anglo family, but she refused, explaining that she loved her husband and children too much to leave them Presence of children doesn’t automatically mean rape. Though I agree that in a movie of that time it might have been expected to be taken that way. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2024, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/38 "2024-11-06T00:38:04Z")
One memorable episode of early “Doctor Who” showed the aftermath of a Viking raid on an English village. A village woman is discovered lying on the floor of her ransacked hut, and when asked by her husband what happened, she gasps in a strangled voice “Vikings!”. I think that rape was definitely implied. And this was an early sixties kid’s show. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2024, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/39 "2024-11-06T00:51:16Z")
Episodes with black performers for sure, since that was a level of mixing they didn’t want their people to see. I was thinking more of episodes of shows. Not that there were a lot in the '50s. But I suspect they ran Jack Benny just fine. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2024, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730/40 "2024-11-06T01:02:51Z")
Yeah, but Rochester was a servant. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-word-rape-basically-taboo-on-tv-during-the-fifties/1009730.md?page=3)