Sound Era
Tanner’s most controversial decision from the sound era remains his banning of All Quiet on the Western Front on 18 June 1930 for “being out of keeping with the unwarlike atmosphere” of the period. A recut version of the film was eventually passed by the Board of Review in 1931. Tanner also refused to approve The Blue Angel and Hedy Lamarr’s fifth film Ecstasy. He required cuts to King Kong.
Films from other dominions of the British Empire appeared to fare slightly better than American and foreign films. In 1932 Tanner listed 74 British quota films examined in the first nine months of that year. Two had been rejected (a ban rate of 2.7%), one for “vulgar incidents”, the other for bad language. Seven required cuts for bad language (“my God” and “by God”), three for vulgar incidents, and two for violence.
Tanner was succeeded as Chief Censor by his assistant, W A von Keisenberg, in 1938.
Read more about this topic: Walter Tanner
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