When You Weren't Allowed to Use the Word PREGNANT on This Day in History

 

Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America

This Day in History: Almost 72 percent of all television sets in the United States were tuned into I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth on this day in 1953. However, rules were strict back then, so they couldn't use the word "pregnant" opting instead for the French term "Enceinte." Lucy was pregnant for the entire season of I Love Lucy, but they weren't allowed to actually use the word PREGNANT once. They were allowed to tell audiences what was going on: the show got used phrases like "with child," "having a baby," and "expecting."

Old time television at one point couldn't show toilets either. It was not until Leave It To Beaver that people got to see a toilet on TV, and even then they couldn't even show the whole commode. In 1960 Jack Paar walked off the set of "The Tonight Show" in the middle of taping an episode because censors cut a joke that used the phrase "water closet."

You couldn't show shared beds on TV back then either. On TV shows, married couples such as The Dick Van Dyke Show’s Rob and Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore) were forced to sleep in widely separated twin beds.

Also: "On the dramatic anthology series 'Playhouse 90,' an episode titled 'Judgment at Nuremberg' has all references to gas chambers eliminated from its re-enactment of the Nazi trials. This is done at the behest of the show's slightly sensitive sponsor, the American Gas Association." Source

Barbara Eden was not allowed to show her navel on I Dream of Jeannie.

The Doors were not allowed to sing about getting Higher on the Ed Sullivan show. Jim Morrison used the word anyways.

Mick Jagger, the lead singer for The Rolling Stones, was asked to change the line “Let’s spend the night together” to “Let’s spend some time together” on the Ed Sullivan show.

Early TV would show Elvis only above the waist because of his gyrating hips. 

Motion Picture Production Code 'punished Betty Boop for her short hemlines and garter, for her sex appeal and for her representation of liberation and fun.' As a result, 'her hemlines were lengthened, her garter removed,' and she began wearing pencil skirts and collars. She also became a nanny, as she transitioned to 'a responsible, maternal ‘mother.’" Source

Warner Brothers' Tweety Bird was once considered too naked for TV. Source

Toilet Assassinations on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Edmund Ironside, King of England, was stabbed while sitting on the toilet, by an assassin hiding underneath on this day in 1016.

Sitting on the toilet leaves one vulnerable, so it makes sense that in the past, some have used this private time to kill the inhabitants of "the throne." One of the first of such assassinations is recorded in the Bible at Judges chapter 3 when Ehud kills King Eglon while he was sitting on the chamber.* 

On November 4 1035, Jaromír, Duke of Bohemia, was stabbed with a spear from under a toilet seat while defecating.

Godfrey the Hunchback, Duke of Lower Lorraine (an area roughly coinciding with the Netherlands and Belgium) was murdered in 1069 when staying in the Dutch city of Vlaardingen. Supposedly, the assassin made sure which of the latrines, which were built and drained on the outer side of the wall, according to medieval building style, belonged to the duke's sleeping room, and took a position underneath. Some sources say that a sword was used for the assassination; others mention a sharp iron weapon, which could have been a sword but also a spear or a dagger, but a spear seems to be the most practical choice. After being stabbed in the bottom it took him several days to die. The assassination was ordered by Dirk V Count of Holland and his ally Robrecht the Frisian, Count of Flanders.

Godfrey IV, Duke of Lower Lorraine, was assassinated by a spear in Vlaardingen (Netherlands) while "answering the call of nature" in 1076.

On August 4, 1306, Wenceslaus III of Bohemia, was murdered with a spear while sitting in the garderobe (castle toilet). His assassin was never identified.

Japanese ruler Uesugi Kenshin was allegedly assassinated while using a toilet in 1578.

Historian Ioan P. Culianu was shot dead while on the toilet in the third-floor men's room of Swift Hall on the campus of the University of Chicago on 21 May 1991, in a possibly politically-motivated assassination. His killer has never been caught.

*The Hebrew for the location of the private meeting is ba-aliyat ha-meqerah, translated as cooling roof chamber, which was likely a bathroom given that the servants believed Eglon was relieving himself (v24). Ehud said, "I have a message from God for you", drew his sword, and stabbed the king in his abdomen. The Hebrew word for abdomen (beten), is the same word that is used for the womb of a woman. After Ehud stabbed the king, the end of Judges 3:22 reads in Hebrew wa-yese ha-paršedonah usually translated as “and the dirt came out,” a phrase of uncertain meaning as it is only used once in the Hebrew Bible. “Dirt” could be translated as feces.

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