Congressmen screened a banned underground film to sink a nominee.

Evidence

In late July, Thurmond organized a “Fortas Film Festival,” in Room 2228 of the Senate office building. A fourteen-minute filmed striptease, two other skin flicks, and Flaming Creatures were projected on the wood-paneled wall. Members of Congress were invited, as was the press, and Thurmond thoughtfully furnished glossy frame enlargements from the movie. The anti-Fortas forces announced plans to send prints of Flaming Creatures to women’s groups and civic clubs in hopes of triggering further outrage. Before the Fortas nomination collapsed in September, there was talk of showing the film on the Senate floor. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1387

Categorization

• QUESTION: Did the Fortas Film Festival in fact cause the nomination’s collapse, or was it incidental? Worth chasing the political history.
• SHARE: The ‘Fortas Film Festival’ — a US Senator screening porn to Congress — is a genuinely stunning fact for anyone into 60s culture wars.
• SEED: An essay on the obscenity frame as a bipartisan tool — the same film that the art vanguard celebrated being brandished by a segregationist senator.