Censor Bait

Speaking of Son of Paleface, (well, I was speaking about it a few weeks ago), blogger Ray Davis looked at the script drafts of Son of Paleface (housed in the Academy Library in L.A., which I really, really should visit) and has reprinted some lines that were cut from the script after it was submitted to the Breen Office.

As he says, it's doubtful that Tashlin ever expected most of these lines to make it into the picture; as you probably know, there was a tradition of loading up a script with obviously risqué lines in the hope that the censors would focus on those and overlook the less obviously risqué stuff that the filmmakers really wanted to keep. Lines that seem to have been included as "censor bait" (in this draft, Jane Russell's character is called "Lily"; in the film she was changed to "Mike" to make Bob Hope's character seem even more sexually ambiguous):

LILY: Darling, you look so warm. Let me loosen your tie.
JUNIOR: All right. Just don't loosen my belt. I'm liable to break a toe.

I'm plumb ornery... an' I ain't had mah ornery plumbed since I left Harvard.