The Moon Is Blue (1953) on Netflix
Patty O'Neill meets architect Donald Gresham atop the Empire State Building. He and his neighbor David Slater both set out to seduce her. She tells them she means to stay a virgin.
- Watch on NetflixThis title is not on Netflix right now. Please check back later for updates.
- Watch on NordVPN
- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb6.7/102,750 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes44%
Trailer
Plot summary
Patty O'Neill is a young actress who meets Donald Gresham, an architect, at the Empire State Building. He invites her to his apartment for drinks and dinner, and she agrees to come. There she meets the neighbors from upstairs: Cynthia Slater, who was once engaged to Donald, and her father David. Both men are drawn to Patty. She would rather talk than be seduced, and she enjoys debating the moral questions of the day, so she tells them she plans to stay a virgin until she marries. The two men spend the night looking for a way around her objection.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Moon Is Blue (1953)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- United Artists released The Moon Is Blue without the Motion Picture Production Code's seal of approval, the first major American film to do so, opening it in big-city markets in the hope that rural exhibitors would then book it.
- F. Hugh Herbert's play had been a hit in Germany, so Otto Preminger shot English and German versions (Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach) at the same time on the same sets with different casts, estimating this would add only eight to ten days and 10 to 15 percent to costs.
- Otto Preminger cast David Niven as David Slater over the objections of studio executives, who believed the actor's career was in decline.
- The film was banned in Jersey City, New Jersey as indecent and obscene, and Kansas, Maryland and Ohio also banned it, while some small-town American theaters admitted men and women separately; Preminger and United Artists sued in Maryland.
- After the Kansas Supreme Court upheld that state's ban on the film, Otto Preminger and United Artists took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned the Kansas ruling on October 24, 1955.
- Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York and James Francis Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles urged Catholics to avoid the film; Spellman denounced it on June 24, 1953 as an occasion of sin violating standards of morality and decency.
- The film's success helped weaken the influence of the Production Code; on June 27, 1961, the PCA granted seals of approval to both The Moon Is Blue and Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), seals it had initially withheld.
