When Dora Bryan was too sexy for America

We all know that Hollywood films of the 1940s were sexy while their British counterparts were more concerned with cups of tea, don't we?

Not a bit of it.

I once wrote about A Matter of Life and Death and mentioned that it was cut for moral reasons when it was released in the USA as Stairway to Heaven.

Now I have discovered that another of my favourite films of the period, Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol was also trimmed for the American market. Betsy Sherman wrote at the time of the film's revival there last year:

Why was the film altered for its American release? Joseph Breen, of Hollywood's self-policing censorship body, objected to a comic relief passage. Phil has run off into the night and is brought to a police station by a constable. A streetwalker named Rose (Dora Bryan) is cracking wise to the desk sergeant and the shaken-up little boy gravitates to her. When the cops ask Rose to help them question Phil, she struggles, amusingly, to assume a maternal role. Breen ordered Reed to excise references to the fact that she's a prostitute being booked. Now, happily, Rose has been restored to her tawdry glory.