Dec. 7, 1964 - The University of Notre Dame and its president, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, filed suit in New York today to block the Christmas Day opening of the movie “John Goldfarb, Please Come Home.”
Father Hesburgh said that the film depicted the Notre Dame football team as “undisciplined gluttons and drunks” who cavort with harem girls on the eve of a big game.
The suit charged that the film and the novel of the same name “knowingly and illegally misappropriate, dilute, and commercially exploit for their private profit the names, symbols, football team, high prestige, reputation and goodwill” of the university without its permission and over its objections.
20th Century‐Fox, which describes the film as a “zany fantasy,” and its distributors were named as defendants in the suit. Notre Dame also sought an injunction against Doubleday & Co. and Fawcett Publications, publishers of the hardcover and paperback editions of the book.
The movie studio defended the film as “obviously a good-natured lampoon of contemporary American life and international affairs.” It said the film was “in the long tradition of American comedy which enables us to laugh at ourselves.”
The story of the film concerns a U-2 pilot named Goldfarb who crashes in a mythical Arab kingdom and becomes a football coach. The king wants to challenge and defeat Notre Dame because his son could not qualify for the Notre Dame football team.
“John Goldfarb” is scheduled to open at the Loew’s State, Cinema I and other theaters in the New York metropolitan area. It stars Shirley MacLaine (right), Peter Ustinov (left), and Richard Crenna. The screenplay and the book were written by William Peter Blatty.
Father Hosburgh said the university did not seek damages but wanted to prevent the film’s showing. The school said it had been “in communication” with the studio since last June on the use of the university’s name in the picture.
After refusing permission, several trustees of Notre Dame viewed a special showing of the film here on Nov. 17. The screening apparently confirmed their opposition and laid the basis for the suit.
In his complaint. Father Hesburgh summarizes the plot as follows:
“The story is directed to the efforts of an Arab king to field a football team, coached by a blackmailed American Jew, Goldfarb, for the purpose of challenging and defeating Notre Dame by way of vengeance for a supposed wrong done the king’s son by Notre Dame. Its climax is a scene in which Notre Dame players, under the influence of harem girls, are depicted as undisciplined gluttons and drunks, and the game the following day, in which Notre Dame players, dressed in the uniforms of the university, led by a violent and vulgar coach, befuddled by the previous evening’s revelry and in the grip of nausea, are defeated.”
“The university has long been jealous of its rights to the use of and benefits of its reputation and prestige,” Father Hesburgh said, “being concerned that they not be exploited and diluted for private gain by commercial enterprises.”
If the film is shown, the suit maintained, the Roman Catholic university will suffer “irreparable and immeasurable injury.”
Fox, which said that the film represented an investment of $4 million, declared that it could not understand why the university had waited 17 months after publication of the book to file its complaint.
Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s
Comentarios