Quote:
Originally Posted by Joebill
You could show a pregnant woman on television in the 1950s.
What you couldn't say was 'she is pregnant'.
What you could say was 'she is with child'.
And it was Johnny Carson on his version of The Tonight Show.
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I'm pretty sure Lucille Ball said it in words close to what I posted. In the early 50s, it
was the rule at CBS, home to
I Love Lucy, that pregnant women couldn't be shown on television.
From
Wikipedia:
On July 17, 1951, one month before her fortieth birthday and after several miscarriages, Ball gave birth to her first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to her second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr. When he was born, I Love Lucy was a solid ratings hit, and Ball and Arnaz wrote the pregnancy into the show (indeed, Ball gave birth in real life on the same day that her Lucy Ricardo character gave birth).
There were several challenges from CBS, insisting that a pregnant woman could not be shown on television, nor could the word "pregnant" be spoken on-air. After approval from several religious figures[who?] the network allowed the pregnancy storyline, but insisted that the word "expecting" be used instead of "pregnant".
From the
Wikipedia article on Desi Arnez:
Arnaz also pushed the network to allow them to show Lucille Ball while she was pregnant.
According to Arnaz, the CBS network told him, "You cannot show a pregnant woman on television". Arnaz consulted a priest, a rabbi, and a minister, all of whom told him that there would be nothing wrong with showing a pregnant Lucy or with using the word pregnant. The network finally relented and let Arnaz and Ball weave the pregnancy into the story line, but remained adamant about eschewing use of pregnant, so Arnaz substituted expecting, pronouncing it 'spectin' in his Cuban accent. Oddly, the official titles of two of the series' episodes employed the word pregnant: "Lucy Is Enceinte," employing the French word for pregnant, and "Pregnant Women Are Unpredictable," although the episode titles never appeared on the show itself.
See also
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lucille_Ball