The Drive-In Screen

The manager of a drive-in theatre showed a sexually frank film loosely adapted from a famous opera. The screen could be seen from passing roads and nearby homes, and teenagers watched from outside the fence. He was prosecuted under a state law against knowingly exhibiting an obscene motion picture. The state courts took the view that, whatever the film's status before consenting adults, showing it on an outdoor screen visible to the public made it obscene in the context of its exhibition. The manager argued that the obscenity statute said nothing about where a film was shown, so he had no fair warning that the location of the screen could turn the showing into a crime.