For those who were born before 1970 and watched a movie in Maryland you will recognize the above seal of approval photo as it was always shown before the start of a movie. From 1916 to 1981 Maryland censored all movies shown in the state. Some not suitable were rejected and not legally shown in the state, other ones not suitable were sent back to the movie company with suggestions of which scenes to cut from it and after that was done they could resubmit the movie to the board. A number of people were jailed for showing unapproved movies. As an example the 1915 movie "Birth of a Nation" was rejected as morally bad and crime-inciting. Another example was Howard Hughes' "The Outlaw"

The Maryland State Board of Censors was a three-member state agency. The board was dissolved in 1981. At the time of its disbanding, it was the last state-specific film censorship agency in the United States.

The Maryland State Board of Censors were much like the Blue laws on the Eastern Shore of Maryland - designed to protect us from ourselves. To read about blue laws look at this post done in 2010

https://delmarhistoricalandartsociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/living-with-blue-laws.html

LAST STATE BOARD OF CENSORS FADES AWAY AFTER 65 YEARS State Board of Censors

By BEN A. FRANKLIN, Special to the New York Times

Published: June 29, 1981

BALTIMORE, June 27— The last picture show came before the Maryland State Board of Censors this week. It passed. The three-member board got a free preview of ''The Great Muppet Caper'' (rated G), unanimously gave it a license to be exhibited in the Free State of Maryland and then darkened the house - closing their private screening room here for the last time. They held a coffee-and-cookies reception, exchanged gifts and made jokes designed to lighten the aura of doom that surrounded the last meeting of the country's only state movie censorship board.

One of the partiers was Mary Avara, the 71-year-old senior censor. She has spent 21 years filtering smut from the silver screen here and has been the board's most vigorous defender.

A grandmother of nine and a former Baltimore bail bondsman with relatives in practically every branch of city, county and state government, Mrs. Avara is unabashedly a civic ''character.'' She said that she would forgo the $4,500-a-year censor's stipend and ''serve free, if anyone wants to introduce legisation to bring this board back.'' 'Lies' About Stag Parties

Few do, despite what Mrs. Avara called ''made-up lies'' about ''stag parties'' in the screening room to introduce Maryland lawmakers to the world of filmic smut.

Making an unsuccessful defense of continued movie censorship before a committee of the Maryland legislature earlier this year, Mrs. Avara - ''Joan of Arc'' to her antipornography allies - had established her credentials as an expert witness by noting that she had ''looked at more naked bodies than 50,000 doctors.''

But efforts to revive the censor board, expiring under a threeyear-old ''sunset law'' designed to purge useless state agencies, died in the State Senate last March by a vote of 25 to 20. Governor Harry R. Hughes, a Democrat - and, as Mrs. Avara noted this week, more in astonishment than outrage, ''a good Catholic'' - had said he would veto any revival measure, in any case.

The board was costing nearly $100,000 a year, while motion picture license fees were bringing in only about $12,000. Going Against the Tide

In large part through Mrs. Avara's defensive efforts, the Maryland board, which was founded in 1916, has lasted through the decades of the 1960's and 1970's, when the censoring authorities in other states were bowing to Supreme Court decisions that so restricted the definition of obscenity that censorship became a losing game. The censors here have not exactly prevailed, either. Last year the Maryland board reviewed some 500 films; it rejected only six.

Nevertheless, the censors here perceived that they had power. For example, about 600 X-rated titles that had been shown in censorless Washington, were never submitted to the Maryland board for licenses and probable rejection.

In Maryland, unlicensed hard-core movie pornoraphy has continued to be available in the ''adult'' sex shops that line this ciy's regionally famous tenderloin, ''The Block,'' a neon strip of go-go bars and pornographic book stores along East Baltimore Street. It is visible from the board's eighth-floor office on Calvert Street.

With its 13 patronage-hired inspectors, the board made a few recent cases against the quarter-in-the-slot peep show violators. But the result usually was drawn-out litigation. Warnings About Morals Thursday, at their final meeting, the outgoing board members issued dire forecasts for what will happen to the morals of Maryland, and indeed the nation, without their vigilance and with the advent of a booming new industry of cable television and video cassette pornography.

''In the demise of this body,'' said Martha S. Wright, a 52-yearold civic activist ending her second term as a censor, ''America has gone from one nation under God, from a righteous nation. It's just another step toward our becoming lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of our fellow man. America is degraded. I am sorry for the United States and for Maryland''.

Earlier this year Mrs. Avara reported to the State Legislature, where she has been known over the years for her cool recitals of explicit and deviant sex, that the job had taken its toll on her, too.

''One of our pictures had a naked woman playing with eels,'' she testified, ''and then she cooked them and ate them. I had to stop eating a lot of food because of what they do with it in these movies.''

Mrs. Avara's failure, at last, to arouse indignation at the Maryland statehouse was praised by Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America. At his headquarters in Washington, Mr. Valenti said: ''This removes a staining blot on the First Amendment to the Constitution. It makes Maryland, the fabled Free State, a free state at last, along with the other 49.''

Mr, Valenti said that the motion picture industry's voluntary rating system, which since 1968 has labeled films ''general,'' ''parental guidance'' and ''restricted,'' would now have increased importance.