Tony Mastroianni Review Collection
Only 7% of recent movies have received ratings as "X"
Cleveland Press February 9, 1971
For those who keep score, about 25% of the movies rated since the rating system went into effect Nov. I, 1968, have been G movies (general audiences) and about 7% have been X (no one under 17 admitted).
Here is the breakdown of the 988 movies rated so far by the Motion Picture Assn. of America: G, 250, 25.3%; GP, 374, 37.8%; R, 296, 30%, and X, 68, 6.9%.
GP stands for general patronage, parental discretion advised; R for restricted, no one under 17 admitted without parent or guardian.
THE TOTAL of X pictures includes only those films turned out by association members and submitted to the association for rating. It does not include what the trade calls skin flicks or nudies, the pictures that are X not only because they deserve an X but because the X (sometimes a double X or triple X) figures in the film's promotion.
Incidentally, "Midnight Cowboy" will be back one of these days as a R movie, not X.
The MPAA originally rated the movie R but the distributor, United Artists, cautious in those early classification days, gave it an X on its own, only to find that the picture was fairly tame by comparison with other movies that carried a less restrictive rating. So the R goes back.
The trend has been toward more R-rated movies with the number of G and GP pictures going down.
