The Moon is Blue is yet another (though possibly the first) of the genre known as 'love comedy' - which includes last week's Ask Any Girl or any 1960s Doris Day film - where everybody keeps talking about sex but no-one ever gets any.

But in 1953, just talking about it was enough to get Preminger's film banned by the Production Code, condemned by the Legion of Decency, and denounced from the pulpit, despite the fact that the movie contained nothing that was not in the hit stage play on which it was based.

For all the adverse publicity, the film was an even bigger hit, perhaps, in part, due to the trailer Preminger produced featuring a man in a movie theatre watching the film with a live bear. An old lady sitting next to him is incensed: "Are you crazy? You can't bring a bear to a movie!" "Why not?" the man coolly replied. "He loved the play." Andrew Horn