Lloyd Binford

Lloyd Tilghman Binford (1869 – August 27, 1956, Duck Hill, Mississippi) was an American insurance executive and film censor who was the head of the Memphis Censor Board for 28 years.

The son of an infantry colonel, Binford left high school at 16 for a job as a railway postal clerk. After moving to Memphis, he eventually became president of the Columbian Mutual Life Insurance Company and a Freemason noted for his views on "Southern womanhood" and white supremacy. He once told Collier's that at his funeral "two rows of seats in the rear" would be "set aside for my Negro friends".

Binford's changes included the removal of whipping and crucifixion sequences from Cecil B. de Mille's The King of Kings and cuts to or bans of numerous films with African-American stars or topics, including Imitation of Life, Sensations of 1945, and Brewster's Millions (1945). In 1945, he attracted national attention when he banned the Jean Renoir film The Southerner, citing his opinion that the Southern characters were portrayed as "common, lowdown, ignorant white trash". The film's producer David Loew retorted that "Binford must have been sniffing too many magnolias."Boxoffice magazine noted in an editorial that Binford's opinion of The Southerner contrasted with that of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which endorsed the film as portraying "'the courage, stout-heartedness and love of our land which is an outstanding characteristic of the south.'"

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