February 15, 1962
THE CONNECTION, an independently made movie by New York-based filmmaker Shirley Clarke, opens in Scottsdale, Arizona while the film is embroiled in a censorship battle in the Empire state. Clarke, a pioneering female director of the New American cinema, was primarily a documentarian (Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World, 1963 Academy Award winner; Portrait of Jason, 1967 – National Film Registry). She championed the neorealist style of the American independent movement in the 1950s and 1960s. This was her first narrative feature.
The film, adapted by Jack Gelber from his play, concerns a racially diverse group of heroin-addicted jazz musicians waiting for their pusher. Censored for the use of four-letter-words, and scandalous for the times, it finally opens in a New York theater in October ’62. During the highly publicized fight in the New York courts, it scores a showing at the White House. 
