The Legion of Decency still held great sway on film-going habits in America, and a "Condemned" movie would eliminate a huge number of ticket sales. The film had already opened in New York City, NY and Los Angeles, CA, but the Legion's banning of the film interfered with scheduled openings in other cities, such as Detroit, MI and Memphis, TN. The J. Arthur Rank Organisation was in a bad position. Parliament had just imposed a seventy-five percent duty on American movies imported to England, and Hollywood was temporarily boycotting the British market. The few British movies that could play well in America were encouraged as a goodwill gesture, so the J. Arthur Rank Organisation was anxious that this movie play in as many American cities as possible. The only option they saw was to make cuts to this movie to satisfy the Legion of Decency. The movie was edited by nine hundred feet or so - ten cuts in all. All of Sister Clodagh's (Deborah Kerr) memories of Ireland were cut, accounting for most of the offending footage. The closeup of Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) applying lipstick also fell victim to censorship, and a few lines of suggestive dialogue were also eliminated; e.g., Mr. Dean's (David Farrar) line to Sister Briony (Judith Furse), "You will be doing me a great favor when you educate the local girls." Finally, the wording of the foreword was changed so that there would be no possibility to mistake the order of nuns as Catholic. Now it said that "a group of Protestant nuns in mysterious India find adventure, sacrifice, and tragedy." Now satisfied, the ban was removed and this movie was released with an A2 classification from the Legion.

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