Death of Henry Herx.
It may be a surprise to find this death notice on the MSC site. In fact, Henry Herx had quite some influence on the Australian Church and its movie ministry.
As can be seen in the obituary notice below, Henry worked for the US bishops conference for many years, from the mid-60s to the end of the 1990s, reviewing and classifying both popular and art movies. He began thirty years after the establishment of the Legion of Decency (1934), the approach to movies that zeroed in on what was morally objectionable rather than an overall opinion on the quality and entertainment value of a film. In the mid-1960s, the Legion took account of the growing complexity of films and their dealing with moral issues, formulating a new category of ‘Unobjectionable for adults with reservations’. The Legion was also transformed into the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures.
Henry used the Legion’s classifications, gradually modifying the names for more positive language.
His reviews and classifications were influential on Fr Fred Chamberlin, who was the first National Catholic Film Officer for Australia, from the 1970s to the 1990s. Henry and Fred were friends, especially when Henry moved on to the Board of OCIC, the International Catholic Organisation for Cinema. The editor of this website had the opportunity of a sabbatical in 1989 and went to New York to work with the Bishops Office and with Henry. Henry was a most welcoming and genial man, full of experience. His knowledge of US movie history and of the Legion of Decency were absorbing and an education in itself. While I would not agree with every review by Henry, they were well written, intelligent, and gave an example of a fully committed Catholic ministry, a fine lay ministry.
CNS, reports (Mark Pattison): Henry Herx, who spent 35 years of his working life reviewing movies and television for the Catholic Church, died Aug. 15 at his home in the Newark, N.J., suburb of Ramsey of complications from liver cancer. He was 79.
In addition to reviewing thousands of films and TV shows, Herx also taught classes in film at DePaul University in Chicago and Fordham University in New York.
Herx also edited several editions of "The Family Guide to Movies and Videos," the last edition of which was published in 1999, the year he retired from a career in cinematic criticism.
His one-sentence paragraphs pulled few punches in informing readers not only of the moral quality of a film, but whether it was worth seeing by any audience.
Herx may have been one of the last living links to the old Legion of Decency, which reviewed and rated movies based on their moral content. Beginning in 1964, Herx reviewed movies for the Legion of Decency for five years in Chicago before its film department was merged into the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, which later changed to the Office for Film and Broadcasting of the U.S. bishops' conference.
Following the job from Chicago to New York, Herx estimated that by the time he retired at the end of 1999, he had seen 10,000 of the 12,000 movies in the office's databank.
"Henry Herx had an encyclopedic knowledge of film and an acute sense of what made a good film," said an Aug. 16 statement from Msgr. Francis J. Maniscalco, former communications secretary for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Just talking to him was an education in film history. He combined this knowledge with his strong and informed faith to guide several generations of moviegoers toward artistically worthwhile films with significant moral themes."