How James Dean and Broadway Frightened America
‘”Switchblade knife’ means any knife that has a blade that folds, closes, or retracts into the handle or sheath that opens automatically by pressure applied to a button or other device located on the handle or opens or releases a blade from the handle or sheath by the force of gravity or by the application of centrifugal force.” TEXAS PENAL CODE s46.01(11)(defining “switchblade.”)
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On August 8, 1958, the United States Congress enacted Public Law 85-263, “prohibiting the introduction, or manufacture for introduction, into interstate commerce of switchblade knives, and for other purposes.” The practical effect of Public Law 85-263 was bring the production of switchblade knives—then manufactured by two Rhode Island companies, Imperial and Colonial—to a standstill. For if the companies could not ship switchblades beyond the boundaries of Rhode Island (and thus into “interstate commerce”), there was no point in manufacturing them at all.
Why would a massive effort in the 1950’s seek to ban switchblade knives? To most rational people, a switchblade knife is no more dangerous than a gun (which may legally possessed and carried) or even a pocket knife. So how is it that the switchblade became so vilified as to require the attention of the United States Congress?
The answer is both simple and confounding: because the switchblade knife became associated with and symbolic of “youthful, evil intent, and urban youth gang warfare.” See Senate Research Center, Bill Analysis HB1862.
Without producing statistics of any kind to support this bold assertion, a panic began. In 1957 and ’58, two senators from Tennessee commissioned surveys from local police chiefs in an attempt to gather “hard data on switchblades used in crimes, especially in juvenile crimes.” See Bernard Levine, “Switchblade Legacy,” Knife World August 1990. Problem was, less than half of police departments responded, and virtually no hard data was submitted.
Instead, the police department submitted the same panicked rhetoric that the United States Congress would use that same year. For example, the report of San Francisco police chief, Francis J. Ahern, assured the senators that “a substantial amount of our juvenile crimes of violence involve use of [the switchblade knife].” Yet, Ahern cited no data to back this up.
When actual data was produced it failed to make the point of those lobbying for the ban on switchblades. For example, a report from the Kansas City chief of police revealed “a total of 15 switchblade knives were used in assaults and robberies in Kansas City” in 1956—slightly over 1 per month. Kansas City, in 1956, had a population of nearly half a million people. Id.
Far more compelling than actual facts and data were the fictional depictions of 1950’s youth in plays like Westside Story and the James Dean film, Rebel Without A Cause. Westside Story opened on Broadway in 1957, and its plot centered on a street feud between the Sharks and the Jets. Switchblades were featured as the weapon of choice. (Although, dance was, apparently, the real weapon of choice…) Rebel Without A Cause (1955), as its title would suggest, featured James Dean as a troubled youth, who is forced into a switchblade fight with a rival gang at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. (Because the Griffith Observatory is a prime location for urban knife fights between rival street gangs?…)
Somehow, the fictional images of these films became reality in the adult collective consciousness, and the image of the violent youth with switchblade in hand terrorized the thoughts of adult Americans in the 1950’s. So much so, in fact, that following Public Law 85-263, switchblades were eventually band in the majority of states. Texas banned switchblades in the 1950’s as well. Prior to September 1, 2013, possessing a switchblade in Texas—a “prohibited weapon”—was punishable as a Class A misdemeanor, and violators faced up to 1 year in county jail and/or a fine of up to $4,000.00. TEXAS PENAL CODE s46.05(a)(5) (of 2011-2012 version of Penal Code.)
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The idea sketched above is worth repeating: what was actually dangerous was not the switchblade itself—hard data about youth crimes involving switchblades was scarce to nonexistent. Instead, what was dangerous was the very idea of it as a symbol for out of control American Youth.
It would take until 2014 for Texas to come to its senses regarding the switchblade…