I love it when I read an article with a catchy title, and unless you're not a curious person you've most likely done exactly what I wanted you to do: Click on the link.
When most people think of Classic Hollywood films, they automatically name off the same ones; I've come to title these as "the basics:" The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Sound of Music, Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life. Don't get me wrong, these are all fantastic films but they're a bit too...clean for me. The boy always gets the girl or there's always a happy ending...the heroine learns her lesson...blah blah blah. I mean that's good and all, but I really just want to see a little more than just your basic package.
You can take that last phrase any way you please.
I always thought that Classic Film was pretty conservative, life was all gay and nobody ever suffered; that's the life that some films of that era portrayed. At least from 1934 on. The films that most of us see from the classic era followed a very strict production code called The Motion Picture Production Code, or "Hays Code" after William Harrison Hays. So what about the films prior to 1934? That my dear friends is an era that has come to be known as Pre-Code Hollywood; an era where provocative filmaking was champion.
Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry between the introduction of sound in the late 1920s to 1934. Although the Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934. Before that date, movie content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee and the major studios, and popular opinion than strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers. As a result, films in the late 1920s and early 1930s included sexual innuendo (it was far from subtle, in some cases it was down right blatant), references to homosexuality (which was just outrageous...we all know that gays didn't show up until that whole AIDS thing), miscegenation (inter-racial relationships and marriages were frowned upon and you could face jail time), illegal drug use, infidelity, abortion and intense violence. From this era came the infamous gangster films and strong women-dominated films; Along with featuring stronger female characters, films examined female subject matters that were not revisited until much later in Hollywood history. Nefarious characters were seen to profit from their deeds, in some cases without significant repercussions, and drug use was a topic of several films. The bad guys didn't always get what they deserved and often times the films were a testament to how people really behaved, felt, and what was really going on in America at the time. Beginning in late 1933, and escalating throughout the first half of 1934, American Catholics launched a campaign against what they deemed the immorality of American cinema. This, plus a potential government takeover of film censorship and social research seeming to indicate that so-called "bad" movies could promote bad behavior, was enough pressure to force the studios to capitulate to greater oversight.
Leave it to the Catholics to take away all our fun.
Anyway in 1929, lay Catholic Martin Quigley, editor of the Motion Picture Herald, a prominent trade paper, and Jesuit priest Father Daniel A. Lord, created a code of standards, and submitted it to the studios. Lord's concerns centered on the effects sound film had on children, whom he considered especially susceptible to their allure. Several studio heads, including Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), met with Lord and Quigley in February 1930. After some revisions, they agreed to the stipulations of the Code. One of the main motivating factors in adopting the Code was to avoid direct government intervention. It was the responsibility of the SRC headed by Colonel Jason S. Joy to supervise film production and advise the studios when changes or cuts were required.
The Code was divided into two parts. The first was a set of "general principles" which mostly concerned morality. The second was a set of "particular applications" which was an exacting list of items that could not be depicted. Some restrictions, such as the ban on homosexuality or the use of specific curse words, were never directly mentioned but were assumed to be understood without clear demarcation. Miscegenation, better known as the mixing of the races, was forbidden. It also stated that the notion of an "adults-only policy" would be a dubious, ineffective strategy that would be difficult to enforce. However, it did allow that "maturer minds may easily understand and accept without harm subject matter in plots which does younger people positive harm." If children were supervised and the events implied elliptically, the code allowed "the possibility of a cinematically inspired thought crime."
The Code sought not only to determine what could be portrayed on screen, but also to promote traditional values. Sexual relations outside of marriage could not be portrayed as attractive and beautiful, presented in a way that might arouse passion, nor be made to seem right and permissible. All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience. Authority figures had to be treated respectfully, and the clergy could not be portrayed as comic characters or villains. Under some circumstances, politicians, police officers and judges could be villains, as long as it was clear they were the exception to the rule. The entire document contained Catholic undertones and stated that art must be handled carefully because it could be "morally evil in its effects" and because its "deep moral significance" was unquestionable. The Catholic influence on the Code was initially decided to be kept secret. A recurring theme was "throughout, the audience feels sure that evil is wrong and good is right." The Code also contained an addendum commonly referred to as the Advertising Code, which regulated advertising copy and imagery.
Can you see why they were lax in enforcing it for so long? I mean really..."art must be handled carefully because it could be "morally evil in its effects" and because its "deep moral significance" was unquestionable."
Screw that.
And they did. For almost fourteen years they just sort of forgot about it. On February 19, 1930, Variety published the entire contents of the Code and predicted that state film censorship boards would soon become obsolete. However, the men obligated to enforce the code, Jason Joy, who was the head of the Committee until 1932, and his successor, Dr. James Wingate, were generally ineffective. The very first film the office reviewed, The Blue Angel (Marlene Dietrich's claim to American stardom and the first German sound film), which was passed by Joy without revision, was considered indecent by a California censor. Although there were several instances where Joy negotiated cuts from films, and there were indeed definite — albeit loose — constraints, a significant amount of lurid material made it to the screen. Joy had to review 500 films a year using a small staff and little power. The Hays office did not have the authority to order studios to remove material from a film in 1930, but instead worked by reasoning and sometimes pleading with them. Complicating matters, the appeals process ultimately put the responsibility for making the final decision in the hands of the studios themselves. How effective.
One obvious factor in ignoring the Code was the fact that some found such censorship prudish, due to the libertine social attitudes of the 1920s and early 1930s. When the Code was announced The Nation, a liberal periodical, attacked it. The publication stated that if crime were never presented in a sympathetic light, then, taken literally, "law" and "justice" would become the same. Therefore, events such as the Boston Tea Party could not be portrayed. And if clergy were always to be presented positively, then hypocrisy could not be examined either. The Outlook agreed and unlike Variety, predicted from the beginning that the Code would be difficult to enforce. Additionally, the Great Depression of the 1930s led many studios to seek income by any way possible. As films containing racy and violent content resulted in high ticket sales, it seemed reasonable to continue producing such films. Soon, the flouting of the code became an open secret. In 1931, the Hollywood Reporter mocked the code, and Variety followed suit in 1933. In the same year as the Variety article, a noted screenwriter stated that "the Hays moral code is not even a joke any more; it's just a memory."
I'm sure the Catholics and supporters of the Code just loved that.
Although the liberalization of sexuality in American film had increased during the entire 1920s, the Pre-Code era is either dated to the start of the sound film era, or more generally to March 1930 when the Hays Code was first written. It seemed as though this era of provocative film and free spirits was safe after all. Not so much...
By 1932, there was an increasing movement for government control. By mid-1934 when Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia called for a Catholic boycott of all films, and Raymond Cannon was privately preparing a congressional bill supported by both Democrats and Republicans which would introduce Government oversight, the studios decided they had had enough. They re-organized the enforcement procedures giving Hays and the recently appointed Joseph I. Breen, a devout Roman Catholic, head of the new Production Code Administration, greater control over censorship. The studios agreed to disband their appeals committee and to impose a $25,000 fine for producing, distributing, or exhibiting any film without PCA approval. Hays had originally hired Breen, who had worked in public relations, in 1930 to handle Production Code publicity, and the latter was popular among Catholics. Joy began working solely for Fox Studios, and Wingate had been bypassed in favor of Breen in December 1933. Hays became a functionary, while Breen handled the business of censoring films. Breen was a rabid anti-Semite, who was quoted as stating that Jews "are, probably, the scum of the earth." When Breen died in 1965, the trade magazine Variety stated, "More than any single individual, he shaped the moral stature of the American motion picture."
Its such a comfort to know that upstanding Christian men were at the head of this Code. Unfortunately some Pre-Code movies suffered irreparable damage from censorship after 1934. When studios attempted to re-issue films from the 1920s and early 1930s, they were forced to make extensive cuts. Films such as Animal Crackers (1930), Mata Hari (1931), Arrowsmith (1931), and A Farewell to Arms (1932) exist only in their censored versions. Many other films survived intact because they were too controversial to be re-released, such as The Maltese Falcon (1931) (which was remade a decade later), and consequently never had their master negatives edited. Some films were even destroyed, or too damaged to restore as a result of these "upstanding moral values." Who knows how many great films we lost as a result of this crusade.
A lot of people who aren't into Film History have no idea that this era even existed, for them film starts with the Golden Years (1939 to about 1960) and ends with the most recent box-office hit. There's nothing wrong with that, but I feel that this era deserves a lot of credit; it shouldn't be tossed to the side. It contained stars like Ruth Chatterton (seriously, check out Female. It's awesome) , and Warren William (the so-called "king of Pre-Code") who excelled during this period but are mostly forgotten today which is a shame. Starlets like Barbara Stanwyck (see my previous post for all the wonderful deets about her), Jean Harlow (my FAVOURITE blonde bombshell; she basically set the standard for every blonde-haired, curvy beauty to follow her), Norma Shearer (the Queen of MGM), Joan Blondell, Mae West (C'mon up and see me sometime), and Marlene Dietrich all got their start and thrived in the Pre-Code era. Famous leading men such as Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson wouldn't be the icons they are today had they not starred in some of the most violent gangster films of the time.
There are way too many of these films for me to even start to talk about my favourites. I will however share with you a wonderful collection of these films that our friends at TCM have compiled together and preserved for future generations to treasure and watch; they have been dubbed the Forbidden Hollywood Collection.
Volume 1 contains Baby Face, Red Headed Woman, and Waterloo Bridge, which would be redone years later starring Vivien Leigh. I own this collection and I have to say that it's one of my favourites, it sits right next to Volume 2. The second volume contains a goody bag of five films that include The Divorcee, A Free Soul, Female, Three on a Match, and Night Nurse.
Now I can't offer any insight on Volume 3 because I don't have it...yet.
I'm open to charitable gifts though.
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