Pre-Code Hollywood

Pre-Code Hollywoodwas an era in theAmerican film industrythat occurred between the widespread adoption of sound in film in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines (popularly known as theHays Code) in 1934. Although the Hays Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor, and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934, with the establishment of theProduction Code Administration.Before that date, film content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and the major studios, and popular opinion than by strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers.

As a result, some films in the late 1920s and early 1930s depicted or impliedsexual innuendo,romantic and sexual relationships between white and black people, mildprofanity,illegal drug use,promiscuity,prostitution,infidelity,abortion,intenseviolence,andhomosexuality.Nefarious characters were seen to profit from their deeds, in some cases without significant repercussions. For example, gangsters in films such asThe Public Enemy,Little Caesar,andScarfacewere seen by many as heroic rather than evil. Strong female characters were ubiquitous in such pre-Code films asFemale,Baby FaceorRed-Headed Woman,among many others, which featured independent, sexually liberated women.^[1]^[2]Many of Hollywood's biggest stars, such asClark Gable,Bette Davis,James Cagney,Barbara Stanwyck,Joan Blondell,andEdward G. Robinson,got their start in the era. Other stars who excelled during this period, however, likeRuth Chatterton(who decamped to England) andWarren William(the so-called "king of pre-Code", who died in 1948), would wind up essentially forgotten by the general public within a generation.^[3]

Beginning in late 1933 and escalating throughout the first half of 1934,American Catholicslaunched 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 movies that were seen to be immoral could promote bad behavior, was enough pressure to force the studios to capitulate to greater oversight.

Origins of the Code (1915–1930)

Earliest attempts for the Code

Will H. Hayswas recruited by the studios in 1922 to help clean up their "Sin City" image after a series of scandals, especially theRoscoe "Fatty" Arbucklemanslaughter trial.^[4]

In 1922, after some risqué films and a series of off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars, the studios enlistedPresbyterian elder Will H. Haysto rehabilitate Hollywood's image. Hays, later nicknamed the motion picture "Czar", was paid the then-lavish sum of $100,000 a year (equivalent to more than $1.7 million in 2022 dollars).^[5]^[6]^[7]Hays had previously served asU.S. Postmaster Generalunder presidentWarren G. Hardingand as the head of theRepublican National Committee.^[4]At the time of his hiring, he was president of theMotion Picture Producers and Distributors of America(MPPDA); he held the position for 25 years and "defended the industry from attacks, recited soothingnostrums,and negotiated treaties to cease hostilities ".^[8]Hollywood mimicked the decisionMajor League Baseballhad made in hiring judgeKenesaw Mountain LandisasLeague Commissionerthe previous year to quell questions about the integrity of baseball in the wake of the1919 World Series gambling scandal;The New York Timescalled Hays the "screen Landis".^[5]

In 1924, Hays introduced a set of recommendations dubbed "The Formula", which the studios were advised to heed, and asked filmmakers to describe to his office the plots of films they were planning.^[9]TheSupreme Courthad already decided unanimously in 1915 inMutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohiothat free speech did not extend to motion pictures,^[10]and while there had been token attempts to clean up the movies before, such as when the studios formed theNational Association of the Motion Picture Industry(NAMPI) in 1916, little had come of the efforts.^[11]

Creation of the Code and its contents

In 1929,Catholic layman Martin Quigley,editor of the prominent trade paperMotion Picture Herald,and FatherDaniel A. Lord,aJesuitpriest, created a code of standards (of which Hays strongly approved)^[12]and submitted it to the studios.^[8]^[13]Lord's concerns centered on the effects sound film had on children, whom he considered especially susceptible to the medium's allure.^[12]Several studio heads, includingIrving ThalbergofMetro-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.^[14]It was the responsibility of the Studio Relations Committee, headed by Colonel Jason S. Joy, to supervise film production and advise the studios when changes or cuts were required.^[15]^[16]

The Code was divided into two parts. The first was a set of "general principles" that mostly concerned morality. The second was a set of "particular applications", 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, the mixing of the races, was forbidden. The Code stated that the notion of an "adults-only policy" would be a dubious, ineffective strategy that would be difficult to enforce.^[17]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 whatBrandeis Universitycultural historian Thomas Doherty called "the possibility of a cinematically inspiredthought crime".^[18]

The Code sought not only to determine what could be portrayed on screen, but also to promote traditional values.^[19]Sexual relations outside of marriage could not be portrayed as attractive and beautiful, presented in a way that might arouse passion or be made to seem right and permissible.^[15]All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience.^[5]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 that they were the exception to the rule.^[15]

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.^[17]The Catholic influence on the Code was initially kept secret, owing to theAnti-Catholic biasof the time.^[20]A recurring theme was "throughout, the audience feels sure that evil is wrong and good is right."^[5]The Code contained an addendum, commonly referred to as the Advertising Code, that regulated film advertising copy and imagery.^[21]

Enforcement

On February 19, 1930,Varietypublished the entire contents of the Code.^[22]Soon the men obligated to enforce the code – Jason Joy, who was the head of the Committee until 1932, and his successor, Dr. James Wingate – would be seen as generally ineffective.^[16]^[23]The first film the office reviewed,The Blue Angel,which was passed by Joy without revision, was considered indecent by a California censor.^[24]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.^[25]

Joy had to review 500 films a year using a small staff and little power.^[23]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.^[26]Complicating matters, the appeals process ultimately put the responsibility for making the final decision in the hands of the studios themselves.^[16]

One factor in ignoring the Code was the fact that some found such censorship prudish. This was a period in which theVictorian erawas sometimes ridiculed as being naïve and backward.^[15]When the Code was announced,The Nation,a liberal periodical, attacked it.^[27]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 theBoston Tea Partycould not be portrayed. And if clergy were always to be presented positively, then hypocrisy could not be examined either.^[28]The Outlookagreed.^[28]

Clara Bowlifts her skirt on the poster for the pre-Code filmThe Saturday Night Kid(1929). Skirt-lifting was one of many suggestive activities detested by Hays.^[29]

Additionally, theGreat Depressionof the 1930s motivated studios to produce films with racy and violent content, which boosted ticket sales.^[15]Soon, the flouting of the code became an open secret. In 1931,The Hollywood Reportermocked the code, andVarietyfollowed suit in 1933. In the same year as theVarietyarticle, a noted screenwriter stated that "the Hays moral code is not even a joke any more; it's just a memory."^[16]

Early sound film era

Although the liberalization of sexuality in American film had increased during the 1920s,^[30]the pre-Code era is either dated generally to the start of the sound film era, or more specifically to March 1930, when the Hays Code was first written.^[31]^[32]Over the protests of NAMPI,^[33]New York became the first state to take advantage of the Supreme Court's 1915 decision inMutual Film vs. Ohioby instituting a censorship board in 1921. Virginia followed suit the next year,^[34]and eight individual states had a board by the advent of sound film.^[35]^[36]

Many of these boards were ineffectual. By the 1920s, the New York stage, a frequent source of subsequent screen material, had topless shows; performances were filled with profanity, mature subject matter, and sexually suggestive dialogue.^[37]Early during the sound system conversion process, it became apparent that what might be acceptable in New York would not be so in Kansas.^[37]In 1927, Hays suggested studio executives form a committee to discuss film censorship.Irving ThalbergofMetro Goldwyn Mayer(MGM),Sol WurtzelofFox,and E. H. Allen ofParamountresponded by collaborating on a list they called the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls",based on items that were challenged by local censor boards, and which consisted of eleven subjects best avoided, and twenty-six to be handled very carefully. TheFederal Trade Commission(FTC) approved the list, and Hays created the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) to oversee its implementation.^[38]^[39]However, there was still no way to enforce these tenets.^[5]The controversy surrounding film standards came to a head in 1929.^[31]^[40]

DirectorCecil B. DeMillewas responsible for the increasing discussion of sex in cinema in the 1920s.^[41]^[42]Starting withMale and Female(1919), he made a series of films that examined sex and were highly successful.^[41]Films featuring Hollywood's original "It girl"Clara Bowsuch asThe Saturday Night Kid(released four days before the October 29, 1929, market crash) highlighted Bow's sexual attractiveness.^[43]1920s stars such as Bow,Gloria Swanson,andNorma Talmadgefreely displayed their sexuality in a straightforward fashion.^[44]

Hollywood during the Great Depression

The Great Depression presented a unique time for film-making in the United States. The economic disaster brought on by the stock market crash of 1929 changed American values and beliefs in various ways. Themes ofAmerican exceptionalismand traditional concepts of personal achievement, self-reliance, and the overcoming of odds lost great currency.^[45]Due to the constant empty economic reassurances from politicians in the early years of the Depression, the American public developed an increasingly jaded attitude.^[46]

The cynicism, challenging of traditional beliefs, and political controversy of Hollywood films during this period mirrored the attitudes of many of their patrons.^[47]Also gone was the carefree and adventurous lifestyle of the 1920s.^[48]"After two years theJazz Ageseems as far away as the days before the war ",F. Scott Fitzgeraldcommented in 1931.^[49]In the sense noted by Fitzgerald, understanding the moral climate of the early 1930s is complex. Although films experienced an unprecedented level of freedom and dared to portray things that would be kept hidden for several decades, many in America looked upon the stock market crash as a product of the excesses of the previous decade.^[50]In looking back upon the 1920s, events were increasingly seen as occurring in prelude to the market crash.^[51]InDance, Fools, Dance(1931), lurid party scenes featuring 1920s flappers are played to excess.Joan Crawfordultimately reforms her ways and is saved; less fortunate isWilliam Bakewell,who continues on the careless path that leads to his ultimate self-destruction.^[51]

ForRain or Shine(1930),Milton AgerandJack Yellencomposed "Happy Days Are Here Again".The song was repeated sarcastically by characters in several films such asUnder Eighteen(1931) and20,000 Years in Sing Sing(1933). Less comical was the picture of the United States' future presented inHeroes for Salethat same year (1933), in which ahobolooks into a depressing night and proclaims, "It's the end of America".^[52]

Heroes for Salewas directed by prolific pre-Code directorWilliam Wellmanand featured silent film starRichard Barthelmessas aWorld War Iveteran cast onto the streets with a morphine addiction from his hospital stay. InWild Boys of the Road(1933), the young man played byFrankie Darrowleads a group of dispossessed juvenile drifters who frequently brawl with the police.^[53]Such gangs were common; around 250,000 youths traveled the country by hopping trains or hitchhiking in search of better economic circumstances in the early 1930s.^[54]

Complicating matters for the studios, the advent ofsound filmin 1927 required an immense expenditure in sound stages, recording booths, cameras, and movie-theater sound systems, not to mention the new-found artistic complications of producing in a radically altered medium. The studios were in a difficult financial position even before the market crash as the sound conversion process and some risky purchases of theater chains had pushed their finances near the breaking point.^[56]These economic circumstances led to a loss of nearly half of the weekly attendance numbers and closure of almost a third of the country's theaters in the first few years of the depression. Even so, 60 million Americans went to the cinema weekly.^[57]

Apart from the economic realities of the conversion to sound, were the artistic considerations. Early sound films were often noted for being too verbose.^[3]^[58]In 1930,Carl Laemmlecriticized the wall-to-wall banter of sound pictures, and directorErnst Lubitschwondered what the camera was intended for if characters were going to narrate all the onscreen action.^[58]The film industry also withstood competition from the home radio, and often characters in films went to great lengths to belittle other media.^[59]The film industry was not above using the new medium to broadcast commercials for its projects however, and occasionally turned radio stars into short feature performers to take advantage of their built-in following.^[60]

Seething beneath the surface of American life in the Depression was the fear of the angry mob, portrayed in panicked hysteria in films such asGabriel Over the White House(1933),The Mayor of Hell(1933), andAmerican Madness(1932).^[55]Massive wide shots of angry hordes, comprising sometimes hundreds of men, rush into action in terrifyingly efficient uniformity. Groups of agitated men either standing in breadlines, loitering in hobo camps, or marching the streets in protest became a prevalent sight during the Great Depression.^[55]TheBonus Armyprotests of World War I veterans on the capital in Washington, D.C., on which Hoover unleashed a brutal crackdown, prompted many of the Hollywood depictions. Although social issues were examined more directly in the pre-Code era, Hollywood still largely ignored the Great Depression, as many films sought to ameliorate patrons' anxieties rather than incite them.^[61]

Hays remarked in 1932:^[62]

The function of motion pictures is to ENTERTAIN.... This we must keep before us at all times and we must realize constantly the fatality of ever permitting our concern with social values to lead us into the realm of propaganda... the American motion picture... owes no civic obligation greater than the honest presentment of clean entertainment and maintains that in supplying effective entertainment, free of propaganda, we serve a high and self-sufficing purpose.

Social problem films

Hays and others, such asSamuel Goldwyn,obviously felt that motion pictures presented a form of escapism that served a palliative effect on American moviegoers.^[63]Goldwyn had coined the famous dictum, "If you want to send a message, callWestern Union"in the pre-Code era.^[63]However, the MPPDA took the opposite stance when questioned about certain so-called "message" films before Congress in 1932, claiming the audiences' desire for realism led to certain unsavory social, legal, and political issues being portrayed in film.^[64]

The length of pre-Code films was usually comparatively short,^[66]but that running time often required tighter material and did not affect the impact of message films.Employees' Entrance(1933) received the following 1985 review fromJonathan Rosenbaum:"As an attack on ruthless capitalism, it goes a lot further than more recent efforts such asWall Street,and it's amazing how much plot and character are gracefully shoehorned into 75 minutes. "^[67]The film featured pre-Code megastarWarren William(later dubbed "the king of Pre-Code"^[3]), "at his magnetic worst",^[68]playing a particularly vile and heartless department store manager who, for example, terminates the jobs of two long-standing male employees, one of whom takes his own life as a result. He also threatens to fireLoretta Young's character, who pretends to be single to stay employed, unless she sleeps with him, then attempts to ruin her husband after learning she is married.^[69]

Films that stated a position about a social issue were usually labeled either "propaganda films" or "preachment yarns". In contrast to Goldwyn and MGM's definitively Republican stance on social issue films, Warner Brothers, led by New Deal advocateJack L. Warner,was the most prominent maker of these types of films and preferred they be called "Americanism stories".^[64]^[70]^[71]Pre-Code historian Thomas Doherty has written that two recurring elements marked the so-called preachment yarns. "The first is the exculpatory preface; the second is theJazz Ageprelude. "^[72]The preface was essentially a softened version of a disclaimer that intended to calm any in the audience who disagreed with the film's message. The Jazz Age prelude was almost singularly used to cast shame on the boisterous behavior of the 1920s.^[72]

Cabin in the Cotton(1932) is a Warner Bros. message film about the evils of capitalism. The film takes place in an unspecified southern state where workers are given barely enough to survive and taken advantage of by being charged exorbitant interest rates and high prices by unscrupulous landowners.^[73]The film is decidedly anti-capitalist;^[74]however, its preface claims otherwise:^[72]

In many parts of the South today, there exists an endless dispute between rich land-owners, known as planters, and the poor cotton pickers, known as "peckerwoods". The planters supply the tenants with the simple requirements of everyday life and; in return, the tenants work the land year in and year out. A hundred volumes could be written on the rights and wrongs of both parties, but it is not the object of the producers ofCabin in the Cottonto take sides. We are only concerned with the effort to picture these conditions.

In the end, however, the planters admit their wrongdoing and agree to a more equitable distribution of capital.^[74]

The avaricious businessman remained a recurring character in pre-Code cinema. InThe Match King(1932),Warren Williamplayed an industrialist based on real-life Swedish entrepreneurIvar Kreuger,himself nicknamed the "Match King", who attempts to corner the global market on matches. William's vile character, Paul Kroll, commits robbery, fraud, and murder on his way from a janitor to a captain of industry.^[75]^[76]When the market collapses in the 1929 crash, Kroll is ruined and chooses suicide over imprisonment.^[75]William played another unscrupulous businessman inSkyscraper Souls(1932): David Dwight, a wealthy banker who owns a building named after himself that is larger than theEmpire State Building.^[77]He tricks everyone he knows into poverty to appropriate others' wealth.^[75]He is ultimately shot by his secretary (Verree Teasdale), who then ends the film and her own life by walking off the roof of the skyscraper.^[78]

Americans' mistrust and dislike of lawyers was a frequent topic of dissection in social problem films suchLawyer Man(1933),State's Attorney,andThe Mouthpiece(1932). In films such asPaid(1930), the legal system turns innocent characters into criminals. The life ofJoan Crawford's character is ruined and her romantic interest is executed so that she may live free, although she is innocent of the crime for which the district attorney wants to convict her.^[79]Religious hypocrisy was addressed in such films asThe Miracle Woman(1931), starringBarbara Stanwyckand directed byFrank Capra.

Many pre-Code films dealt with the economic realities of a country struggling to find its next meal. InBlonde Venus(1932),Marlene Dietrich's character resorts to prostitution to feed her child, andClaudette Colbert's character inIt Happened One Night(1934) gets her comeuppance for throwing a tray of food onto the floor by later finding herself without food or financial resources.^[80]Joan Blondell's character inBig City Blues(1932) reflects that, as achorus girl,she regularly received diamonds and pearls as gifts, but now must content herself with a corned beef sandwich.^[80]InUnion Depot(1932),Douglas Fairbanks Jr.puts a luscious meal as the first order of business on his itinerary after coming into money.^[81]

Political releases

In the pre-Code filmGabriel Over the White House(1933), a U.S. President makes himself dictator – part of what the 1930s trade papers dubbed the "dictator craze".

Given the social circumstances, politically oriented social problem films ridiculed politicians and portrayed them as incompetent bumblers, scoundrels, and liars.^[82]InThe Dark Horse(1932),Warren Williamis again enlisted, this time to get an imbecile, who is accidentally in the running for Governor, elected. The candidate wins the election despite his incessant, embarrassing mishaps.Washington Merry-Go-Roundportrayed the state of a political system stuck in neutral.^[82]Columbia Picturesconsidered releasing the film with a scene of the public execution of a politician as the climax before deciding to cut it.^[83]

Cecil B. DeMillereleasedThis Day and Agein 1933, and it stands in stark contrast to his other films of the period. Filmed shortly after DeMille had completed a five-month tour of theSoviet Union,This Day and Agetakes place in America and features several children torturing a gangster who got away with the murder of a popular local shopkeeper.^[84]^[85]The youngsters are seen lowering the gangster into a vat of rats when the police arrive, and their response is to encourage the youths to continue this. The film ends with the youngsters taking the gangster to a local judge and forcing the magistrate to conduct a trial in which the outcome is never in doubt.^[86]

The need for strong leaders who could take charge and steer America out of its crisis is seen inGabriel Over the White House(1933), about a benevolent dictator who takes control of the United States.^[87]Walter Hustonstars as a weak-willed, ineffectual president (likely modeled after Hoover) who is inhabited by the archangelGabrielupon being knocked unconscious.^[88]^[89]The spirit's behavior is similar to that ofAbraham Lincoln.The president solves the nation's unemployment crisis and executes anAl Capone-type criminal who has continually flouted the law.^[88]

Dictators were not just glorified in fiction. Columbia'sMussolini Speaks(1933) was a 76-minute paean to thefascistleader, narrated by NBC radio commentatorLowell Thomas.After showing some of the progress Italy has made duringMussolini's 10-year reign, Thomas opines, "This is a time when a dictator comes in handy!"^[90]The film was viewed by over 175,000 jubilant people during its first two weeks at the cavernousPalace TheaterinAlbany, New York.^[91]

The election ofFranklin Delano Roosevelt(FDR) in 1932 quelled the public affection for dictators.^[91]As the country became increasingly enthraled with FDR, who was featured in countlessnewsreels,it exhibited less desire for alternative forms of government.^[92]Many Hollywood films reflected this new optimism.Heroes for Sale,despite being a tremendously bleak and at times anti-American film, ends on a positive note as the New Deal appears as a sign of optimism.^[93]WhenWild Boys of the Road(1933), directed byWilliam Wellman,reaches its conclusion, a dispossessed juvenile delinquent is in court expecting a jail sentence. However the judge lets the boy go free, revealing to him the symbol of the New Deal behind his desk, and tells him "[t]hings are going to be better here now, not only here in New York, but all over the country."^[94]A box-office casualty of this hopefulness wasGabriel Over the White House,which entered production during the Hoover era malaise and sought to capitalize on it. By the time the film was released on March 31, 1933, FDR's election had produced a level of hopefulness in America that rendered the film's message obsolete.^[95]

Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany and his regime's anti-Semitic policies significantly affected American pre-Code filmmaking. Although Hitler had become unpopular in many parts of the United States, Germany was still a voluminous importer of American films and the studios wanted to appease the German government.^[96]The ban on Jews and negative portrayals of Germany by Hitler's government even led to a significant reduction in work for Jews in Hollywood until after the end of World War II. As a result, only two social problem films released by independent film companies addressed the mania in Germany during the pre-Code era (Are We Civilized?andHitler's Reign of Terror).^[97]

In 1933,Herman J. Mankiewiczand producerSam Jaffeannounced they were working on a picture, to be titledMad Dog of Europe,which was intended to be a full-scale attack on Hitler.^[98]Jaffe had quit his job atRKO Picturesto make the film. Hays summoned the pair to his office and told them to cease production as they were causing needless headaches for the studios.^[99]Germany had threatened to seize all the properties of the Hollywood producers in Germany and ban the import of any future American films.^[100]^[101]

Crime films

In the early 1900s, the United States was still primarily a rural country, especially in self-identity.^[102]D. W. Griffith'sThe Musketeers of Pig Alley(1912) is one of the earliest American films to feature urban organized crime.^[103]Prohibition's arrival in 1920 created an environment in which those who wished to consume alcohol often had to consort with criminals,^[104]especially in urban areas. Nonetheless, the urban-crime genre was mostly ignored until 1927 whenUnderworld,which is recognized as the first gangster movie,^[105]became a surprise hit.

According to theEncyclopedia of Hollywoodentry onUnderworld,"The film established the fundamental elements of the gangster movie: a hoodlum hero; ominous, night-shrouded city streets; floozies; and a blazing finale in which the cops cut down the protagonist." Gangster films such asThunderbolt(1929) andDoorway to Hell(1930) were released to capitalize onUnderworld's popularity,^[102]withThunderboltbeing described as "a virtual remake" ofUnderworld.^[106]Other late-1920s crime films investigated the connection between mobsters andBroadwayproductions in movies such asLights of New York(1928),Tenderloin(1928), andBroadway(1929).^[107]

The Hays Office had never officially recommended banning violence in any form in the 1920s—unlike profanity, the drug trade or prostitution—but advised that it be handled carefully.^[9]New York's censor board was more thorough than that of any other state, missing only around 50 of the country's 1,000 to 1,300 annual releases.^[108]

From 1927 to 1928, violent scenes removed included those in which a gun was pointed at the camera or "at or into the body of another character". Also subject to potential censorship were scenes involving machine guns, criminals shooting at law enforcement officers, stabbing or knife brandishing (audiences considered stabbings more disturbing than shootings), whippings, choking, torture and electrocution, as well as scenes perceived as instructive to the audience as to how to commit crime. Sadistic violence and reaction shots showing the faces of individuals on the receiving end of violence were considered especially sensitive areas.^[109]The Code later recommended against scenes showing robbery, theft, safe-cracking, arson, "the use of firearms", "dynamiting of trains, machines, and buildings" and "brutal killings", on the basis that they would be rejected by local censors.^[39]

Birth of the Hollywood gangster

No motion picture genre of the Pre-Code era was more incendiary than the gangster film; neither preachment yarns nor vice films so outraged the moral guardians or unnerved the city fathers as the high caliber scenarios that made screen heroes out of stone killers.^[110]
— Pre-Code historian Thomas P. Doherty

In the early 1930s, several real-life criminals became celebrities. Two in particular captured the American imagination:Al CaponeandJohn Dillinger.Gangsters like Capone had transformed the perception of entire cities.^[110]Capone gave Chicago its "reputation as the locus classicus of American gangsterdom, a cityscape where bullet-proof roadsters with tommygun-toting hoodlums on running boards careened around State Street spraying fusillades of slugs into flower shop windows and mowing down the competition in blood-spattered garages". Capone appeared on the cover ofTimemagazine in 1930.^[110]He was even offered seven-figure sums by two major Hollywood studios to appear in a film, but he declined.^[111]

Dillinger became a national celebrity as a bank robber who eluded arrest and escaped confinement several times. He had become the most celebrated public outlaw sinceJesse James.^[112]His father appeared in a popular series of newsreels giving police homespun advice on how to catch his son. Dillinger's popularity rose so quickly thatVarietyjoked that "if Dillinger remains at large much longer and more such interviews are obtained, there may be some petitions circulated to make him our president."^[113]Hays wrote a cablegram to all the studios in March 1934 mandating that Dillinger not be portrayed in any motion picture.^[114]

The genre entered a new level following the release ofLittle Caesar(1931), which featuredEdward G. Robinsonas gangster Rico Bandello.^[102]^[115]Caesar,along withThe Public Enemy(starringJames Cagney) andScarface(1932) (starringPaul Muni), were, by standards of the time, incredibly violent films that created a new type of anti-hero. Nine gangster films were released in 1930, 26 in 1931, 28 in 1932 and 15 in 1933, when the genre's popularity began to subside after the end ofProhibition.^[116]The backlash against gangster films was swift. In 1931, Jack Warner announced that his studio would stop making them and that he himself had never allowed his 15-year-old son to see them.^[117]

Little Caesaris generally considered the grandfather of gangster films.^[118]After its release, James Wingate, who then headed New York's censorship board, told Hays that he was flooded with complaints from people who saw children in theaters nationwide "applaud the gang leader as a hero".^[119]The success ofLittle Caesarinspired Fox'sThe Secret Six(1931) andQuick Millions(1931), and Paramount'sCity Streets(1931), but the next big Hollywood gangster would come from Warners.^[120]

William Wellman'sThe Public Enemy(1931) featured James Cagney as Tom Powers. In the notorious "grapefruit scene", when Powers's girlfriend (Mae Clarke) angers him during breakfast, he shoves half a grapefruit in her face.^[121]Cagney's character behaved even more violently toward women in the gangster filmPicture Snatcher(1933); in one scene, he knocks out an amorous woman whose feelings he does not reciprocate and violently throws her into the backseat of his car.^[122]In April 1931, the same month as the release ofThe Public Enemy,Hays recruited former police chiefAugust Vollmerto conduct a study on the effectgangster pictureshad on children. After he had finished his work, Vollmer stated that gangster films were innocuous and even overly favorable in depicting the police.^[123]Although Hays used the results to defend the film industry,^[123]the New York State censorship board was not impressed, and from 1930 through 1932, it removed 2,200 crime scenes from films.^[124]

Some critics have namedScarface(1932) as the most incendiary pre-Code gangster film.^[125]^[126]Directed byHoward Hawksand starring Paul Muni as Tony Camonte, the film is partially based on the life of Al Capone and incorporates details of Capone's biography into the storyline.^[125]The production ofScarfacewas troubled from the start. The Hays Office warned producerHoward Hughesnot to make the film,^[127]and when the film was completed in late 1931, the office demanded numerous changes, including a conclusion in which Camonte was captured, tried, convicted and hanged.^[128]It also demanded that the film carry the subtitle "Shame of a Nation".^[124]Hughes sent the film to numerous state censorship boards, saying he had hoped to show that the film was made to combat the "gangster menace".^[122]After he was unable to get the film past the New York State censor board^[122]even after the changes, Hughes sued the board and won, allowing him to release the film in a version close to its intended form.^[128]^[129]When other local censors refused to release the edited version, the Hays Office sent Jason Joy to assure them that the cycle of gangster films of this nature was ending.^[130]

Scarfaceprovoked outrage mainly because of its unprecedented violence, but also for its shifts of tone from serious to comedic.^[131]Dave Kehr,writing in theChicago Reader,stated that the film blends "comedy and horror in a manner that suggests Chico Marx let loose with a live machine gun".^[132]In one scene, Camonte is inside a cafe while a torrent of machine-gun fire from the car of a rival gang is headed his way; when the barrage is over, Camonte picks up one of the newly releasedtommy gunsthat the gangsters had dropped and exhibits childlike wonder and unrestrained excitement over the new toy.^[122]Civic leaders became furious that gangsters like Capone (who was also the inspiration forLittle Caesar)^[133]were being applauded in movie houses all across America.^[102]The screenplay, adapted by Chicago journalist Ben Hecht, contained biographical details of Muni's character that were so obviously taken from Capone that it was impossible not to draw the parallels.^[125]

One of the factors that made gangster pictures so subversive was that, in the difficult economic times of the Depression, there already existed the viewpoint that the only way to achieve financial success was through crime.^[134]TheKansas City Timesargued that although adults may not be particularly affected, these films were "misleading, contaminating, and often demoralizing to children and youth".^[135]Exacerbating the problem, some cinema theater owners advertised gangster pictures irresponsibly; real-life murders were tied into promotions and "theater lobbies displayed tommy guns andblackjacks".^[136]The situation reached such a nexus that the studios had to ask exhibitors to tone down the gimmickry in their promotions.^[136]

Prison films

Prison films of the pre-Code era often involved men who were unjustly incarcerated, and films set in prisons of the North tended to portray them as a bastion of solidarity against the crumbling social system of theGreat Depression.^[137]Sparked by the real-lifeOhio penitentiary fireon April 21, 1930, in which guards refused to release prisoners from their cells, causing 300 deaths, the films depicted the inhumane conditions inside prisons in the early 1930s.^[137]The genre was composed of two archetypes: the prison film and thechain-gangfilm.^[138]Prison films typically depicted large hordes of men moving about in identical uniforms, resigned to their fate and living by a well-defined code.^[139]In chain-gang films, Southern prisoners were often subjected to a draconian system of discipline in the blazing outdoor heat, where they were treated terribly by their ruthless captors.^[137]

The prototype of the prison genre wasThe Big House(1930).^[140]In the film,Robert Montgomeryplays a squirmy inmate who is sentenced to six years after committing vehicular manslaughter while under the influence. His cell mates are a murderer played byWallace Beeryand a forger played byChester Morris.The picture features future staples of the prison genre such as solitary confinement, informers, riots, visitations, an escape and the codes of prison life. The protagonist, Montgomery, ends up being a loathsome character, a coward who will sell out anyone in the prison to secure an early release.^[141]The film was banned in Ohio, the site of the deadly prison riots that inspired it.^[142]Numbered Men,The Criminal Code,Shadow of the Law,Convict's Code,and others, from no less than seven studios, followed.^[143]However, prison films mainly appealed to men and had weak box-office performances as a result.^[142]

Studios also produced children's prison films that addressed the juvenile delinquency problems of America in the Depression.The Mayor of Hell,for instance, featured children killing a murderously abusive reform-school overseer without retribution.^[144]

Chain-gang films

The most searing criticism of the American prison system was reserved for the depiction of Southern chain gangs, withI Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gangbeing by far the most influential and famous.^[145]The film is based onthe true storyof folk figureRobert E. Burns.^[146]In the first half of 1931,True Detective Mysteriesmagazine had published Burns's work over six issues, and the story was released as a book in January 1932.^[147]Decorated veteran James Allen (Paul Muni) returns from World War I a changed man and seeks an alternative to the tedious job that he had left behind, traveling the country looking for construction work. Allen follows a hobo, whom he had met at a homeless shelter, into a cafe, taking the hobo up on his offer of a free meal. When the hobo attempts to rob the eatery, Allen is charged as an accessory, convicted of stealing a few dollars and sentenced to ten years in a chain gang.

The men are chained together and transported to a quarry to break rocks every day. Even when unchained from each other, shackles remain around their ankles at all times. Allen convinces a large black prisoner who has particularly good aim to hit the shackles on his ankles with a sledgehammer to bend them. He removes his feet from the bent shackles, and in a famous sequence, escapes through the woods while being chased by bloodhounds. On the outside he develops a new identity and becomes a respected developer in Chicago. He is blackmailed into marriage by a woman he does not love who finds out his secret. When he threatens to leave her for a young woman with whom he has fallen in love, his wife turns him in. His case becomes acause célèbre,and he agrees to surrender under the agreement that he will serve 90 days and then be released. However, he is tricked and is not freed after the agreed duration. This forces him to escape again, and he seeks out the young woman, telling her that they cannot be together because he will always be hunted. The film ends with her asking him how he survives, and his ominous reply from the darkness is: "I steal."^[148]

Although based on reality, theChain Gangfilm changes the original story slightly to appeal to Depression-era audiences by depicting the country as struggling economically, even though Burns returned during theRoaring Twentiesera.^[149]The film's bleak, anti-establishment ending shocked audiences.^[150]

Laughter in Hell,a 1933 film directed byEdward L. Cahnand starringPat O'Brien,was inspired in part byI Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.^[151]O'Brien plays a railroad engineer who kills his wife and her lover in a jealous rage, and is sent to prison. The dead man's brother is the warden of the prison and torments O'Brien's character. O'Brien and several others revolt, killing the warden and escaping with his new lover (Gloria Stuart).^[152]^[153]The film, rediscovered in 2012,^[154]drew controversy for itslynchingscene in which several black men were hanged, though reports vary as to whether the black men were hanged alongside white men or by themselves. A film critic fromThe New Age(anAfrican Americanweekly newspaper) praised the filmmakers for being courageous enough to depict the atrocities that were occurring in some Southern states.^[153]

Sex films

Promotion

As films featuring prurient elements performed well at the box office, after the crackdown on crime films,^[157]Hollywood increased its production of pictures featuring theseven deadly sins.^[158]In 1932, Warner Bros formed an official policy decreeing that "two out of five stories should be hot", and that nearly all films could benefit by "adding something having to do with ginger".^[159]Filmmakers (including the shrewdMae West) began putting in overly suggestive material they knew would never reach theaters in hopes that lesser offenses would survive the cutting-room floor. MGM screenwriterDonald Ogden Stewartsaid "[Joy and Wingate] wouldn't want to take out too much, so you would give them five things to take out to satisfy the Hays Office—and you would get away with murder with what they left in."^[160]

Films such asLaughing Sinners,The Devil's Holiday,Safe in Hell,The Devil is Driving,Merrily We Go to Hell,Laughter in Hell,andThe Road to Ruinwere provocative in their mere titles.^[158]Studios marketed their films, sometimes dishonestly, by inventing suggestive tag lines and lurid titles, even going so far as to hold in-house contests for thinking up provocative titles for screenplays.^[161]Commonly labeled "sex films" by the censors, these pictures offended taste in more categories than just sexuality.^[158]According to aVarietyanalysis of 440 pictures produced in 1932–33, 352 had "some sex slant", with 145 possessing "questionable sequences", and 44 being "critically sexual".Varietysummarized that "over 80% of the world's chief picture output was... flavored with bedroom essence."^[159]Attempts to create films for adults only (dubbed "pinking" ) wound up bringing large audiences of all ages to cinemas.^[162]

Posters and publicity photos were often tantalizing.^[163]Women appeared in poses and garb not even glimpsed in the films themselves. In some cases actresses with small parts in films (or in the case of Dolores Murray in her publicity still forThe Common Law,no part at all) appeared scantily clad.^[164]Hays became outraged at the steamy photographs, drawings and prose circulating in newspapers around the country for publicity.^[165]The original Hays Code contained an often-ignored note about advertising imagery, but he wrote an entirely new advertising screed in the style of theTen Commandmentsthat contained a set of twelve prohibitions.^[166]The first seven addressed imagery. They prohibited women in undergarments, women raising their skirts, suggestive poses, kissing, necking, and other suggestive material. The last five concerned advertising copy and prohibited misrepresentation of the film's contents, "salacious copy", and the word "courtesan".^[29]

Studios found their way around the restrictions and published increasingly racy imagery. Ultimately this backfired in 1934 when a billboard in Philadelphia was placed outside the home of CardinalDennis Dougherty.Severely offended, Dougherty took his revenge by helping to launch the motion-picture boycott that would later facilitate enforcement of the Code.^[167]A commonly repeated theme by those supporting censorship, and one mentioned in the Code itself^[168]was the notion that the common people needed to be saved from themselves by the more refined cultural elite.^[169]

Despite the obvious attempts to appeal to red-blooded American males, most of the patrons of sex pictures were female.Varietysquarely blamed women for the increase in vice pictures:^[170]

Women are responsible for the ever-increasing public taste in sensationalism and sexy stuff. Women who make up the bulk of the picture audiences are also the majority reader of the tabloids, scandal sheets, flashy magazines, and erotic books... the mind of the average man seems wholesome in comparison.... Women love dirt, nothing shocks 'em.

Jean Harlow(seen here on a 1935Timecover) was propelled to stardom in pre-Code films such asPlatinum Blonde,*Red Dust*,andRed-Headed Woman.

Pre-Code female audiences liked to indulge in the carnal lifestyles of mistresses and adulteresses while at the same time taking joy in their usually inevitable downfall in the closing scenes of the picture.^[171]While gangster films were claimed to corrupt the morals of young boys, vice films were blamed for threatening the purity of adolescent women.^[162]

Content

In pre-Code Hollywood, the sex film became synonymous withwomen's pictures—Darryl F. Zanuckonce told Wingate that he was ordered by Warner Brothers' New York corporate office to reserve 20% of the studio's output for "women's pictures, which inevitably means sex pictures".^[172]Vice films typically tacked on endings where the most sin-filled characters were either punished or redeemed. Films explored Code-defying subjects in an unapologetic manner with the premise that an end-reel moment could redeem all that had gone before.^[173]The concept of marriage was often tested in films such asThe Prodigal(1931), in which a woman is having an affair with a seedy character, and later falls in love with her brother-in-law. When her mother-in-law steps in at the end of the film, it is to encourage one son to grant his wife a divorce so she can marry his brother, with whom she is obviously in love. The older woman proclaims the message of the film in a line near the end: "This is the twentieth century. Go out into the world and get what happiness you can."^[174]

InMadame Satan(1930), adultery is explicitly condoned and used as a sign for a wife that she needs to act in a more enticing way to maintain her husband's interest.^[175]InSecrets(1933), a husband admits to serial adultery, only this time he repents and the marriage is saved.^[175]The films took aim at what was already a damaged institution. During the Great Depression, relations between spouses often deteriorated due to financial strain, marriages lessened, and husbands abandoned their families in increased numbers.^[176]Marriage rates continually declined in the early 1930s, finally rising in 1934, the final year of the pre-Code era, and although divorce rates lowered, this is likely because desertion became a more common method of separation.^[177]Consequently, female characters, such asRuth Chatterton's inFemale,live promiscuous bachelorette lifestyles, and control their own financial destiny (Chatterton supervises an auto factory) without regret.^[172]

InThe Divorcee(1930), starringNorma Shearer,a wife discovers that her husband (played by Chester Morris) has been cheating on her. In reaction, she decides to have an affair with his best friend (played byRobert Montgomery). When the husband finds out, he decides to leave her. After pleading with him to stay, the wife unleashes her frustrations upon him, and, in a moment of inspiration, reveals her desire to live a fearless, sexually liberated life without him. According to film criticMick LaSalle,this was the motion picture that inspired other films centering upon sophisticated female protagonists, who stayed out late, had affairs, wore revealing gowns, and who basically destroyed the sexual double standard by asserting themselves both within society and in the bedroom. FromThe Divorceeonward, there developed "a trend toward a sophistication in women's pictures that would continue unabated until the end of the Pre-Code era in mid-1934".^[178]

One of the most prominent examples of punishment for immoral transgressions in vice film can be seen inThe Story of Temple Drake,based on theWilliam FaulknernovelSanctuary.InDrake,the title character (played byMiriam Hopkins), a cold, vapid "party girl", the daughter of a judge, is raped and forced into prostitution by a backwoods character, and according to pre-Code scholar Thomas Doherty, the film implies that the deeds done to her are in recompense for her immorality.^[179]Later, in court, she confesses that she killed the man who raped and kept her. She faints after this confession, upon which her lawyer carries her out, leading to a "happy ending".^[180]In the RKO filmChristopher Strong,Katharine Hepburnplays an aviator who becomes pregnant from an affair with a married man. She commits suicide by flying her plane directly upwards until she breaks the world altitude record, at which point she takes off her oxygen mask and plummets to earth.^[181]Strong female characters often ended films as "reformed" women, after experiencing situations in which their progressive outlook proved faulty.^[172]

Female protagonists in aggressively sexual vice films were usually of two general kinds: the bad girl or the fallen woman.^[183]In so-called "bad girl pictures", female characters profited from promiscuity and immoral behavior.^[184]Jean Harlow,an actress who was by all reports a lighthearted, kind person offscreen, frequently played bad girl characters and dubbed them "sex vultures".^[185]

Two of the most prominent examples of bad girl films,Red-Headed WomanandBaby Face,featured Harlow and Stanwyck. InRed-Headed Woman,Harlow plays a secretary determined to sleep her way into a more luxurious lifestyle, and inBaby FaceStanwyck is an abused runaway determined to use sex to advance herself financially.^[186]

InBaby FaceStanwyck moves to New York and sleeps her way to the top of Gotham Trust.^[187]Her progress is illustrated in a recurring visual metaphor of the movie camera panning ever upward along the front of Gotham Trust's skyscraper. Men are driven mad with lust over her and they commit murder, attempt suicide, and are ruined financially for associating with her before she mends her ways in the final reel.^[188]Stanwyck's sole companion for the duration of the film is a black woman named Chico (Theresa Harris), whom she took with her when she ran away from home at age 14.^[189]

Red-Headed Womanbegins with Harlow seducing her boss Bill LeGendre and intentionally breaking up his marriage. During her seductions, he tries to resist and slaps her, at which point she looks at him deliriously and says "Do it again. I like it! Do it again!"^[190]They eventually marry but Harlow seduces a wealthy aged industrialist who is in business with her husband so that she can move to New York. Although this plan succeeds, she is cast aside when she is discovered having an affair with her chauffeur, in essence cheating on her paramour. Harlow shoots LeGendre, nearly killing him. When she is last seen in the film, she is in France in the back seat of a limousine with an elderly wealthy gentleman being driven along by the same chauffeur.^[191]The film was a boon to Harlow's career and has been described as a "trash masterpiece".^[192]^[193]

Cinema classified as "fallen woman" films was often inspired by real-life hardships women endured in the early Depression era workplace. The men in power in these stories frequently sexually harassed the women working for them. Remaining employed often became a question of a woman's virtue. InShe Had to Say Yes(1933), starringLoretta Young,a struggling department store offers dates with its female stenographers as an incentive to customers.Employees' Entrancewas marketed with the tag line "See what out of work girls are up against these days."^[183]Joy complained in 1932 of another genre, the "kept woman" film, which presented adultery as an alternative to the tedium of an unhappy marriage.^[194]

Nudity was generally banned, but permitted if it was presented as documentary footage from other cultures.^[195]Filmmaker Deane Dickason took advantage of this loophole to release a documentary titledVirgins of Baliin September 1932, which concerns a day in the life of two Balinese teenagers who are topless in much of the footage.^[196]The film's introduction notes that Balinese women were normally topless and only covered their breasts for ceremonial duties; Doherty commented dryly that, "fortunately" for Dickason, his film's two "stars" rarely performed ceremonial duties. Typical of the film is the first scene where the two girls take a bath in the river while Dickason narrates, talking breathlessly about how the two girls "bathe their shamelessly nude bronze bodies".^[196]Virgins of Bali,which consisted almost entirely of scenes of Balinese women in various states of undress under the guise of showing what daily life inBaliwas like, was a successful film with men at the time and contributed to make Bali into a popular tourist destination.^[196]

Homosexuals were portrayed in such pre-Code films asOur Betters(1933),Footlight Parade(1933),Only Yesterday(1933),Sailor's Luck(1933), andCavalcade(1933).^[197]Although the topic was dealt with much more openly than in the decades that followed, the characterizations of gay and lesbian characters were usually derogatory. Gay male characters were portrayed as flighty with high voices, existing merely as buffoonish supporting characters.^[198]

A rare example of a homosexual character not being portrayed in the standard effeminate way, albeit still negatively, was the villain "Murder Legendre", played byBela LugosiinWhite Zombie(1932), the Frenchman who mastered the magical powers of aBokor(voodoo sorcerer). Legendre is hired by a wealthy plantation owner Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer) to turn the woman he desires into a zombie, only to be informed later that Legendre desires him and is going to transform him into a zombie. In films likeLadies They Talk About,lesbians were portrayed as rough, burly characters, but in DeMille'sThe Sign of the Cross,a female Christian slave is brought to a Roman prefect and seduced in dance by a statuesque lesbian dancer.^[199]Fox nearly became the first American studio to use the word "gay" to refer to homosexuality, but the SRC made the studio muffle the word in the soundtrack of all footage that reached theaters.^[200]

Bisexual actressMarlene Dietrichcultivated a cross-gender fan base and started a trend when she began wearing men's suits. She caused a commotion when she appeared at the premiere ofThe Sign of the Crossin 1932 in a tuxedo, complete with top hat and cane.^[202]The appearance of homosexual characters was at its height in 1933; in that year, Hays declared that all gay male characters would be removed from pictures. Paramount took advantage of the negative publicity Dietrich generated by signing a largely meaningless agreement stating that they would not portray women in male attire.^[203]

Comedy films

In the harsh economic times of the early Depression, films and performers often featured an alienated, cynical, and socially dangerous comic style. As with political films, comedy softened with the election of FDR and the optimism of the New Deal. Characters in the pre-Code era frequently engaged in comedic duels of escalating sexual innuendo.^[204]InEmployee's Entrance,a woman enters the office of a scoundrel boss who remarks, "Oh, it's you—I didn't recognize you with all your clothes on."^[205]Racial stereotypes were usually employed when ethnic characters appeared. Black people in particular were usually the butt of the wisecrack, never the wisecracker. The most acknowledged black comedian wasStepin Fetchit,whose slow-witted comedic character was only meant to be successful in an unintentional manner, with himself as the punchline.^[206]

The New York stage was filled with ribald humor and sexually offensive comedy; when movie producers started to put wisecracks in their sound pictures, they sought New York performers.^[37]^[207]Popular comics such as theMarx Brothersgot their start on Broadway in front of live audiences.^[208]Censors complained when they had to keep up with the deluge of jokes in pictures in the early 1930s, some of which were designed to go over their heads.^[207]The comic banter of some early sound films was rapid-fire, non-stop, and frequently exhausting for the audience by the final reel.^[208]

Mae Westhad already established herself as a comedic performer when her 1926 Broadway showSexmade national headlines. Tried and convicted of indecency by the New York City District Attorney, she served eight days in prison.^[209]West carefully constructed a stage persona and carried it over into her interviews and personal appearances.^[210]Despite her voluptuous physique, most of her appeal lay in her suggestive manner. She became a wordsmith in the art of the come-on and the seductive line, and despite her obvious appeal to male audiences, was popular with women as well.^[211]^[212]Over the cries of the censors,^[213]West got her start in the filmNight After Night(1932), which starredGeorge RaftandConstance Cummings,as aTexas Guinan-esque supporting character. She agreed to appear in the film only after producers agreed to let her write her own lines.^[214]In West's first line on film, after a hat check girl remarks "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds", West replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie."^[215]Raft, who had wantedTexas Guinanherself for the role that went to West, later wrote, "In this picture, Mae West stole everything but the cameras."^[216]She went on to makeShe Done Him Wrongin 1933, which became a huge box office hit, grossing $3 million against a $200,000 budget,^[217]and then nine months later wrote and starred inI'm No Angel.^[218]She became such a success that her career saved Paramount from financial ruin.^[209]^[213]

The arrival of sound film created a new job market for writers of screen dialogue. Many newspaper journalists moved to California and became studio-employed screenwriters. This resulted in a series of fast-talking comedy movies featuring newsmen.^[219]The Front Page,later re-made as the much less cynical and more sentimental post-CodeHis Girl Friday(1940), was adapted from the Broadway play byChicagonewsmen, and Hollywood screenwriters,Ben HechtandCharles MacArthur.It was based on Hecht's experiences working as a reporter for theChicago Daily Journal.^[220]

Cartoons

Theatrical cartoons were also covered by the Production Code. According toLeonard Maltin:"In early 1933 a Georgia theater owner wrote toFilm Daily:'The worst kicks we have are on smut in cartoons. They are primarily a kid draw, and parents frequently object to the filth that is put in them, incidentally without helping the comedy. The dirtiest ones are invariably the least funny.'"Betty Boopthus underwent some of the most dramatic changes after the Code was imposed: "gone was the garter, the short skirt, the décolletage".^[221]

Musical films

Dancers rehearsing in abbreviated clothing in42nd Street(1933) illustrates the allure of thebackstage musical.

The "By a Waterfall"number fromBusby Berkeley'sFootlight Parade(1933), which also highlightedJames Cagney's dancing talents

*42nd Street*(1933) made concessions to theHays Codein its dialogue, but still featured sexualized imagery.

As sound-pictures became the norm in Hollywood, the "backstage" film musical was a natural subject for the new medium. Not only could the studios present singing and dancing to their audiences – many of whom were unlikely to have ever seen a stage musical before – but the pre-Code film musicals also tended to feature shapely young female chorus "girls" wearing skimpy rehearsal clothing that revealed parts of the body that were still not normal to see on the street, and hinted at other parts in a way that normal fashion did not allow.^[222]But even if this could be considered exploitative use of the female body, the pre-Code movie musicals were generally not derogatory in their presentation of the physical virtues of their women, but celebratory, withBusby Berkeley's spectacular musical numbers being especially, and wittily, so; Berkeley avoided fetishizing his female performers.^[223]

Chorus "boys", too, were generally well built, healthy-looking, virile specimens, but even so they never got nearly the attention that the women did. Along with the obvious displays of male and female sexual potential, and the flirting and courting that went with it, pre-Code musicals feature the energy and vitality of their youthful performers,^[15]as well as the comedic abilities of the many older character actors in Hollywood, who were often cast as producers, agents, Broadway "angels" (financial backers) and stingy rich relatives, and brought a light – if often stereotypical – touch to these films.

Some Pre-Code musicals

Horror and science fiction films

Unlike silent-era sex and crime films, silent horror movies, despite being produced in the hundreds, were never a major concern for censors or civic leaders. When sound horror films were released, however, they quickly caused controversy. Sound provided "atmospheric music and sound effects, creepy-voiced macabre dialogue and a liberal dose of blood-curdling screams", which intensified its effects on audiences, and consequently on moral crusaders.^[225]^[226]The Hays Code did not mention gruesomeness, and filmmakers took advantage of this oversight. However, state boards usually had no set guidelines and could object to any material they found indecent.^[227]Although films such asFrankensteinandFreakscaused controversy when they were released, they had already been re-cut to comply with censors.^[228]

Comprising the nascent motion picture genres ofhorrorandscience fiction,the "nightmare picture" provoked individual psychological terror in its horror incarnations, while embodying group sociological terror in its science fiction manifestations. The two main types of pre-Code horror movies were the single monster movie, and films where masses of hideous beasts rose up and attacked their putative betters.FrankensteinandFreaksexemplified both genres.^[231]

The pre-Code horror cycle was motivated by financial necessity. Universal in particular buoyed itself with the production of horror hits such asDracula(1931) andFrankenstein,then followed those successes up withMurders in the Rue Morgue(1932),The Mummy(1932), andThe Old Dark House(1932). Other major studios responded with their own productions.^[225]Much like the crime film cycle, however, the intense boom of the horror cycle was ephemeral, and had fallen off at the box office by the end of the pre-Code era.^[232]

While Joy declaredDracula"quite satisfactory from the standpoint of the Code" before it was released, and the film had little trouble reaching theaters,Frankensteinwas a different story.^[233]New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts removed the scene where the monster unintentionally drowns a little girl and lines that referenced Dr. Frankenstein'sGod complex.^[234]Kansas,in particular, objected to the film. The state's censor board requested the cutting of 32 scenes, which if removed, would have halved the length of the film.^[227]

Paramount'sDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde(1931) played to the Freudian theories popular with the audience of its time.Fredric Marchplayed the split-personality title character. Jekyll represented the composedsuper-ego,and Hyde the lecherousid.Miriam Hopkins's coquettish bar singer, Ivy Pierson, sexually teases Jekyll early in the film by displaying parts of her legs and bosom.^[235]Joy felt the scene had been "dragged in simply to titillate the audience".^[234]Hyde coerces her with the threat of violence into becoming his paramour and beats her when she attempts to stop seeing him. She is contrasted with his wholesome fiancée Muriel (Rose Hobart), whose chaste nature dissatisfies March's baser alter ego.^[236]The film is considered the "most honored of the Pre-Code horror films".^[237]Many of the graphic scenes between Hyde and Ivy were cut by local censors because of their suggestiveness.^[238]Sex was intimately tied to horror in many pre-Code horror movies. InMurders in the Rue Morgue,an adaptation ofEdgar Allan Poe'sclassic talethat has little in common with the source material,Bela Lugosiplays a mad scientist who tortures and kills women, trying to mix human blood with ape blood during his experiments. His prized experiment, an intelligent ape named Erik, breaks into a woman's second-floor apartment window and rapes her.^[239]

InFreaks,directorTod BrowningofDraculafame helms a film that depicts a traveling circus populated by a group ofcarnival "freaks".Browning cast actual carnival sideshow performers, including people withdwarfism,anintersexperson,conjoined twins,and "the armless and legless man billed as the 'living torso'".^[240]Although circusfreak showswere common in the early 1930s, the film was their first depiction on screen.^[240]The film includes scenes of the disabled characters performing mundane tasks, including one of the "living torso" lighting a match and then a cigarette with his mouth. The film was accompanied by a sensational marketing campaign that asked sexually suggestive questions such as "Do the Siamese Twins make love?", "What sex is the half-man half-woman?", and "Can a full grown woman truly love a midget?"^[241]In response to negative test screenings, studioMetro-Goldwyn-Mayercut the film from its original 90 minutes runtime to just over one hour.^[242]Surprisingly, given its reaction toFrankenstein,the state ofKansasobjected to nothing inFreaks.^[243]However, other states, such as Georgia, were repulsed by the film and it was not shown in many locales.^[244]The film later became a cult classic spurred bymidnight movieshowings,^[245]but it was a box-office bomb in its original release.^[246]

InIsland of Lost Souls(1932), an adaptation ofH. G. Wells' science-fiction novelThe Island of Doctor Moreau,Charles Laughtonplays yet another mad scientist with a God complex.^[247]As Moreau, Laughton creates a mad scientist's island paradise, an unmonitored haven where he is free to create a race of man-beasts and Lota, a beast-woman he wants to mate with a normal human male. A castaway lands on his island, providing him an opportunity to see how far his science experiment, the barely clothed, attractive Lota, has come. The castaway discovers Moreauvivisectingone of the beast-men and attempts to leave the island. He runs into the camp of the man-beasts and Moreau beats them back with a whip. The film ends with Lota dead, the castaway rescued, and the man-beasts chanting, "Are we not men?" as they attack and then vivisect Moreau.^[248]The film has been described as "a rich man'sFreaks"due to its esteemed source material.^[249]Wells, however, despised the movie for its lurid excesses. It was rejected by 14 local censor boards in the United States, and considered "against nature" in Great Britain, where it was banned until 1958.^[249]^[250]

Exotic adventure films

In the early 1930s, the studios made a series of films that aimed to provide viewers a sense of the exotic, an exploration of the unknown and the forbidden. Films such asAfrica Speakswere directly marketed by referencing interracial sex; moviegoers received small packets labeled "Secrets", which contained pictures of naked black women.^[251]As portrayals of historic conditions, these movies are of little educational value, but as artifacts that show Hollywood's attitude towards race and foreign cultures, they are enlightening.^[252]The lack of black characters in films highlights their status inJim Crow America.^[253]

The central point of interest inThe Blonde Captive(1931), a film that depicted a blonde woman abducted by a savage tribe ofAboriginal Australians,was not that she was kidnapped, but that she enjoys living among the tribe.^[251]InBird of Paradise(1932), aWhite Americanman (Joel McCrea) enjoys a torrid affair with aPolynesianprincess (Dolores del Río). The film created a scandal when released due to a scene featuring del Ríoswimming naked.^[254]Orson Wellessaid del Río represented the highest erotic ideal with her performance in the film.^[255]

The white protagonist inTarzan, the Ape Man(1932) is the "King of the [African] Jungle". Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) is a monosyllabic half-naked jungle creature whose attractiveness is derived from his physical prowess; throughout the movie, he saves Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) from danger and she swoons in his arms.^[256]When Jane's father warns her "[h]e's not like us", she responds, "[h]e's white" as evidence to the contrary.^[257]In the racy 1934 sequel,Tarzan and His Mate(the last word meaning both a status and a biological function),^[258]men come from the U.S. with fancy gowns and other accoutrements to woo and clothe the bra-less, barely clothed Jane, again played by O'Sullivan, hoping to lure her away from the savage Tarzan.^[259]He detests the fancier clothing and tears it off. The film included a skinny-dipping scene with extensive nudity with a body double standing in for O'Sullivan.^[260]Breen, then head of the SRC, objected to the scene, and MGM, the movie's producer, decided to take their case to the appeals review board. The board consisted of the heads of Fox, RKO, and Universal. After watching the scene "several times", the board sided with Breen and the MPPDA, and the scene was removed, but MGM still allowed some uncut trailers and a few reels to stay in circulation.^[261]MGM marketed the film primarily towards women using taglines such as:^[262]

Girls! Would you live like Eve if you found the right Adam?
Modern marriages could learn plenty from this drama of primitive jungle mating!
If all marriages were based on the primitive mating instinct, it would be a better world.

Non-White characters were portrayed against stereotype inMassacre(1934). The protagonist (Richard Barthelmess) is aNative Americanwho performs in aWild West Showin full Indian garb, but then slips into a suit and speaks in American slang once the show is over.^[263]He has a black butler who is atypically intelligent; his character merely plays dumb by slipping into a stereotypical slow-witted "negro" character when it suits him, rather than being genuinely unintelligent.^[264]

Films such asThe Mask of Fu Manchu(1932),Shanghai Express(1932) andThe Bitter Tea of General Yen(1933), explored the exoticism of theFar East—by using white actors, not Asians, in the lead roles. The white actors frequently looked absurd inyellow-face makeupnext to genuineAsians,so the studios would cast all the Asian parts white.^[265]Generally, "Yellow Peril"stereotypes dominated the portrayal of Asian characters, who were almost always villains.^[266]The American scholar Huang Yunte wrote that the character of Charlie Chan, aChinese Americandetective aided by his bumbling, Americanized "Number One Son" were virtually the only positive examples of Asian characters in Hollywood in this period.^[266]The actressAnna May Wongcomplained in a 1933 interview about the prevalence of "Yellow Peril" stereotypes in Hollywood saying: "Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain? And so crude a villain – murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass! We are not like that. How could we be, with a civilization that is so many times older than the West?"^[267]

InFu Manchu,Boris Karloff plays the evil Chinese mad scientist and gangster Dr. Fu Manchu, who wants to find the sword and mask ofGenghis Khan,which will give him the power to control the "countless hordes" of Asians, and lead them into battle against the West.^[268]Fu is a sexual deviant who engages in ritual torture and has occult powers.^[269]Several times, the film seems to suggest Fu is engaged in an incestuous relationship with his equally evil daughter Fah Lo See (Myrna Loy), which plays up a central theme of the "Yellow Peril" fears, the alleged abnormal sexuality of Asians.^[266]In a scene cut from the film due to its depiction of miscegenation, the film shows Fu's depraved daughter violating one of the chaste good characters.^[270]Fu is eventually conquered, but not before he temporarily lays his hand on the sword and proclaims to a vast Pan-Asian army made up of Asians and Muslims: "Would you have maidens like this [referring toKaren Morley] for your wives? Then conquer and breed! Kill the white man and take his women! "^[268]

InFrank Capra'sThe Bitter Tea of General Yen,Stanwyck plays a missionary who goes to civil-war-torn China and meets the titular general (played byNils Asther) after his car kills the driver of herrickshaw.When she is knocked unconscious in a riot, he takes her out of the rabble and onto a train car. She has lurid, horror-themed, symbolic dreams about the General, in which she is both titillated and repulsed by him. The film breaks precedent by developing into an interracial love story, but his army ends in ruins. Yen kills himself at the film's conclusion—by drinking poisoned tea—rather than be captured and killed.^[271]Capra adored the script and disregarded the risk of making a film that broke California's (and 29 other states') laws concerning the portrayal of miscegenation. CinematographerJoseph Walkertested a new technique he created, which he dubbed "Variable Diffusion", in filming the movie. This rendered the entire film in verysoft focus.^[172]

Documentary films

From 1904 until 1967, when television finally killed them off, newsreels preceded films. In the early sound-film era, they lasted around eight minutes and featured highlights and clips of the world's biggest stories. Updated twice a week by the five major studios, they became a highly profitable enterprise: in 1933, newsreels had a total box office take of almost $19.5 million against an outlay of under $10 million.^[272]The sound-film era created the narrator; among the first wasGraham McNamee,who provided voiceover during the clips, often delivering hackneyed jokes while delineating the on-screen action.^[273]Sound newsreel interviews and monologs featured famous subjects unaccustomed to the new medium. These clips changed public perception of important historical figures depending on their elocution, the sound of their previously unheard voices, and their composure in front of the camera.^[274]Around 12 "newsreel theaters" were soon created around the United States, the most successful being the Embassy Newsreel Theater onBroadway.The Embassy was a 578-seat facility that presented fourteen 45–50 minute programs a day, running from 10 in the morning until midnight.^[275]It was noted for its discerning, intellectual audience, many of whom did not attend motion-picture theaters.^[276]

The most gripping news story of the pre-Code era was thekidnapping of the Lindbergh babyon the evening of March 1, 1932.^[277]As the child was already enormously famous before the kidnapping, the event created a media circus, with news coverage more intense than anything since World War I. Newsreels featuring family photos of the child (the first time private pictures had been "conscripted for public service"^[278]) asked spectators to report any sight of him. On May 12, 1932, the child's body was found less than five miles from the Lindbergh home.^[277]^[279]Although newsreels covered the most important topics of the day, they also presentedhuman-interest stories(such as the immensely popular coverage of theDionne quintuplets^[279]) and entertainment news, at times in greater detail than more pressing political and social matters.^[280]

Some of the images' impact belies their historical accuracy; nearly all ceremonies and public events that were filmed for newsreels in the early sound era were staged, and in some cases even reenacted. For instance: when FDR signed an important bill, a member of his cabinet was called away before the staged reenactment began, so the film shows him absent at the time of the signing, although he had been present.^[281]The newsreels of FDR were staged to hide his hobbled gait caused by polio.^[282]Caught between the desire to present accurate hard-hitting news stories and the need to keep an audience in the mood for the upcoming entertainment, newsreels often soft-pedaled the difficulties Americans faced during the early years of the Great Depression.^[283]FDR in particular received favorable treatment from Hollywood, with all five of the major studios producing pro-FDR shorts by late 1933. These shorts featured some of the studios' lesser contract talent extolling the virtues of FDR created government and social programs.^[284]Roosevelt himself was a natural before the camera. The newsreels were instrumental to the success of his initial campaign, and his enduring popularity while in office.^[282]He was described byVarietyas the "Barrymore of the Capital".^[71]

Taking advantage of 30 years of archived newsreels were filmmakers making early sound-era documentaries. World War I was a popular topic of these films and was the subject of numerous documentaries includingThe Big Drive(1933),World in Revolt(1933),This is America(1933),Hell's Holiday(1933),^[285]and the presciently titledThe First World War(1934) – the most critically and commercially successful documentary of the era.

Filmmakers also made feature-length documentaries that covered the dark recesses of the globe, including theAmazon rainforest,Native American settlements,thePacific Islands,and everywhere in between. Taking advantage of audiences' voyeuristic impulses, aided by the allowance of nudity in tribal documentaries, the filming of lands untouched by modernity, and the presentation of locales never before filmed, these movies placated Depression era American audiences by showing them lifestyles more difficult than their own.^[286]Also captured were polar expeditions in films such as90° SouthandWith Byrd at the South Pole,andsub-Saharan Africain thesafarifilms ofMartin and Osa Johnson,among others.^[287]

Some exploitation style documentaries purported to show actual events but were instead staged, elaborate ruses. The most prominent of these wasIngagi(1931), a film that claimed to show a ritual where African women were given over to gorillas as sex slaves, but instead was mostly filmed in Los Angeles using local blacks in place of natives.^[288]Douglas Fairbanksmocked the phoniness of many pre-Code documentaries in his parodyAround the World in 80 Minutes with Douglas Fairbanks,in one scene of which he filmed himself wrestling a stuffed tiger doll, then a tiger-skin rug.^[289]Opposing these films was thetravelogue,which was shown before features and served as a short saccharine form of cinematic tourism.^[290]

Beginning of Code era (July 1, 1934)

The Code enumerated a number of key points known as the "Don'ts" and "Be Carefuls":^[291]

Resolved, That those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated:

Pointed profanity – by either title or lip – this includes the words "God", "Lord", "Jesus", "Christ" (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), "hell", "damn", "Gawd", and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled;

Any licentious or suggestive nudity – in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture;

The illegal traffic in drugs;

Any inference of sex perversion;

White slavery;

Miscegenation(sex relationships between people of different races);

Sex hygieneand venereal diseases;

Scenes of actual childbirth – in fact or in silhouette;

Children's sex organs;

Ridicule of the clergy;

Willful offense to any nation, race or creed;

And be it further resolved, That special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized:

The use of the flag;

International relations (avoiding picturizing in an unfavorable light another country's religion, history, institutions, prominent people, and citizenry);

Arson;

The use of firearms;

Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc. (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon themoron);

Brutality and possible gruesomeness;

Technique of committing murder by whatever method;

Methods of smuggling;

Third-degreemethods;

Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment for crime;

Sympathy for criminals;

Attitude toward public characters and institutions;

Sedition;

Apparent cruelty to children and animals;

Branding of people or animals;

The sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue;

Rape or attempted rape;

First-nightscenes;

Man and woman in bed together;

Deliberate seduction of girls;

The institution of marriage;

Surgical operations;

The use of drugs;

Titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers;

Excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or the other is a "heavy".

Pre-Code films began to draw the ire of various religious groups, some Protestant but mostly a contingent of Roman Catholic crusaders.^[292]Amleto Giovanni Cicognani,apostolic delegate to theCatholic Churchin the United States, called upon Roman Catholics in the United States to unite against the surging immorality of films. As a result, in 1933, the Catholic Legion of Decency, headed by the ReverendJohn T. McNicholas(later renamed theNational Legion of Decency), was established to control and enforce decency standards and boycott films they deemed offensive.^[293]^[294]They created a rating system for films that started at "harmless" and ended at "condemned", with the latter denoting a film that was a sin to watch.^[295]

I wish to join the Legion of Decency, which condemns vile and unwholesome moving pictures. I unite with all who protest against them as a grave menace to youth, to home life, to country and to religion. I condemn absolutely those salacious motion pictures which, with other degrading agencies, are corrupting public morals and promoting a sex mania in our land... Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality.
— Catholic Legion of Decency Pledge^[2]

The Legion spurred several million Roman Catholics across the U.S. to sign up for the boycott, allowing local religious leaders to determine which films to protest.^[294]^[296]

Conservative Protestants tended to support much of the crackdown, particularly in the South, where anything relating to the state of race relations or miscegenation could not be portrayed. Although the Central Conference of American Rabbis joined in the protest, it was an uneasy alliance given the heavy presence of Jewish studio executives and producers, which, it was felt, had inspired at least some of the vitriol from the Catholic groups.^[297]

Hays opposed direct censorship, considering it "Un-American". He had stated that although there were some tasteless films in his estimation, working with filmmakers was better than direct oversight, and that, overall, films were not harmful to children. Hays blamed some of the more prurient films on the difficult economic times, which exerted "tremendous commercial pressure" on the studios more than a flouting of the code.^[298]Catholic groups became enraged with Hays and as early as July 1934 were demanding that he resign from his position, which he did not, although his influence waned and Breen took control, with Hays becoming a functionary.^[299]^[300]

ThePayne Study and Experiment Fundwas created in 1927 byFrances Payne Boltonto support a study of the influence of fiction on children.^[301]ThePayne Fund Studies,a series of eight^[302]books published from 1933 to 1935 that detailed five years of research aimed specifically at the cinema's effects on children, were also gaining publicity at this time, and became a great concern to Hays.^[298]^[303]^[304]Hays had said certain films might alter "... that sacred thing, the mind of a child... that clean, virgin thing, that unmarked state" and have "the same responsibility, the same care about the thing put on it that the best clergyman or the most inspired teacher would have".^[305]Despite its initial reception, the main findings of the study were largely innocuous. It found that cinema's effect on individuals varied with age and social position, and that films reinforced audiences' existing beliefs.^[306]^[307]The Motion Picture Research Council (MPRC, led by honorary vice presidentSara Delano Roosevelt(mother of President Franklin D. Roosevelt),^[308]and executive director the Rev. William H. Short^[309]) which funded the study, was not pleased. An "alarmist summary" of the study's results written byHenry James Formanappeared inMcCall's,a leading women's magazine of the time, and Forman's book,Our Movie Made Children,which became a bestseller, publicized the Payne Fund's results, emphasizing its more negative aspects.^[297]^[310]

The social environment created by the publicity of the Payne Fund Studies and religious protests reached such a fever pitch that a member of the Hays Office described it as a "state of war".^[311]However, newspapers includingThe Plain Dealer(Cleveland),New Orleans Times Picayune,Chicago Daily News,Atlanta Journal,Saint Paul Dispatch,the PhiladelphiaRecordandPublic Ledger,theBoston Americanand New York'sDaily News,Daily Mirror,andEvening Postall lambasted the studies.^[312]When discussing the Supreme Court's 1915 decision, film historian Gregory Black argues that the efforts of reformers might have been lessened had "filmmakers been willing to produce films for specialized audiences (adults only, family, no children)... but the movers and shakers of the industry wanted or needed the largest possible market."^[313]The most provocative films were the most profitable, with the 25% of the motion picture industry's output that was the most sensational supporting the cleaner 75%.^[314]

By 1932, there was an increasing movement for government control.^[315]By mid-1934, when Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia called for a Catholic boycott of all films, andRaymond Cannonwas privately preparing a congressional bill supported by both Democrats and Republicans that would introduce Government oversight, the studios decided they had had enough.^[316]They re-organized the enforcement procedures giving Hays and the recently appointedJoseph I. Breen,a devout Roman Catholic, head of the newProduction Code Administration(PCA), greater control over censorship.^[317]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.^[5]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.^[318]Joy began working solely forFox Studios,and Wingate had been bypassed in favor of Breen in December 1933.^[319]^[320]Hays became a functionary, while Breen handled the business of censoring films.^[321]

Breen initially had anti-Semitic prejudices,^[322]and was quoted as stating that Jews "are, probably, the scum of the earth".^[296]^[323]When Breen died in 1965, the trade magazineVarietystated, "More than any single individual, he shaped the moral stature of the American motion picture."^[324]Although the Legion's impact on the more effective enforcement of the Code is unquestionable, its influence on the general populace is harder to gauge. A study done by Hays after the Code was finally fully implemented found that audiences were doing the exact opposite of what the Legion had recommended. Each time the Legion protested a film it meant increased ticket sales; unsurprisingly, Hays kept these results to himself and they were not revealed until many years later.^[325]In contrast to big cities, boycotts in smaller towns were more effective and theater owners complained of the harassment they received when they exhibited salacious films.^[326]

Many actors and actresses, such as Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck, and Clark Gable, continued their careers apace after the Code was enforced. However, others, such asRuth Chatterton(who decamped to England around 1936) andWarren William(who died relatively young in the 1940s), who excelled during this period, are mostly forgotten today.^[3]^[327]

Effects of the Code

Censors like Martin Quigley and Joseph Breen understood that a private industry code is more effective than government censorship. Private censorship can be more sweeping in its demands, because it is not bound by constitutional due process or freedom of expression rules.^[328]

Termed by Breen as "Compensating moral value", the maxim was that "any theme must contain at least sufficient good in the story to compensate for, and to counteract, any evil which relates."^[329]Hollywood could present evil behavior, but only if it were eradicated by the end of the film, "with the guilty punished, and the sinner redeemed".^[329]

Pre-Code scholar Thomas Doherty summarized the practical effects:^[330]

Even for moral guardians of Breen's dedication, however, film censorship can be a tricky business. Images must be cut, dialogue overdubbed or deleted, and explicit messages and subtle implications excised from what the argot of film criticism calls the "diegesis".Put simply, the diegesis is the world of the film, the universe inhabited by the characters existing in the landscape of cinema." Diegetic "elements are experienced by the characters in the film and (vicariously) by the spectator;" nondiegetic "elements are apprehended by the spectator alone.... The job of the motion picture censor is to patrol the diegesis, keeping an eye and ear out for images, languages, and meanings that should be banished from the world of film.... The easiest part of the assignment is to connect the dots and connect what is visually and verbally forbidden by name.... More challenging is the work of the textual analysis and narrative rehabilitation that discerns and redirects hidden lessons and moral meanings.

The censors thus expanded their jurisdiction from what was seen to what was implied in the spectator's mind. InThe Office Wife(1930), several ofJoan Blondell's disrobing maneuvers were strictly forbidden and the implied image of the actress being naked just off-screen was deemed too suggestive even though it relied upon the audience using their imaginations, so post-Code releases of the film had scenes that were blurred or rendered indistinct, if allowed at all.^[329]

Following the July 1, 1934, decision by the studios to put the power over film censorship in Breen's hands, he appeared in a series of newsreel clips promoting the new order of business, assuring Americans that the motion-picture industry would be cleansed of "the vulgar, the cheap, and the tawdry" and that movies would be made "vital and wholesome entertainment".^[332]All scripts now went through PCA,^[325]and several films playing in theaters were ordered withdrawn.^[311]^[333]

The first film Breen censored in the production stage was the Joan Crawford-Clark Gable filmForsaking All Others.^[334]Although Independent film producers vowed they would give "no thought to Mr. Joe Breen or anything he represents", they caved on their stance within one month of making it.^[335]The major studios still owned most of the successful theaters in the country,^[4]and studio heads such asHarry CohnofColumbia Pictureshad already agreed to stop making indecent films.^[336]^[337]In several large cities audiences booed when the Production seal appeared before films.^[335]But the Catholic Church was pleased, and in 1936Pope Pius XIstated that the U.S. film industry "has recognized and accepts its responsibility before society".^[5]The Legion condemned zero films produced by the MPPDA between 1936 and 1943.^[338]

A coincidental upswing in the fortunes of several studios was publicly explained by Code proponents such as theMotion Picture Heraldas proof positive that the code was working.^[339]Another fortunate coincidence for Code supporters was the torrent of famous criminals such asJohn Dillinger,Baby Face Nelson,andBonnie and Clydethat were killed by police shortly after the PCA took power. Corpses of the outlaws were shown in newsreels around the country, alongside clips ofAl CaponeandMachine Gun KellyinAlcatraz.^[340]Among the unarguably positive aspects of the Code being enforced was the money it saved studios in having to edit, cut, and alter films to get approval from the various state boards and censors. The money saved was in the millions annually.^[341]A spate of more wholesome family films featuring performers such asShirley Templetook off.^[331]

Stars such as James Cagney redefined their images. Cagney played a series of patriots and his gangster inAngels with Dirty Faces(1938) purposefully acts like a coward when he is executed so children who had looked up to him would cease any such admiration.^[340]Breen in essence neutered Groucho Marx, removing most of his jokes that directly referenced sex, although some sexual references slipped through unnoticed in the Marx Brothers post-Code projects.^[342]In the political realm, films suchMr. Smith Goes to Washington(1939) in whichJames Stewarttries to change the American system from within while reaffirming its core values, stand in stark contrast toGabriel Over the White Housewhere a dictator is needed to cure America's woes.^[343]

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 asMata Hari(1931),Arrowsmith(1931),Shopworn(1932),Love Me Tonight(1932),Dr. Monica(1934) andHorse Feathers(1932) exist only in their censored versions. Many other films survived intact because they were too controversial to be re-released, such asThe Maltese Falcon(1931), which was remade a decade later with the same name, and thus never had their master negatives edited.^[344]In the case ofConvention City(1933), which Breen would not allow to be re-released in any form, the entire film remains missing. Although it has been rumored that all prints and negatives were ordered destroyed by Jack Warner in the late 1930s,^[345]further research shows the negative was in the vaults as late as 1948 when it was junked due to nitrate decomposition.^[346]

After the Code

The Production code continued to be enforced, but during the lead up toWorld War II,the Hollywood studios began to worry that adhering to the Code would reduce their overseas profits from Europe.^[347]At the same time, Hays warned about films being used forpropagandapurposes.^[348]

Hays stepped down in 1945, after 24 years as Hollywood's chief censor, but remained an advisor.^[349]His successor,Eric Johnston,rebranded the association as theMotion Picture Association of America(MPAA).^[347]In 1956, he oversaw the first major revision of the Production Code since it was created in 1930. This revision allowed the treatment of some subjects that had previously been forbidden, including abortion and the use of narcotics, so long as they were "within the limits of good taste". At the same time, the revisions added a number of new restrictions to the code, including outlawing the depiction of blasphemy and mercy killings in films.^[350]

Johnston died in 1963,^[351]and, after a three-year search, he was succeeded in 1966 byJack Valenti,former aide to PresidentLyndon Johnson.^[352]In November 1968, Valenti replaced the Production Code witha system of voluntary film ratings,in order to limit censorship of Hollywood films and provide parents with information about the appropriateness of films for children.^[353]In addition to concerns about protecting children,^[354]Valenti stated in his autobiography that he sought to ensure that American filmmakers could produce the films they wanted, without the censorship that existed under the Production Code that had been in effect since 1934.^[353]The rating system went through some adjustments, but remains in effect.^[355]

Screenings since the 1980s

In the 1980s, New York CityFilm ForumprogrammerBruce Goldsteinheld the first film festivals featuring pre-Code films.^[356]Goldstein is also credited by San Francisco film criticMick LaSalleas the person to bring the term "pre-Code" into general use.^[357]
UCLAran several series of pre-Code films during the 2000s, showcasing films that had not been seen for decades and were not available on home video.^[358]
In 2014, theBritish Film Instituteran a 21-film season titledHollywood Babylon: Early Talkies Before the Censors,at theBFI Southbank.^[359]^[360]

Home video

In the 1990s, MGM released several pre-Code films on laserdisc and VHS. "The Forbidden Hollywood Collection" included:Baby Face;Beauty and the Boss;Big Business Girl;Blessed Event;Blonde Crazy;Bombshell;Dance, Fools, Dance;Employees' Entrance;Ex-Lady;Female;Havana Widows;Heroes for Sale;Illicit;I've Got Your Number;Ladies They Talk About;Lady Killer;Madam Satan;Night Nurse;Our Dancing Daughters;Our Modern Maidens;The Purchase Price;Red-Headed Woman;Scarlet Dawn;Skyscraper Souls;The Strange Love of Molly Louvain;They Call It Sin;andThree on a Match.^[361]^[362]

MGM/UA andTurner Classic Moviesalso released other pre-Code films such asThe Divorcee,Doctor X,A Free Soul,Little Caesar,Mystery of the Wax Museum,Possessed,The Public Enemy,Red Dust(remade in 1953 asMogambo), andRiptideunder other labels.

In 1999, the Roan Group/Troma Entertainment released two pre-Code DVD collections:Pre-Code Hollywood: The Risqué Years #1,featuringOf Human Bondage,MillieandKept Husbands,andPre-Code Hollywood 2,featuringBird of ParadiseandThe Lady Refuses.

Warner Bros. Home Videohas released a number of their pre-Code films on DVD under theForbidden Hollywoodbanner. To date, 10 volumes have been released:

Volume 1 (December 5, 2006), includesBaby Face,Red-Headed Woman,andWaterloo Bridge.^[363]
Volume 2 (March 4, 2008), includesThe Divorcee,A Free Soul,Three on a Match,Female,andNight Nurse.^[327]
Volume 3 (March 24, 2009), featured six films fromWilliam Wellman:Other Men's Women,The Purchase Price,Frisco Jenny,Midnight Mary,Heroes for Sale,andWild Boys of the Road.^[364]
Volume 4 (August 9, 2012), includesJewel Robbery,Lawyer Man,Man Wanted,andThey Call It Sin.
Volume 5 (August 9, 2012), includesHard to Handle,Ladies They Talk About,The Mind Reader,andMiss Pinkerton.
Volume 6 (April 2, 2013), includesThe Wet Parade,Downstairs,Mandalay,andMassacre.^[365]
Volume 7 (April 30, 2013), includesThe Hatchet Man,Skyscraper Souls,Employees' Entrance,andEx-Lady^[366]
Volume 8 (October 28, 2014), includesBlonde Crazy,Strangers May Kiss,Hi, Nellie,andDark Hazard^[367]
Volume 9 (October 27, 2015), includesBig City Blues,Hell's Highway,The Cabin in the Cotton,andWhen Ladies Meet^[368]
Volume 10 (April 19, 2016), includesGuilty Hands,The Mouthpiece,Secrets of the French Police,The Match King,andEver in My Heart.^[369]

Universal Home Videofollowed suit with thePre-Code Hollywood Collection: Universal Backlot Seriesbox set (April 7, 2009). It includesThe Cheat,Merrily We Go to Hell,Hot Saturday,Torch Singer,Murder at the Vanities,andSearch for Beauty,together with a copy of the entire Hays Code.

There have been numerous releases ofmanufactured-on-demand DVD-Rs,with Warner also issuing various pre-Coders individually and as dual-film sets via theirWarner Archive Collectionimprint. These include:

Pre-Code Double Feature(March 29, 2012) withThe CrashandRegistered Nurse
Dorothy Mackaill Pre-Code Double Feature(March 29, 2012) withBright LightsandThe Reckless Hour.

Turner has also released MOD DVD-Rs, including:

Pre-Code Double Feature(May 17, 2012) withThe Song of SongsandThis Is the Night.
Columbia Pictures Pre-Code Collection(TCM, November 25, 2014) includesTen Cents a Dance,Arizona,Three Wise Girls,ShopwornandVirtue.

References

Notes

^"Women in Pre-Code Film".Women's Media Center.
^^a ^b"Pre-Code: Hollywood before the censors | Sight & Sound".British Film Institute.Archived fromthe originalon January 27, 2021.
^^a ^b ^c ^dTuran 2004,p. 371.
^^a ^b ^cSiegel & Siegel 2004,p. 190.
^^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^gYagoda, Ben."Hollywood Cleans Up Its Act: The curious career of the Hays Office".American Heritage.February/March 1980.RetrievedOctober 11,2012.
^Gardner 2005,p. 92.
^"Inflation Calculator".DaveManuel.com.RetrievedOctober 30,2015.
^^a ^bDoherty 1999,p. 6.
^^a ^bPrince 2003,p. 20.
^Jowett, essay in Bernstein, p. 16.
^Butters, Jr. 2007,p. 149.
^^a ^bSmith 2005,p. 38.
^Jacobs 1997,p. 108.
^Prince 2003,p. 21.
^^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^fLaSalle, Mick(June 18, 2009)."Pre-Code Hollywood".GreenCine.com.Archived fromthe originalon June 18, 2009.RetrievedOctober 4,2010.
^^a ^b ^c ^dDoherty 1999,p. 8.
^^a ^bDoherty 1999,p. 7.
^Doherty 1999,p. 11.
^Butters, Jr. 2007,p. 188.
^Black 1996,p. 43.
^Doherty 1999,p. 107.
^Black 1996,p. 44.
^^a ^bBlack 1996,p. 51.
^Black 1996,pp. 50–51.
^Jacobs 1997,p. 27.
^Black 1996,p. 52.
^Black 1996,pp. 44–45.
^^a ^bBlack 1996,p. 45.
^^a ^bDoherty 1999,pp. 111–112.
^Benshoff & Griffin, p. 218.
^^a ^bLaSalle (2002), p. 1.
^Doherty, p. 2.
^Black 1996,p. 30.
^Butters Jr, p. 148.
^LaSalle (1999), p. 62.
^Vieira, pp. 7–8.
^^a ^b ^cButters Jr, p. 187.
^Vieira, p. 8.
^^a ^bPrince, p. 31.
^Butters Jr, p. 189.
^^a ^bSiegel & Siegel, p. 379.
^Black, pp. 27–29.
Parkinson, p. 42.
^Jeff & Simmons, p. 6.
^Black, p. 27.
^Doherty, p. 16.
^Doherty, pp. 24–26.
^Doherty, pp. 16–17.
^Doherty, p. 20.
^Doherty, p. 22.
^Doherty, pp. 22–23.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 23.
^Doherty, pp. 26–27.
^^a ^bTuran 2004,p. 375.
^McElvaine (vol 1), p. 311.
^^a ^b ^cDoherty, p. 40.
^Doherty, p. 17.
^Doherty, p. 18.
McElvaine (Vol 1), p. 448.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 34.
^Doherty, p. 36.
^Doherty, pp. 36–37.
^Doherty, pp. 41–44.
^Doherty, p. 45.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 46.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 49.
^LaSalle (2002), p. 148.
^Turan 2004,p. 370.
^Rosenbaum, Jonathan.Employees' Entrancereview.Chicago Reader.Retrieved October 7, 2010.
^Doherty, p. 71.
^Turan 2004,p. 374.
^Doherty, p. 54.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 79.
^^a ^b ^cDoherty, p. 50.
^Doherty, pp. 50–51.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 51.
^^a ^b ^cDoherty, p. 59.
^Kehr, Dave(July 14, 2002)."The Nation; Seeing Business Through Hollywood's Lens"'The New York Times.Retrieved April 3, 2022.
^Hall, Mourdant(August 5, 1932)."Skyscraper Souls(1932) – A Banker's Ambition ".The New York Times.Retrieved October 9, 2010.
^LaSalle (2002), p. 150.
^Doherty, p. 60.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 56.
^Doherty, pp. 57–58.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 63.
^Doherty, p. 64.
^Doherty, p. 65.
^Monahan, Kaspar (September 16, 1933)."High Schoolers Smash Rule Of Gangland – Save City From Mobsters In DeMille Film At Penn".The Pittsburgh Press.Retrieved October 9, 2010.
^Doherty, p. 66.
^Black, p. 137.
^^a ^bDoherty, pp. 73–75.
^Hall, Mordaunt (April 1, 1933).Gabriel Over the White Housereview.The New York Times.Retrieved October 20, 2010.
^Doherty, p. 76.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 77.
^Doherty, p. 85.
^Doherty, p. 89.
^Doherty, p. 92.
^Doherty, p. 75.
Black, p. 144.
^Doherty, p. 97.
^Doherty, pp. 98–99.
^Doherty, pp. 100–101.
^Doherty, p. 101.
^"Charges Nazis Here Using Threats to Halt Production of" mad Dog of Europe "".Jewish Telegraphic Agency.October 23, 1933.RetrievedJune 27,2013.
^Schuessler, Jennifer (June 26, 2013)."Scholar asserts that Hollywood avidly aided Nazis".The New York Times.Retrieved December 11, 2016.
^^a ^b ^c ^dSiegel & Siegel, p. 165.
^Shadoian, p. 29.
^Leitch, p. 22.
^Kehr, Dave.Underworld(film) review.Chicago Reader.Retrieved October 11, 2010.
^Leitch, p. 23.
^Hughes, p. xii.
^Prince, p. 23.
^Prince, pp. 23–28.
^^a ^b ^cDoherty, p. 139.
^Doherty, p. 140.
^Doherty, p. 137.
^Doherty, p. 142.
^Doherty, pp. 137–138.
^Siegel & Siegel, p. 359.
^Black, p. 110.
^Leitch, p. 24.
^Dirks, Tim.Little Caesarprofile.filmsite.org. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
^Black, p. 115.
^Vieira, p. 33.
^Dirk, Tim.The Public Enemyreview.filmsite.org. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
^^a ^b ^c ^dDoherty, p. 150.
^^a ^bBlack, p. 123.
^^a ^bSmith, p. 51.
^^a ^b ^cDoherty, p. 148.
^Ebert, Roger.ofScarface^{[permanent dead link]},The Chicago Sun-Times,December 9, 1983.
Scarfacereview.Variety.December 31, 1931. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
Wood, Bret.Scarfacereview.tcm.com. Retrieved November 1, 2010.
^Vieira, p. 69.
^^a ^b"Cinema: The New Pictures".Time.April 18, 1932. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
^Corliss essay in Schatz, p. 159.
^Black, p. 131.
^Doherty, pp. 149–150.
^Kehr, Dave.Scarfacereview.Chicago Reader.Retrieved October 15, 2010.
^Little Caesarreview.Film4.com. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
^Doherty, p. 151.
^Black, p. 109.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 153.
^^a ^b ^cDoherty, p. 158.
^Doherty, p. 159
^Doherty. pp. 159–160.
^Druker, Don."The Big House".Chicago Reader.Retrieved October 17, 2010.
^Doherty, p. 160.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 170.
^Black, pp. 158–159.
^Doherty, p. 169.
^Wollstein, Hans J."REVIEW:Hell's Highway".The New York Times.Retrieved October 17, 2010.
^Doherty, p. 163.
^Niemi, p. 381.
^LeRoy, Mervyn.I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang(1932) United States: Warner Bros.
^Doherty, p. 164.
^Doherty, p. 166.
^Doherty, p. 162.
^"REVIEW:Laughter in Hell".tcm.com. Retrieved October 12, 2010.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 167.
^King, Susan (October 4, 2012)."Bernardo Bertolucci feted at the American Cinematheque".Los Angeles Times.RetrievedJuly 19,2014.
^Doherty, p. 280.
^Fristoe, Roger."Safe in Hell".tcm.com. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
^Vasey, p. 114.
^^a ^b ^cDoherty, p. 103.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 104.
^Vieira, p. 130.
^Doherty, pp. 107–110.
^^a ^bSmith, p. 56.
^Doherty, pp. 110–111.
^Doherty, p. 110.
^Doherty, p. 111.
^Doherty, pp. 107, 110–112.
^Doherty, pp. 112–113.
^Reprinted in Jacobs, p. 10: "Most arts appeal to the mature. This art appeals at once to every class, mature, immature, developed, underdeveloped, law abiding, criminal. Music has its grades for different classes; so has literature and drama. This art of the motion picture, combining as its does the two fundamental appeals of looking at a picture and listening to a story, at once reached [sic] every class of society. [Thus] it is difficult to produce films intended for only certain classes of people.... Films, unlike books and music, can with difficulty be confined to certain selected groups "
^Doherty, pp. 106–107.
Massey, p. 71.
^Doherty, p. 126.
^Doherty, p. 127.
^^a ^b ^c ^dVieira, p. 118.
^Doherty, p. 113.
^Doherty, pp. 113–114.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 114.
^McElvaine (Vol 2), p. 1055.
^McElvaine (Vol 1), pp. 310–311.
^LaSalle M. (2000).Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood.New York: St. Martin's Press, p. 12.ISBN 0-312-25207-2
^Doherty, pp. 117–118.
^Black, Gregory D.Hollywood Censored,Cambridge University Press,1994.
^
- Doherty, p. 128.
- Profile:Christopher Strong
- ArchivedOctober 17, 2012, at theWayback Machine.timeout.com. Retrieved November 11, 2010.
^Doherty, pp. 124–125.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 131.
^Doherty, p. 132.
^LaSalle (1999), p. 127.
^LaSalle, Mick (February 3, 2006)."'Baby Face' now better (and racier) than ever before".San Francisco Chronicle.Retrieved October 11, 2010.
^Burr, Ty (April 7, 2006)."Uncut version of 'Baby Face' is naughty but nice".The Boston Globe.Retrieved October 11, 2010.
^Hall, Mordaunt (June 24, 1933)."Baby Face(1933) – A Woman's Wiles ".The New York Times.Retrieved October 11, 2010.
^Doherty, p. 277.
^LaSalle (1999), p. 130.
^Doherty, p. 130.
^Hanke, Ken (November 20, 2007)."Red-Headed Woman".Mountain Xpress.Retrieved October 11, 2010.
^Schwartz, Dennis (January 2, 2007)."REVIEW:Red-Headed Woman".ArchivedNovember 26, 2010, at theWayback Machine.Retrieved October 11, 2010.
^Smith, p. 53.
^Variety (1932).Variety (December 1932).Media History Digital Library. New York, NY: Variety Publishing Company.
^^a ^b ^cDoherty, pp. 233-235.
^Vieira, pp. 132–133.
^Doherty, p. 121.
^Doherty, p. 122.
^Vieira, p. 133.
^Jacobs, p. 3.
^Doherty, p. 123.
Siegel & Siegel, p. 124.
^Doherty, p. 125.
^Doherty, pp. 172–175.
^Doherty, p. 176.
^Doherty, pp. 177–178.
Bogle, p. 42.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 181.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 179.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 182.
^Doherty, p. 183.
^Doherty, pp. 182–183.
^Smith, p. 55.
^^a ^bMcElvaine (vol 2), p. 1039.
^Vieira, p. 112.
^LaSalle (2000), p. 118.
^Siegel & Siegel, p. 457.
^Hughes, p. 9.
^Doherty, p. 186.
^Doherty, p. 187.
^Doherty, p. 188.
^Maltin, Leonard.Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated CartoonsRevised edition. 1987, pp. 105–106.
^LaSalle, Mike (2014)Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code HollywoodNew York: MacMillan. p. 158ISBN 9781466876972
^Haskell, Molly(1987)From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies(2nd ed.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 146.ISBN 0-226-31885-0
^Clip of first reference to Ginger Rogers' character as "Anytime Annie",a pre-Code element in42nd Street(1933 film) on YouTube
^^a ^bSmith, p. 57.
^Berenstein, pp. 2, 14.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 297.
^Doherty, p. 303.
^Gardner (1988), p. 66.
^Teresi, Dick (September 13, 1988)."Are You Mad, Doctor?".The New York Times.Retrieved November 24, 2010.
^Doherty, pp. 296, 299, 308.
^Doherty, p. 298.
^Vieira, pp. 42–43.
^^a ^bVieira, p. 43.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 305.
^Review:Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.TV Guide.Retrieved April 3, 2022.
^Doherty, pp. 303–304.
^Vieira, p. 49.
^Doherty, pp. 305–307.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 313.
^Doherty, pp. 315–317.
^Matthews, Melvin E Jr. (2009).Fear Itself: Horror on Screen and in Reality During the Depression and World War II.Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 53.ISBN 978-0-786-44313-0.
^Butters, p. 206.
^Doherty, pp. 317–18.
^Phipps, Keith (August 16, 2004).Review of the filmFreaksprofile.avclub.com. Retrieved November 26, 2010.
^Doherty, p. 318.
^Vieira, p. 147.
^Doherty, pp. 308–311.
^^a ^bVieira, p. 132.
^Hanke, Ken (August 24, 2010)."REVIEW:Island of Lost Souls/White Zombie".Mountain Xpress.Retrieved November 26, 2010.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 255.
^Doherty, pg. 254.
^Doherty, pp. 255–256.
^Sex in Cinema,AMC filmsite
^Bird of Paradise(1932 film) review.dawnsdeloresdelrio.blogspot.com. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
^Doherty, p. 257.
Hall, Mourdant (February 28, 1932)."Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932)".The New York Times.Retrieved December 15, 2010.
^Van Dyke, W.S.Tarzan, the Ape Man(1932) Hollywood: MGM
^Doherty, p. 259.
^Tarzan and His Matereviews.film4.com. Retrieved December 15, 2010.
^Gibbons, Cedric.Tarzan and His Mate(1934). Hollywood: MGM
Tarzan and His Mate.Variety.December 31, 1933. Retrieved December 15, 2010.
Doherty, p. 260.
^Doherty, pp. 260–261.
Vieira, pp. 179–80.
^Doherty, p. 262.
^Doherty, p. 263.
^Doherty, p. 266.
^Doherty, p. 268.
^^a ^b ^cYunte, p. 144.
^Lim 2005, p. 58.
^^a ^bBrabin, Charles.The Mask of Fu Manchu(1932). United States: MGM.
^Doherty, pp. 269–270.
^Vieira, p. 88.
^Doherty, pp. 270–274.
^Doherty, pp. 197, 212.
^Doherty, pp. 174–175, 198.
^Doherty, pp. 200–202.
^Doherty, p. 200.
^Doherty, p. 212.
^^a ^bGill, Barbara."Lindbergh kidnapping rocked the world 50 years ago".ArchivedMarch 3, 2016, at theWayback Machine.The Hunterdon County Democrat.1981. Retrieved October 29, 2010.
^Doherty, pp. 218–219.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 220.
^Doherty, p. 199.
^Doherty, pp. 203–204.
^^a ^bDoherty, pp. 81–82.
^Doherty, pp. 208, 213–215.
^Doherty, p. 84.
^Doherty, pp. 204–205.
^Doherty, pp. 223, 225–227.
^Doherty, pp. 227–228, 246.
^Doherty, pp. 236, 241.
^Doherty, p. 243.
^Doherty, p. 222.
^Lewis (2000),pp. 301–302
^LaSalle (2002), p. xii.
^Doherty, pp. 320–321.
^^a ^b"Religion: Legion of Decency".Time.June 11, 1934. Retrieved October 21, 2010.
^Jowett, Jarvie, and Fuller, p. 93.
^^a ^bBlack, p. 149.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 322.
^^a ^bBlack, p. 150.
^United Press International."Movie Critic asks Film Czar to Quit".The Pittsburgh Press.July 7, 1934. Retrieved October 21, 2010.
^Associated Press."Church Critics of Movies Call for Ousting of Will Hays".Gettysburg Times.July 10, 1934. Retrieved October 21, 2010.
^Jowett, Jarvie, and Fuller, p. xvi.
^See Jowett, Jarvie and Fuller, p. 92. Frequently this number is mistakenly given as nine; nine were announced, but only eight were ever released.
^Jacobs, p. 107.
^Massey, p. 75.
^Lewis, p. 133.
^Massey, p. 29.
^Jowett, Jarvie, and Fuller, p. 5.
^Doherty, p. 323.
^Saettler, p. 229.
^Massey, pp. 29–30.
*Jowett, Jarvie, and Fuller, pp. 94–95.
^^a ^bJacobs, p. 106.
^Black, p. 154.
^Black, p. 18.
^Richard Corlissessay reprinted in Schatz, p. 144.
^Butters Jr, p. 191.
^Doherty, pp. 321, 324–325.
Corliss essay in Schatz, p. 149.
^Doherty, pp. 8, 9.
^Butters Jr, p. 190.
Jeff & Simmmons, p. 55.
Ross, p. 270.
^Jacobs, p. 109.
^Smith, p. 60.
^LaSalle (1999), p. 192.
^Black, p. 39.
^Doherty. p. 98. *For more discussion of Breen's antisemitism, see Doherty (2009), chapter 10, in the "Further reading" section.
^Doherty, p. 9.
^^a ^bLaSalle, p. 201.
^Doherty, pp. 324–325.
^^a ^bKehr, Dave (March 11, 2008)."Critic's Choice – New DVDs: Forbidden Hollywood".The New York Times.Retrieved September 20, 2011.
^Heins, Marjorie."The Miracle:Film Censorship and the Entanglement of Church and State ".fepproject.org. Retrieved October 4, 2010.
^^a ^b ^cDoherty, p. 11.
^Doherty, p. 10.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 333.
^Doherty, pp. 328–30.
^Doherty, p. 331.
^Doherty, p. 329.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 334.
^United Press."Will Hays Confers with Film Leaders".Berkeley Daily Gazette.July 10, 1934. Retrieved October 20, 2010.
^"Stir in Hollywood".Evening Post.July 21, 1934. Retrieved October 20, 2010.
^Corliss essay in Schatz, p. 151.
^Doherty, p. 336.
^^a ^bDoherty, p. 339.
^Doherty, p. 335.
^Gardner (1988), pp. 114–116, 118–120.
^Doherty, pp. 341–342.
^Vieira, p. 6.
^Vieira, pp. 211–212, 230.
^"Where is Convention City hiding?".ArchivedApril 10, 2015, at theWayback Machine.chiseler.org. Retrieved August 9, 2015.
^^a ^bLeff, Leonard J.; Simmons, Jerold L. (2001).The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code.University Press of Kentucky.ISBN 0813190118.
^"Hays Scores Propaganda On Screens".The Pittsburgh Press.March 30, 1938.RetrievedFebruary 1,2013.
^"Eric Johnston to Rule Movies".The Spokesman-Review.September 20, 1945.RetrievedFebruary 19,2013.
^"Motion Picture Code Made 'More Flexible'".Eugene Register Guard.December 17, 1956.RetrievedApril 12,2013.
^"Eric Johnston Dies at 66".St. Petersburg Times.August 23, 1963.RetrievedApril 12,2013.
^Clabaugh, Jeff (July 1, 2004)."Valenti retires, Glickman named Hollywood's Washington man".Washington Business Journal.RetrievedApril 2,2013.
^^a ^bValenti, Jack (2007).This Time, This Place.New York: Three Rivers Press. pp. 302–306.ISBN 9780307346650.
^"Film Ratings System Adopted By Industry".St. Petersburg Times.October 8, 1968.RetrievedMarch 12,2013.
^"G is for Golden: The MPAA Film Ratings at 50"Motion Picture Association
^LaSalle, Mick (July 10, 2009)."Bruce Goldstein IntroducesThe Tingler".sfgate.com. Retrieved October 17, 2010.^{[dead link]}
^LaSalle, Mick (December 21, 2008)."A Gift Idea – An Interview With Rialto's Bruce Goldstein".sfgate.com. Retrieved October 17, 2010.^{[dead link]}
^Turan, Kenneth (January 27, 2008)."Back when Hollywood played it fast and sassy".Los Angeles Times.Retrieved December 28, 2010.
^"Pre-Code Hollywood: The Forgotten Genre".The Huffington Post.May 19, 2014.RetrievedApril 18,2017.
^"Hollywood behaving badly: the outrageous films of the early-talkie era".The Telegraph.April 25, 2014.Archivedfrom the original on January 11, 2022.RetrievedApril 18,2017.
^Nichols, Peter M (March 24, 1991)."Home Entertainments/Video: Fast Forward; Rent Now, Buy Later".The New York Times.Retrieved September 20, 2011.
^James, Caryn (May 30, 1993)."Movies Used to Be Really Good by Being Bad".The New York Times.Retrieved September 20, 2011.
^Kehr, Dave (December 19, 2006)."Hollywood Treasures, Boxed, Tinned and Ready for Viewers".The New York Times.Retrieved September 20, 2011.
^Kehr, Dave (March 20, 2009)."On the William Wellman Depression Express".The New York Times.Retrieved September 20, 2011.
^Laz."Forbidden Hollywood Collection: Volume 6".Shop.warnerarchive.com.Archived fromthe originalon May 8, 2013.RetrievedJune 27,2013.
^"Forbidden Hollywood Collection: Volume 7 DVD".TCM Shop. Archived fromthe originalon December 19, 2014.RetrievedSeptember 6,2014.
^"Forbidden Hollywood Collection: Volume 8 DVD".TCM Shop. Archived fromthe originalon December 19, 2014.RetrievedDecember 6,2014.
^"Forbidden Hollywood Volume 9 DVD".TCM Shop. Archived fromthe originalon November 14, 2015.RetrievedOctober 31,2015.
^"Forbidden Hollywood Collection: Volume 10 DVD".TCM Shop.RetrievedSeptember 7,2016.

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Leitch, Thomas.Crime Films.Cambridge University Press2004;ISBN 0-511-04028-8.
Lewis, Jen.Hollywood V. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the Modern Film Industry.NYU Press 2002;ISBN 0-8147-5142-3.
Lim, Shirley Jennifer. "I Protest: Anna May Wong and the Performance of Modernity, (Chapter title)" A Feeling of Belonging: Asian American Women's Public Culture, 1930–1960. New York: New York University Press, 2005, pp. 104–175.ISBN 0-8147-5193-8.
Massey, Anne.Hollywood Beyond the Screen: Design and Material Culture.Berg Publishers 2000;ISBN 1-85973-316-6.
McElvaine, Robert S. (editor in chief)Encyclopedia of The Great Depression Volume 1 (A–K).Macmillan Reference USA2004;ISBN 0-02-865687-3.
McElvaine, Robert S. (editor in chief)Encyclopedia of The Great Depression Volume 2 (L–Z).Macmillan Reference USA 2004;ISBN 0-02-865688-1.
Parkinson, David.History of Film.Thames & Hudson 1996;ISBN 0-500-20277-X.
Prince, Stephen (2003).Classical Film Violence: Designing and Regulating Brutality in Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1968.Rutgers University Press.ISBN 0-8135-3281-7..
Ross, Stephen J. "The Seen, The Unseen, and The Obscene: Pre-Code Hollywood".Reviews in American History.The Johns Hopkins University Press June 2000^{[ISBN missing]}
Schatz, Thomas.Hollywood: Social dimensions: technology, regulation and the audience.Taylor & Francis 2004;ISBN 0-415-28134-2.
Shadoian, Jack.Dreams & dead ends: the American gangster film.Oxford University Press 2003;ISBN 0-19-514291-8.
Siegel, Scott; Siegel, Barbara (2004).The Encyclopedia of Hollywood(2nd ed.). Checkmark Books.ISBN 0-8160-4622-0..
Smith, Sarah (2005).Children, Cinema and Censorship: From Dracula to the Dead End Kids.Wiley-Blackwell.ISBN 1-4051-2027-4..
Snyder, R. E.; Doherty, T. (2000). "Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934".The Journal of American History.87(3): 1085.doi:10.2307/2675386.JSTOR 2675386.
Turan, Kenneth (2004).Never Coming to a Theater Near You: A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Movie.Public Affairs.ISBN 1-58648-231-9..
Vasey, Ruth.The world according to Hollywood, 1918–1939.University of Wisconsin Press 1997;ISBN 0-299-15194-8.
Vieira, Mark A.Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood.New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1999;ISBN 0-8109-8228-5.

Further reading

Doherty, Thomas Patrick.Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration.New York: Columbia University Press 2009;ISBN 0-231-14358-3.

External links

Pre-Code.Com– Covering All of Pre-Code Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1934
The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930at artsreformation.com
Pre-Code Filmfrom Bright Lights Film Journal
Sexual Classic Filmsat Filmsite.org
Pre-Code Filmat the UCLA Film & Television Archive
Let's Misbehave: A Tribute to Precode Hollywood
9 Outrageous and Uncensored Pre-code Horror Films You Should See Nowat blumhouse.com
Josephs, Jack(February 14, 1931)."PARENT-TEACHERS PLAN DRIVE ON SEX PICTURES".Inside Facts of Stage and Screen.No. v13 #6. Hollywood, CA: Inside Facts Publishing Company.RetrievedJuly 21,2023– viaarchive.org.

[1] "Women in Pre-Code Film".Women's Media Center.

[bfi/deep-focus/pre-code-hollywood-2] "Pre-Code: Hollywood before the censors | Sight & Sound".British Film Institute.Archived fromthe originalon January 27, 2021.

[FOOTNOTETuran2004371-3] Turan 2004,p. 371.

[FOOTNOTESiegelSiegel2004190-4] Siegel & Siegel 2004,p. 190.

[ah-5] ^^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^gYagoda, Ben."Hollywood Cleans Up Its Act: The curious career of the Hays Office".American Heritage.February/March 1980.RetrievedOctober 11,2012.

[FOOTNOTEGardner200592-6] Gardner 2005,p. 92.

[7] "Inflation Calculator".DaveManuel.com.RetrievedOctober 30,2015.

[FOOTNOTEDoherty19996-8] Doherty 1999,p. 6.

[FOOTNOTEPrince200320-9] Prince 2003,p. 20.

[10] Jowett, essay in Bernstein, p. 16.

[FOOTNOTEButters,_Jr.2007149-11] Butters, Jr. 2007,p. 149.

[FOOTNOTESmith200538-12] Smith 2005,p. 38.

[FOOTNOTEJacobs1997108-13] Jacobs 1997,p. 108.

[FOOTNOTEPrince200321-14] Prince 2003,p. 21.

[LaSalle-15] LaSalle, Mick(June 18, 2009)."Pre-Code Hollywood".GreenCine.com.Archived fromthe originalon June 18, 2009.RetrievedOctober 4,2010.

[FOOTNOTEDoherty19998-16] Doherty 1999,p. 8.

[FOOTNOTEDoherty19997-17] Doherty 1999,p. 7.

[FOOTNOTEDoherty199911-18] Doherty 1999,p. 11.

[FOOTNOTEButters,_Jr.2007188-19] Butters, Jr. 2007,p. 188.

[FOOTNOTEBlack199643-20] Black 1996,p. 43.

[FOOTNOTEDoherty1999107-21] Doherty 1999,p. 107.

[FOOTNOTEBlack199644-22] Black 1996,p. 44.

[FOOTNOTEBlack199651-23] Black 1996,p. 51.

[FOOTNOTEBlack199650–51-24] Black 1996,pp. 50–51.

[FOOTNOTEJacobs199727-25] Jacobs 1997,p. 27.

[FOOTNOTEBlack199652-26] Black 1996,p. 52.

[FOOTNOTEBlack199644–45-27] Black 1996,pp. 44–45.

[FOOTNOTEBlack199645-28] Black 1996,p. 45.

[FOOTNOTEDoherty1999111–112-29] Doherty 1999,pp. 111–112.

[BG218-30] Benshoff & Griffin, p. 218.

[La1-31] LaSalle (2002), p. 1.

[32] Doherty, p. 2.

[FOOTNOTEBlack199630-33] Black 1996,p. 30.

[34] Butters Jr, p. 148.

[35] LaSalle (1999), p. 62.

[36] Vieira, pp. 7–8.

[but-37] Butters Jr, p. 187.

[38] Vieira, p. 8.

[Pr30-39] Prince, p. 31.

[Bu-40] Butters Jr, p. 189.

[SS379-41] Siegel & Siegel, p. 379.

[42] Black, pp. 27–29.
Parkinson, p. 42.

[43] Jeff & Simmons, p. 6.

[44] Black, p. 27.

[DH16-45] Doherty, p. 16.

[46] Doherty, pp. 24–26.

[47] Doherty, pp. 16–17.

[48] Doherty, p. 20.

[49] Doherty, p. 22.

[50] Doherty, pp. 22–23.

[DH23-51] Doherty, p. 23.

[52] Doherty, pp. 26–27.

[FOOTNOTETuran2004375-53] Turan 2004,p. 375.

[54] McElvaine (vol 1), p. 311.

[DH40-55] Doherty, p. 40.

[DH17-56] Doherty, p. 17.

[57] Doherty, p. 18.
McElvaine (Vol 1), p. 448.

[DH34-58] Doherty, p. 34.

[DH36-59] Doherty, p. 36.

[60] Doherty, pp. 36–37.

[61] Doherty, pp. 41–44.

[62] Doherty, p. 45.

[DH46-63] Doherty, p. 46.

[DH49-64] Doherty, p. 49.

[65] LaSalle (2002), p. 148.

[FOOTNOTETuran2004370-66] Turan 2004,p. 370.

[67] Rosenbaum, Jonathan.Employees' Entrancereview.Chicago Reader.Retrieved October 7, 2010.

[68] Doherty, p. 71.

[FOOTNOTETuran2004374-69] Turan 2004,p. 374.

[DH54-70] Doherty, p. 54.

[DH79-71] Doherty, p. 79.

[DH50-72] Doherty, p. 50.

[73] Doherty, pp. 50–51.

[DH51-74] Doherty, p. 51.

[DH59-75] Doherty, p. 59.

[76] Kehr, Dave(July 14, 2002)."The Nation; Seeing Business Through Hollywood's Lens"'The New York Times.Retrieved April 3, 2022.

[77] Hall, Mourdant(August 5, 1932)."Skyscraper Souls(1932) – A Banker's Ambition ".The New York Times.Retrieved October 9, 2010.

[78] LaSalle (2002), p. 150.

[DH60-79] Doherty, p. 60.

[DH56-80] Doherty, p. 56.

[81] Doherty, pp. 57–58.

[DH63-82] Doherty, p. 63.

[83] Doherty, p. 64.

[DH65-84] Doherty, p. 65.

[85] Monahan, Kaspar (September 16, 1933)."High Schoolers Smash Rule Of Gangland – Save City From Mobsters In DeMille Film At Penn".The Pittsburgh Press.Retrieved October 9, 2010.

[86] Doherty, p. 66.

[87] Black, p. 137.

[DH735-88] Doherty, pp. 73–75.

[89] Hall, Mordaunt (April 1, 1933).Gabriel Over the White Housereview.The New York Times.Retrieved October 20, 2010.

[90] Doherty, p. 76.

[DH77-91] Doherty, p. 77.

[92] Doherty, p. 85.

[93] Doherty, p. 89.

[94] Doherty, p. 92.

[95] Doherty, p. 75.
Black, p. 144.

[96] Doherty, p. 97.

[97] Doherty, pp. 98–99.

[98] Doherty, pp. 100–101.

[99] Doherty, p. 101.

[100] "Charges Nazis Here Using Threats to Halt Production of" mad Dog of Europe "".Jewish Telegraphic Agency.October 23, 1933.RetrievedJune 27,2013.

[101] Schuessler, Jennifer (June 26, 2013)."Scholar asserts that Hollywood avidly aided Nazis".The New York Times.Retrieved December 11, 2016.

[SS165-102] Siegel & Siegel, p. 165.

[103] Shadoian, p. 29.

[104] Leitch, p. 22.

[105] Kehr, Dave.Underworld(film) review.Chicago Reader.Retrieved October 11, 2010.

[106] Leitch, p. 23.

[107] Hughes, p. xii.

[108] Prince, p. 23.

[109] Prince, pp. 23–28.

[DH139-110] Doherty, p. 139.

[111] Doherty, p. 140.

[112] Doherty, p. 137.

[113] Doherty, p. 142.

[114] Doherty, pp. 137–138.

[115] Siegel & Siegel, p. 359.

[116] Black, p. 110.

[117] Leitch, p. 24.

[118] Dirks, Tim.Little Caesarprofile.filmsite.org. Retrieved October 15, 2010.

[119] Black, p. 115.

[Vi31-120] Vieira, p. 33.

[tpedirk-121] Dirk, Tim.The Public Enemyreview.filmsite.org. Retrieved October 15, 2010.

[DH150-122] Doherty, p. 150.

[Bl123-123] Black, p. 123.

[Sm51-124] Smith, p. 51.

[DH148-125] Doherty, p. 148.

[126] Ebert, Roger.ofScarface^{[permanent dead link]},The Chicago Sun-Times,December 9, 1983.
Scarfacereview.Variety.December 31, 1931. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
Wood, Bret.Scarfacereview.tcm.com. Retrieved November 1, 2010.

[127] Vieira, p. 69.

[Time-128] "Cinema: The New Pictures".Time.April 18, 1932. Retrieved October 15, 2010.

[129] Corliss essay in Schatz, p. 159.

[130] Black, p. 131.

[131] Doherty, pp. 149–150.

[CR-132] Kehr, Dave.Scarfacereview.Chicago Reader.Retrieved October 15, 2010.

[Film4-133] Little Caesarreview.Film4.com. Retrieved October 14, 2010.

[134] Doherty, p. 151.

[135] Black, p. 109.

[DH153-136] Doherty, p. 153.

[DH158-137] Doherty, p. 158.

[138] Doherty, p. 159

[139] Doherty. pp. 159–160.

[140] Druker, Don."The Big House".Chicago Reader.Retrieved October 17, 2010.

[141] Doherty, p. 160.

[Doherty._p._170-142] Doherty, p. 170.

[143] Black, pp. 158–159.

[144] Doherty, p. 169.

[145] Wollstein, Hans J."REVIEW:Hell's Highway".The New York Times.Retrieved October 17, 2010.

[146] Doherty, p. 163.

[147] Niemi, p. 381.

[148] LeRoy, Mervyn.I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang(1932) United States: Warner Bros.

[149] Doherty, p. 164.

[150] Doherty, p. 166.

[151] Doherty, p. 162.

[tcm-152] "REVIEW:Laughter in Hell".tcm.com. Retrieved October 12, 2010.

[DH167-153] Doherty, p. 167.

[154] King, Susan (October 4, 2012)."Bernardo Bertolucci feted at the American Cinematheque".Los Angeles Times.RetrievedJuly 19,2014.

[155] Doherty, p. 280.

[156] Fristoe, Roger."Safe in Hell".tcm.com. Retrieved October 11, 2010.

[157] Vasey, p. 114.

[DH103-158] Doherty, p. 103.

[DH104-159] Doherty, p. 104.

[Vi130-160] Vieira, p. 130.

[161] Doherty, pp. 107–110.

[Sm56-162] Smith, p. 56.

[163] Doherty, pp. 110–111.

[164] Doherty, p. 110.

[DH111-165] Doherty, p. 111.

[166] Doherty, pp. 107, 110–112.

[167] Doherty, pp. 112–113.

[168] Reprinted in Jacobs, p. 10: "Most arts appeal to the mature. This art appeals at once to every class, mature, immature, developed, underdeveloped, law abiding, criminal. Music has its grades for different classes; so has literature and drama. This art of the motion picture, combining as its does the two fundamental appeals of looking at a picture and listening to a story, at once reached [sic] every class of society. [Thus] it is difficult to produce films intended for only certain classes of people.... Films, unlike books and music, can with difficulty be confined to certain selected groups "

[169] Doherty, pp. 106–107.
Massey, p. 71.

[170] Doherty, p. 126.

[171] Doherty, p. 127.

[Vi118-172] Vieira, p. 118.

[DH113-173] Doherty, p. 113.

[174] Doherty, pp. 113–114.

[DH114-175] Doherty, p. 114.

[176] McElvaine (Vol 2), p. 1055.

[177] McElvaine (Vol 1), pp. 310–311.

[178] LaSalle M. (2000).Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood.New York: St. Martin's Press, p. 12.ISBN 0-312-25207-2

[179] Doherty, pp. 117–118.

[180] Black, Gregory D.Hollywood Censored,Cambridge University Press,1994.

[181] 
Doherty, p. 128.

Profile:Christopher Strong

ArchivedOctober 17, 2012, at theWayback Machine.timeout.com. Retrieved November 11, 2010.

[182] Doherty, p. 128.

[183] Profile:Christopher Strong

[184] ArchivedOctober 17, 2012, at theWayback Machine.timeout.com. Retrieved November 11, 2010.

[182] Doherty, pp. 124–125.

[DH131-183] Doherty, p. 131.

[DH132-184] Doherty, p. 132.

[185] LaSalle (1999), p. 127.

[186] LaSalle, Mick (February 3, 2006)."'Baby Face' now better (and racier) than ever before".San Francisco Chronicle.Retrieved October 11, 2010.

[187] Burr, Ty (April 7, 2006)."Uncut version of 'Baby Face' is naughty but nice".The Boston Globe.Retrieved October 11, 2010.

[188] Hall, Mordaunt (June 24, 1933)."Baby Face(1933) – A Woman's Wiles ".The New York Times.Retrieved October 11, 2010.

[189] Doherty, p. 277.

[190] LaSalle (1999), p. 130.

[191] Doherty, p. 130.

[192] Hanke, Ken (November 20, 2007)."Red-Headed Woman".Mountain Xpress.Retrieved October 11, 2010.

[193] Schwartz, Dennis (January 2, 2007)."REVIEW:Red-Headed Woman".ArchivedNovember 26, 2010, at theWayback Machine.Retrieved October 11, 2010.

[Sm53-194] Smith, p. 53.

[195] Variety (1932).Variety (December 1932).Media History Digital Library. New York, NY: Variety Publishing Company.

[D2335-196] Doherty, pp. 233-235.

[Vi1323-197] Vieira, pp. 132–133.

[198] Doherty, p. 121.

[199] Doherty, p. 122.

[Vi133-200] Vieira, p. 133.

[201] Jacobs, p. 3.

[202] Doherty, p. 123.
Siegel & Siegel, p. 124.

[203] Doherty, p. 125.

[204] Doherty, pp. 172–175.

[DH176-205] Doherty, p. 176.

[206] Doherty, pp. 177–178.
Bogle, p. 42.

[DH181-207] Doherty, p. 181.

[DH179-208] Doherty, p. 179.

[DH182-209] Doherty, p. 182.

[DH183-210] Doherty, p. 183.

[211] Doherty, pp. 182–183.

[Sm55-212] Smith, p. 55.

[West-213] McElvaine (vol 2), p. 1039.

[Vi112-214] Vieira, p. 112.

[215] LaSalle (2000), p. 118.

[SS457-216] Siegel & Siegel, p. 457.

[217] Hughes, p. 9.

[218] Doherty, p. 186.

[219] Doherty, p. 187.

[220] Doherty, p. 188.

[221] Maltin, Leonard.Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated CartoonsRevised edition. 1987, pp. 105–106.

[lasalle-222] LaSalle, Mike (2014)Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code HollywoodNew York: MacMillan. p. 158ISBN 9781466876972

[223] Haskell, Molly(1987)From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies(2nd ed.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 146.ISBN 0-226-31885-0

[Anytime-224] Clip of first reference to Ginger Rogers' character as "Anytime Annie",a pre-Code element in42nd Street(1933 film) on YouTube

[Sm57-225] Smith, p. 57.

[226] Berenstein, pp. 2, 14.

[DH297-227] Doherty, p. 297.

[228] Doherty, p. 303.

[229] Gardner (1988), p. 66.

[230] Teresi, Dick (September 13, 1988)."Are You Mad, Doctor?".The New York Times.Retrieved November 24, 2010.

[231] Doherty, pp. 296, 299, 308.

[232] Doherty, p. 298.

[233] Vieira, pp. 42–43.

[Vi43-234] Vieira, p. 43.

[DH305-235] Doherty, p. 305.

[236] Review:Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.TV Guide.Retrieved April 3, 2022.

[237] Doherty, pp. 303–304.

[238] Vieira, p. 49.

[239] Doherty, pp. 305–307.

[DH313-240] Doherty, p. 313.

[241] Doherty, pp. 315–317.

[242] Matthews, Melvin E Jr. (2009).Fear Itself: Horror on Screen and in Reality During the Depression and World War II.Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 53.ISBN 978-0-786-44313-0.

[243] Butters, p. 206.

[244] Doherty, pp. 317–18.

[245] Phipps, Keith (August 16, 2004).Review of the filmFreaksprofile.avclub.com. Retrieved November 26, 2010.

[246] Doherty, p. 318.

[247] Vieira, p. 147.

[248] Doherty, pp. 308–311.

[Vi132-249] Vieira, p. 132.

[250] Hanke, Ken (August 24, 2010)."REVIEW:Island of Lost Souls/White Zombie".Mountain Xpress.Retrieved November 26, 2010.

[DH255-251] Doherty, p. 255.

[DH254-252] Doherty, pg. 254.

[253] Doherty, pp. 255–256.

[254] Sex in Cinema,AMC filmsite

[255] Bird of Paradise(1932 film) review.dawnsdeloresdelrio.blogspot.com. Retrieved June 23, 2014.

[256] Doherty, p. 257.
Hall, Mourdant (February 28, 1932)."Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932)".The New York Times.Retrieved December 15, 2010.

[Tarz-257] Van Dyke, W.S.Tarzan, the Ape Man(1932) Hollywood: MGM

[258] Doherty, p. 259.

[259] Tarzan and His Matereviews.film4.com. Retrieved December 15, 2010.

[Tarz2-260] Gibbons, Cedric.Tarzan and His Mate(1934). Hollywood: MGM
Tarzan and His Mate.Variety.December 31, 1933. Retrieved December 15, 2010.
Doherty, p. 260.

[261] Doherty, pp. 260–261.
Vieira, pp. 179–80.

[262] Doherty, p. 262.

[263] Doherty, p. 263.

[264] Doherty, p. 266.

[265] Doherty, p. 268.

[Yunte,_p._144-266] Yunte, p. 144.

[267] Lim 2005, p. 58.

[fu-268] Brabin, Charles.The Mask of Fu Manchu(1932). United States: MGM.

[269] Doherty, pp. 269–270.

[270] Vieira, p. 88.

[271] Doherty, pp. 270–274.

[272] Doherty, pp. 197, 212.

[273] Doherty, pp. 174–175, 198.

[274] Doherty, pp. 200–202.

[275] Doherty, p. 200.

[276] Doherty, p. 212.

[Gill-277] Gill, Barbara."Lindbergh kidnapping rocked the world 50 years ago".ArchivedMarch 3, 2016, at theWayback Machine.The Hunterdon County Democrat.1981. Retrieved October 29, 2010.

[278] Doherty, pp. 218–219.

[DH220-279] Doherty, p. 220.

[280] Doherty, p. 199.

[281] Doherty, pp. 203–204.

[DH7785-282] Doherty, pp. 81–82.

[283] Doherty, pp. 208, 213–215.

[284] Doherty, p. 84.

[285] Doherty, pp. 204–205.

[286] Doherty, pp. 223, 225–227.

[287] Doherty, pp. 227–228, 246.

[288] Doherty, pp. 236, 241.

[289] Doherty, p. 243.

[DH222-290] Doherty, p. 222.

[Hollywood-291] Lewis (2000),pp. 301–302

[292] LaSalle (2002), p. xii.

[293] Doherty, pp. 320–321.

[TM-294] "Religion: Legion of Decency".Time.June 11, 1934. Retrieved October 21, 2010.

[295] Jowett, Jarvie, and Fuller, p. 93.

[Bl149-296] Black, p. 149.

[DH322-297] Doherty, p. 322.

[Bl150-298] Black, p. 150.

[299] United Press International."Movie Critic asks Film Czar to Quit".The Pittsburgh Press.July 7, 1934. Retrieved October 21, 2010.

[300] Associated Press."Church Critics of Movies Call for Ousting of Will Hays".Gettysburg Times.July 10, 1934. Retrieved October 21, 2010.

[301] Jowett, Jarvie, and Fuller, p. xvi.

[302] See Jowett, Jarvie and Fuller, p. 92. Frequently this number is mistakenly given as nine; nine were announced, but only eight were ever released.

[Jc107-303] Jacobs, p. 107.

[304] Massey, p. 75.

[305] Lewis, p. 133.

[MS29-306] Massey, p. 29.

[307] Jowett, Jarvie, and Fuller, p. 5.

[308] Doherty, p. 323.

[309] Saettler, p. 229.

[310] Massey, pp. 29–30.
*Jowett, Jarvie, and Fuller, pp. 94–95.

[Ja106-311] Jacobs, p. 106.

[312] Black, p. 154.

[313] Black, p. 18.

[314] Richard Corlissessay reprinted in Schatz, p. 144.

[315] Butters Jr, p. 191.

[316] Doherty, pp. 321, 324–325.
Corliss essay in Schatz, p. 149.

[317] Doherty, pp. 8, 9.

[318] Butters Jr, p. 190.
Jeff & Simmmons, p. 55.
Ross, p. 270.

[319] Jacobs, p. 109.

[320] Smith, p. 60.

[321] LaSalle (1999), p. 192.

[322] Black, p. 39.

[DH98-323] Doherty. p. 98. *For more discussion of Breen's antisemitism, see Doherty (2009), chapter 10, in the "Further reading" section.

[324] Doherty, p. 9.

[La201-325] LaSalle, p. 201.

[326] Doherty, pp. 324–325.

[vol2-327] Kehr, Dave (March 11, 2008)."Critic's Choice – New DVDs: Forbidden Hollywood".The New York Times.Retrieved September 20, 2011.

[328] Heins, Marjorie."The Miracle:Film Censorship and the Entanglement of Church and State ".fepproject.org. Retrieved October 4, 2010.

[DH11-329] Doherty, p. 11.

[330] Doherty, p. 10.

[DH333-331] Doherty, p. 333.

[332] Doherty, pp. 328–30.

[333] Doherty, p. 331.

[334] Doherty, p. 329.

[DH334-335] Doherty, p. 334.

[336] United Press."Will Hays Confers with Film Leaders".Berkeley Daily Gazette.July 10, 1934. Retrieved October 20, 2010.

[337] "Stir in Hollywood".Evening Post.July 21, 1934. Retrieved October 20, 2010.

[338] Corliss essay in Schatz, p. 151.

[339] Doherty, p. 336.

[DH339-340] Doherty, p. 339.

[DH335-341] Doherty, p. 335.

[342] Gardner (1988), pp. 114–116, 118–120.

[343] Doherty, pp. 341–342.

[344] Vieira, p. 6.

[345] Vieira, pp. 211–212, 230.

[346] "Where is Convention City hiding?".ArchivedApril 10, 2015, at theWayback Machine.chiseler.org. Retrieved August 9, 2015.

[Kimono-347] Leff, Leonard J.; Simmons, Jerold L. (2001).The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code.University Press of Kentucky.ISBN 0813190118.

[PittPress38-348] "Hays Scores Propaganda On Screens".The Pittsburgh Press.March 30, 1938.RetrievedFebruary 1,2013.

[SpokesReview45-349] "Eric Johnston to Rule Movies".The Spokesman-Review.September 20, 1945.RetrievedFebruary 19,2013.

[RG56-350] "Motion Picture Code Made 'More Flexible'".Eugene Register Guard.December 17, 1956.RetrievedApril 12,2013.

[Petersburg63-351] "Eric Johnston Dies at 66".St. Petersburg Times.August 23, 1963.RetrievedApril 12,2013.

[Clabaugh04-352] Clabaugh, Jeff (July 1, 2004)."Valenti retires, Glickman named Hollywood's Washington man".Washington Business Journal.RetrievedApril 2,2013.

[Valenti07-353] Valenti, Jack (2007).This Time, This Place.New York: Three Rivers Press. pp. 302–306.ISBN 9780307346650.

[StPete68-354] "Film Ratings System Adopted By Industry".St. Petersburg Times.October 8, 1968.RetrievedMarch 12,2013.

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