Pre-Code Hollywood

[4] At the time of his hiring, he was president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA); he held the position for 25 years and "defended the industry from attacks, recited soothing nostrums, and negotiated treaties to cease hostilities".

[11] In 1929, Catholic layman Martin Quigley, editor of the prominent trade paper Motion Picture Herald, and Father Daniel A. Lord, a Jesuit priest, created a code of standards (of which Hays strongly approved)[12] and submitted it to the studios.

If children were supervised and the events implied elliptically, the code allowed what Brandeis University cultural historian Thomas Doherty called "the possibility of a cinematically inspired thought crime".

[52] Heroes for Sale was directed by prolific pre-Code director William Wellman and featured silent film star Richard Barthelmess as a World War I veteran cast onto the streets with a morphine addiction from his hospital stay.

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.Hays and others, such as Samuel Goldwyn, obviously felt that motion pictures presented a form of escapism that served a palliative effect on American moviegoers.

Employees' Entrance (1933) received the following 1985 review from Jonathan Rosenbaum: "As an attack on ruthless capitalism, it goes a lot further than more recent efforts such as Wall Street, and it's amazing how much plot and character are gracefully shoehorned into 75 minutes.

Filmed shortly after DeMille had completed a five-month tour of the Soviet Union, This Day and Age takes place in America and features several children torturing a gangster who got away with the murder of a popular local shopkeeper.

According to the Encyclopedia of Hollywood entry on Underworld, "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."

[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.

[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".

[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".

[131] Dave Kehr, writing in the Chicago Reader, stated that the film blends "comedy and horror in a manner that suggests Chico Marx let loose with a live machine gun".

[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.

"[148] Although based on reality, the Chain Gang film changes the original story slightly to appeal to Depression-era audiences by depicting the country as struggling economically, even though Burns returned during the Roaring Twenties era.

... Women love dirt, nothing shocks 'em.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.

[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 by Bela Lugosi in White Zombie (1932), the Frenchman who mastered the magical powers of a Bokor (voodoo sorcerer).

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.

Films such as Africa Speaks were directly marketed by referencing interracial sex; moviegoers received small packets labeled "Secrets", which contained pictures of naked black women.

[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.

[277][279] Although newsreels covered the most important topics of the day, they also presented human-interest stories (such as the immensely popular coverage of the Dionne quintuplets[279]) and entertainment news, at times in greater detail than more pressing political and social matters.

[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.

Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality.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.

[301] The Payne 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.

[315] By mid-1934, when Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia called for a Catholic boycott of all films, and Raymond Cannon was privately preparing a congressional bill supported by both Democrats and Republicans that would introduce Government oversight, the studios decided they had had enough.

[316] They re-organized the enforcement procedures giving Hays and the recently appointed Joseph I. Breen, a devout Roman Catholic, head of the new Production Code Administration (PCA), greater control over censorship.

In The Office Wife (1930), several of Joan 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".

[342] In the political realm, films such Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) in which James Stewart tries to change the American system from within while reaffirming its core values, stand in stark contrast to Gabriel Over the White House where a dictator is needed to cure America's woes.

[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.

[361][362] MGM/UA and Turner Classic Movies also released other pre-Code films such as The Divorcee, Doctor X, A Free Soul, Little Caesar, Mystery of the Wax Museum, Possessed, The Public Enemy, Red Dust (remade in 1953 as Mogambo), and Riptide under other labels.

In this 1931 publicity photo, Dorothy Mackaill plays a secretary-turned-prostitute in Safe in Hell , a pre-Code Warner Bros. film.
Pre-Code films such as The Public Enemy (1931) were able to feature criminal, anti-hero protagonists.
Will H. Hays was recruited by the studios in 1922 to help clean up their "Sin City" image after a series of scandals, especially the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle manslaughter trial. [ 4 ]
This 1932 promotional photo of Joan Blondell was later banned under the then-unenforceable Motion Picture Production Code .
Clara Bow lifts her skirt on the poster for the pre-Code film The Saturday Night Kid (1929). Skirt-lifting was one of many suggestive activities detested by Hays. [ 29 ]
Nils Asther kissing 15-year-old Loretta Young 's foot in a scene from the silent film Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928), before the introduction of the 1930 code.
Unemployed men in 1931. The Depression profoundly influenced pre-Code Hollywood both financially and artistically.
A crowd gathers around American Union Bank in New York City during a bank run early in the Great Depression. The mob mentality displayed in bank runs was portrayed in films like American Madness (1932), where Frank Capra depicted "the thin line between investor confidence and panic in Hoover's America". [ 55 ]
Warren William , described by Mick LaSalle as "one of the singular joys of the Pre-Code era", [ 65 ] played industrialist villains and other lowlife characters.
A famous scene from It Happened One Night , in which Claudette Colbert hitchhikes using an unorthodox method to attract a ride, after Clark Gable 's failure to get one with his thumb.
In the pre-Code film Gabriel Over the White House (1933), a U.S. President makes himself dictator – part of what the 1930s trade papers dubbed the "dictator craze".
Scenes showing guns pointed at the camera (as in this shot from The Great Train Robbery , 1903) were considered inappropriate by New York State censors in the 1920s, and usually removed.
The public's fascination with gangsters in the early 1930s was bolstered by the extensive news coverage of criminals like Al Capone and John Dillinger , upon whom were based such characters as Scarface , portrayed by Paul Muni (1932).
In Little Caesar (1931), Rico ( Edward G. Robinson ) confronts Joe ( Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ) for wanting to leave the gang.
The infamous "grapefruit scene" in The Public Enemy (1931), with James Cagney and Mae Clarke
Both Osgood Perkins and Paul Muni light a match for Karen Morley 's cigarette in the trailer for Scarface (1932). Morley chooses Muni's light, symbolically spurning her boyfriend for the fast-rising gangster.
I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (starring Paul Muni, 1932) was based on the autobiographical memoirs of Robert E. Burns , who was himself a fugitive when the film was released. The film proved to be a powerful catalyst for later criminal-justice and social reforms.
The titles of pre-Code films were often deliberately provocative. Though violent, Safe in Hell (1931) was a socially modern, thoughtful film. [ 155 ] [ 156 ]
Some objected to publicity photos such as this 1932 shot of Ina Claire posing seductively on a chaise lounge from The Greeks Had a Word for Them .
Jean Harlow (seen here on a 1935 Time cover) was propelled to stardom in pre-Code films such as Platinum Blonde , Red Dust , and Red-Headed Woman .
Kay Johnson in Madam Satan (1930), directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Marlene Dietrich 's open bisexuality caused an uproar. In 1933 her studio, Paramount, signed a largely ineffectual agreement not to depict women in men's clothes in their films. [ 182 ]
Mae West is some­times er­ro­ne­ous­ly called the reason for the Production Code. [ 201 ] Even under the Code she managed to wear an almost trans­par­ent dress in Go West, Young Man (1936).
Betty Boop in 1933 and 1939
Dancers rehearsing in abbreviated clothing in 42nd Street (1933) illustrates the allure of the backstage musical .
The " By a Waterfall " number from Busby Berkeley 's Footlight Parade (1933), which also highlighted James Cagney 's dancing talents
42nd Street (1933) made concessions to the Hays Code in its dialogue, but still featured sexualized imagery.
Harry Earles of The Doll Family and Olga Baclanova in the controversial Freaks (1932)
Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931). The monster's brutality shocked many moviegoers, as did the doctor's declaration that "Now I know what it feels like to be God!" By the time of Bride of Frankenstein (1935), the Code was in full effect. [ 229 ] [ 230 ]
In Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), the shadow of the ape's hand appears over head of Camille ( Sidney Fox ) as it enters her room. What follows has been dubbed "interspecies miscegenation" by film historian Thomas Doherty. [ 235 ]
Dolores del Río dances almost topless in Bird of Paradise (1932).
Tarzan and His Mate (1934)
Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (1932)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), one of the first American films to portray the horrors of World War I , received great praise from the public for its humanitarian, anti-war message.
The PCA seal of approval in the 1930s. The Seal appeared before every picture approved by the MPPDA.
Scenes such as this, in which a man is about to kiss a woman in bed in her nightgown ( Warren William and Ann Dvorak in 1932's Three on a Match ), were proscribed by the Production Code. After 1934, a scene such as this would not appear in a Hollywood film for decades.
Shirley Temple , a rising star in 1934, was advertised as "an attraction that will serve as an answer to many of the attacks that are being hurled at pictures". [ 331 ]
Leo Gorcey and James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
The sexually charged Baby Face (1933) starred Barbara Stanwyck , who "had it and made it pay". [ 53 ]