Pre-Code Hollywood
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Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry prior to the enforcement of the Hays Code as of July 31, 1934. Until that date, the United States Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 was widely ignored.
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[edit] History
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This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources (ideally, using inline citations). Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2009) |
The original code was written by a Jesuit priest, Father Daniel A. Lord, and officially adopted in 1930. It was ignored because many found such censorship prudish, due to the libertine social attitudes of the 1920s and early 1930s. This was a period in which the Victorian era was looked upon as being naïve and backward and was constantly ridiculed as such.
Films in the late 1920s and early 30s reflected the liberal attitudes of the day and could include sexual innuendos, references to homosexuality, miscegenation, illegal drug use, infidelity, abortion, and profane language (such as the word "damn") as well as women in their undergarments.
Popular character roles include tough-talking, assertive women, gangsters, and prostitutes.
Of particular note were both the references to sexual promiscuity, drug use, bloody gangster life, and morally ambiguous endings, which drew the ire from various religious groups – some Protestant, but overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.
In particular, Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, apostolic delegate to the Catholic Church in the U.S. called upon American Catholics to unite against the surging immorality of the cinema. As a result, many religious groups created their own leagues, such as the Catholic Legion of Decency (eventually renamed to the "National Legion of Decency") in 1933, premised around controlling and enforcing decency standards in theatres, and boycotting movies which they deemed offensive. Conservative Protestants tended to support much of the crackdown on "immorality", particularly in the South, which had its own form of censorship. By 1939 "Even black bellboys were routinely cut out of films shown in the South; from the evidence of Hollywood pictures of the 1930s, one might not suspect that black people existed in America".[1] Anything relating to the state of race relations in the South or miscegenation could never be exhibited below the Mason-Dixon line.
By 1934, theatre revenues were slumping (likely, in part, due to the Depression) and those in the film industry were unhappy with the prospect of losing even more of their audience, particularly in heavily Catholic cities (New York, Boston, Chicago, etc).
Thus, the pre-Code era effectively came to a close with the establishment of a special bureau (eventually christened The Breen Office, after Joseph Ignatius Breen, a former public relations executive), whose purpose was to review scripts and finished prints in order to ensure that they adhered to the new Code.
This effectively spelled the end of the pre-Code era, and shaped the trends in American film-making during the ensuing years. Enforcement of the code popularized several new trends, such as plots about headstrong, able, employed women (like Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Arthur, and Joan Crawford).
[edit] Censorship
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As censors like Martin Quigley and Joe Breen understood "a private industry code, strictly enforced, is more effective than government censorship as a means of imposing religious dogma. It is secret, for one thing, operating at the pre-production stage. The audience never knows what has been trimmed, cut, revised, or never written. For another, it is uniform — not subject to hundreds of different licensing standards. Finally and most important, private censorship can be more sweeping in its demands, because it is not bound by constitutional due process or free-expression rules — in general, these apply to only the government — or by the command of church-state separation ... there is no question that American cinema today is far freer than in the heyday of the Code, when Joe Breen's blue pencil and the Legion of Decency's ever-present boycott threat combined to assure that films adhered to Roman Catholic Church doctrine".[2]
Many fans of Classical Hollywood cinema today prefer these pre-Code films for their audacious attitude toward conventional morality, and their presentation of more "mature" or risque themes generally not seen again in film until the collapse of the code system[who?].
Many pre-Code movies suffered irreparable damage from the censorship that followed from Breen Office after 1934. When studios attempted to re-issue films from the 1920s and early 1930s, they were forced to make extensive cuts. Many of these films (e.g. Love Me Tonight 1932, Animal Crackers 1930, Mata Hari 1931) currently exist in only these censored versions. In at least one case, an entire film (Convention City 1933) was destroyed because the Breen office refused to budge. In other cases, the studios remade films (such as The Maltese Falcon of 1931 which was remade in 1941) because the Breen office refused to allow them to be shown.
[edit] Popular pre-Code stars
[edit] Notable pre-Code films
[edit] 1929
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[edit] 1930
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[edit] 1931
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[edit] 1932
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[edit] 1933
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[edit] 1934
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[edit] DVD releases
Warner Bros. has started releasing their pre-code films on DVD under the Forbidden Hollywood line. Two volumes have been released, with the third forthcoming.
| Volume | Release date | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Volume 1 | December 5, 2006 | Baby Face (1933) Red-Headed Woman (1932) Waterloo Bridge (1931) |
| Volume 2 | March 4, 2008 | The Divorcee (1930) A Free Soul (1931) Three on a Match (1932) Female (1933) Night Nurse (1931) |
| Volume 3 | March 24, 2009 | Other Men's Women (1931) The Purchase Price (1932) Frisco Jenny (1932) Midnight Mary (1933) Heroes for Sale (1933) Wild Boys of the Road (1933) |
Universal followed suit with their own collection of pre-code films (to be released on April 7, 2009) entitled Pre-Code Hollywood Collection: Universal Backlot Series. This set contains the following: The Cheat (1931), Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), Hot Saturday (1932), Torch Singer (1933), Murder at the Vanities (1934), Search for Beauty (1934). Included in the box is a reproduction of the entire code. [3]
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- LaSalle, Mick (2000). Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-25207-2.
- LaSalle, Mick (2002). Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man. Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 0-312-28311-3.
- Vieira, Mark A. (2003). Sin in Soft Focus. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.. ISBN 0-8109-8228-5.
