Vieira - Forbidden Hollywood: the pre-code era (1930-1934): when sin ruled the movies

W hat is pre-Code? Pre-Code is not a film genre like the western or the musical. It is a retrospective discovery, like film noir or screwball comedy. Unlike noir or screwball, though, it lasted only a few years. When Mae West made She Done Him Wrong, she had no idea she was making a pre-Code movie. She thought she was making a movie about her favorite subject, sex. The pre-Code tag came later, when someone realized that these films shared a time, a place, and an attitude. But what does pre-Code mean, really? What was the Code? What was forbidden?

Pre-Code refers to the four-year period before the Production Code was strengthened and enforced. There had been a Code since 1930, but the studios negotiated with it, bypassed it, or just plain ignored it. The movies of this period make viewers exclaim, I didnt think they could say that in old movies! A collection of eye-opening films constitute pre-Code.

In 1929, the film industry had just made the transition from silent cinema to sound films. Talking pictures brought a new candor, but some people were put off by it. A consortium of clubwomen, churchmen, and politicians assailed the industry, decrying off-color dialogue, stories of seduction, and scantily clad actresses. Local censors could not cut talking pictures yet, because the Vitaphone process used a separate disk, rather than a soundtrack at the edge of the film. With no one to stop them, screenwriters made their dialogue spicier. Complaints increased to the point at which legislators stepped in, and federal censorship looked like a possibility. This would have meant the end of the studio system, so the industry agreed to self-regulation and drafted a list of guidelines. This code would prohibit violence, profanity, and illegal drugs; allusions to white slavery, miscegenation, or sexual perversion; nudity, provocative dancing, or lustful kissing; and suggestions of sexual congress, illicit or otherwise.

In March 1930, representatives of every studio signed the agreement. This Production Code should have kept forbidden elements off the screen, but the Great Depression arrived, emptying theaters. To lure patrons back, producers began to violate the agreement. Actresses flaunted their charms and flouted the Code. Sin and succeed! wrote Variety when reviewing a film in 1931. Three cheers for sin! wrote Liberty magazine when deriding the Code in 1933. By spring 1934, prohibited elements were no longer the issue. The character of the Hollywood film had changed. Films like Search for Beauty and The Scarlet Empress did not merely include suggestive scenes; these films were about sex. Their plots hinged on seduction. They showed naked women and even naked men. Though some of these films were exploitative, many of them were legitimate works of art. Hollywood was offering mature thought to an audience that was ready for itand supporting it.

James Gleason, Frederick Sullivan, Bert Roach, and Bradley Page enjoy pre-Code photos in Erle C. Kentons Search for Beauty.

In that same spring, a grassroots movement sprang up in the Midwest. Purify Hollywood or destroy Hollywood! was the war cry. Immoral movies were the targets. When protests and boycotts caused the box office to drop and bankers to withdraw support, the industry surrendered and let a tough censor named Joseph I. Breen reconstitute the Code. In July of that year, it became the law of the land, and there was a Production Code Administration to enforce it. This time the studios cooperated, allowing Breen to regulate film content. Pre-Code films should really be called pre-Breen.

These are the facts of pre-Code Hollywood. The story behind it is monumental, because it deals with a struggle for power. The stakes were high: the billion-dollar market for Americas sixth-largest industry. The market was mostly Protestant. The industry was mostly Jewish-run. Yet a Midwest Catholic minority gained control.

This is the story of Forbidden Hollywood. The images throughout these pages show why the conflict arose in the first place. Hollywoods attitude toward sex was counter to Catholic doctrine of the day, which taught that sex was for married people and should not be discussed or shown, least of all in a place as public as a movie theater. Theaters came to be viewed as incipient brothels, corrupting everyone who entered them. Even the posters displayed outside their lobbies were scandalous, tainting the environment. Children were thought to be imperiled. Catholics saw the soul of a nation in danger, and they acted.