Pre-Code

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Clara Bow on the cover of Sin in Soft Focus, a book by Mark A. Vieira about pre-Code Hollywood.
Clara Bow on the cover of Sin in Soft Focus, a book by Mark A. Vieira about pre-Code Hollywood.

Pre-Code films were created before the Motion Picture Production Code or Hays Code was put into effect in mid-1934. Although an existing code of conduct for the film industry came into being in 1930, many ignored it and it was not enforced very enthusiastically.

The original code was written by a Jesuit priest, Father Daniel A. Lord, and officially adopted in 1930, but was effectively ignored because few in Hollywood saw any reason to adhere to it.

Consequently as the presence of sound in motion pictures rose, so grew the insertion to somewhat risque subjects; films in the early 1930s are very risque for the decade and could include sexual innuendos, references to homosexuality and illegal drug use, as well as women in their undergarments – which all were quite taboo at the time.

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 American Catholic Church called upon American Catholics to unite against the surging immorality of the cinema. As a result, many religious groups (overwhelmingly Roman Catholic) 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 hope to see the light of day below the Mason-Dixon line.

By 1934, theatre revenues were slumping (likely, in part, 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 dramatically shaped the trends in American film-making during the ensuing years. It should be mentioned that enforcement of the code popularized several new trends, such as Biblical epics (frequently directed by Cecil B. DeMille) and plots directed around headstrong, able, employed women (like Jean Arthur).

Contents

[edit] Censorship

Excerpt from The Free Expression Policy Project at the University of Virginia:

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 only apply to 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" (see [2] from The Free Expression Policy Project at the University of Virginia).

Many knowledgeable and discerning fans of Classical Hollywood cinema today, however, 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 altogether.

Many pre-Code movies suffered irreparable damage from the censorship that followed from Breen Office after 1935. 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, Blotto 1930) currently only exist in these censored versions. In at least one case, a film (Convention City 1933) was totally lost 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. Film from the pre-code period were routinely retitled (e.g. Bright Lights 1930) when they became available for television in the later 1960s so that they wouldn't be confused with later films which had been the only one available for viewing for a generation. Because it was not possible to view uncensored pre-Code films in the U.S. until the 1960s, the pre-Code films were virtually forgotten because movie fans only had access to films made in 1935 and after. This explains why pre-Code films have been so neglected until recent times and why even now they are seldom made available on video. A whole generation grew up knowing only the film classics made after the code and, for many, pre-code films have come as a refreshing surprise that reaches out to modern audiences who may feel that the films of the 1940s and 1950s are just too unrealistic and treacly.

The Code did not begin to weaken until the mid-1960s. By 1959, increasingly explicit films began to appear, such as Anatomy of a Murder, Psycho and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. In the early 1960's, films began to deal with adult subjects and sexual matters that had not been seen in Hollywood films since the early 1930's. The MPAA reluctantly granted the needed seal of approval for these films, but not until certain cuts were made. This all ended in 1966.

In that year, Warner Brothers wanted to release their new film which was entitled Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. When Jack Valenti became President of the MPAA in 1966, he was immediately faced with a problem regarding language in the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Valenti negotiated a compromise: The word "screw" was removed, but other language, including the phrase "hump the hostess" remained. The film received Production Code approval despite having language that was clearly prohibited. Just a few months later, MGM wanted to release Blowup, which contained nudity and drug use. After the film was denied Production Code approval, MGM released it anyway, the first instance of an MPAA member company distributing a film that didn't have an approval certificate. There was little the MPAA could do about it. Enforcement had become impossible, and the Production Code was abandoned entirely. The Code finally became, effectively, dead. In 1968 the MPAA film rating system went into effect, thereby allowing audiences to choose the type of films they wanted to watch.

[edit] Popular pre-Code stars


[edit] Notable pre-Code films


[edit] External links

[edit] Further reading

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