Pre-Code Hollywood
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry between the introduction of sound in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Hays Code, which went into effect on July 31, 1934. Until that date, movie content was restricted more by local laws and public opinion than adherence to the United States Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, which generally was ignored by Hollywood filmmakers. [1]
Contents |
[edit] History
In 1929, a group of Chicago Roman Catholic clergy and lay people, with the assistance of Jesuit priest Father Daniel A. Lord, created a code of ethics and practices they hoped the studios would adopt. In February 1930, they met with the heads of several studios, including Irving Thalberg of MGM, who eventually agreed to the stipulations of the Code. It was the responsibility of the Studio Relations Committee, headed by Jason Joy, to supervise film production and advise the studios when changes or cuts were required. [1]
The Code sought not only to determine what could be portrayed on screen, but also to promote traditional values. Sexual relations outside of marriage could not be portrayed as "attractive and beautiful," could not be presented in a way that might "arouse passion," and could not be made to seem "right and permissible." All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience. Authority figures had to be treated with respect, and the clergy could not be portrayed as comic characters or villains. Under some circumstances, politicians, policemen and judges could be villains, as long as it was clear they were the exception to the rule. [1]
For the most part, the Code 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. As a result, films in the late 1920s and early 30s reflected the liberal attitudes of the day and frequently included sexual innuendos, references to homosexuality, miscegenation, illegal drug use, infidelity, abortion, and profane language, as well as women in their undergarments. Strong women dominated the screen in films such as The Mysterious Lady, The Docks of New York, Anna Christie, Red-Headed Woman, Blonde Venus, Red Dust, and Waterloo Bridge. Gangsters in films like The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, and A Free Soul were more heroic than evil. [1]
References to sexual promiscuity, drug use, bloody gangster life, and morally ambiguous endings began to draw the ire of various religious groups, some Protestant but most overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, apostolic delegate to the Catholic Church in the United States, called upon American Catholics to unite against the surging immorality of the cinema. As a result, in 1933 the Catholic Legion of Decency, later renamed the National Legion of Decency, was established to control and enforce decency standards and boycott films they deemed offensive. Conservative Protestants tended to support much of the crackdown on so-called immorality, particularly in the South, where anything relating to the state of race relations or miscegenation could not be portrayed.
The pre-Code era effectively came to a close with the establishment of a special bureau eventually christened the Breen Office after Joseph I. Breen, a former public relations executive, whose purpose was to review scripts and finished prints in order to ensure they adhered to the new Hays Code, which shaped the trends in American film-making during the ensuing years.
[edit] Censorship
Censors like Martin Quigley and Joseph 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 pre-Code movies suffered irreparable damage from the censorship that followed 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, such as Animal Crackers (1930), Mata Hari (1931), and Love Me Tonight (1932), currently exist in only their censored versions. In the case of Convention City (1933), the entire film reportedly was destroyed because the Breen office refused to budge. In other instances, the studios remade films, such as The Maltese Falcon (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
|
|
[edit] 1930
|
|
[edit] 1931
|
|
[edit] 1932
|
|
[edit] 1933
|
|
[edit] 1934
|
|
[edit] DVD releases
Warner Bros. Home Video has released several of their pre-code films on DVD under the Forbidden Hollywood banner. To date, three volumes have been released.
Volume 1, released on December 5, 2006, includes Baby Face, Red-Headed Woman, and Waterloo Bridge.
Volume 2, released on March 4, 2008, includes The Divorcee, A Free Soul, Three on a Match, Female, and Night Nurse.
Volume 3, released on March 24, 2009, includes Other Men's Women, The Purchase Price, Frisco Jenny, Midnight Mary, Heroes for Sale, and Wild Boys of the Road.
Universal Home Video followed suit with Pre-Code Hollywood Collection: Universal Backlot Series. Released on April 7, 2009, the box set includes The Cheat, Merrily We Go to Hell, Hot Saturday, Torch Singer, Murder at the Vanities, and Search for Beauty, together with a copy of the entire Hays Code.
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Doherty, Thomas Patrick, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930-1934. New York: Columbia University Press 1999. ISBN 0-231-11094-4
- Jacobs, Lea, The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1991. ISBN 0-520-20790-4
- LaSalle, Mick, Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood. New York: St. Martin's Press 2000. ISBN 0-312-25207-2
- LaSalle, Mick, Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man. New York: Thomas Dunne Books 2002. ISBN 0-312-28311-3
- Vieira, Mark A., Sin in Soft Focus. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2003. ISBN 0-8109-8228-5
