Film Noir: Hollywood’s Forbidden Vocabulary

During film noir’s heyday—the 1940s and ’50s—Hollywood maintained a specific list of words and expressions it didn’t want moviegoers to hear. You could murder your husband. Calling him a “louse” was another matter.

In 1934, threatened with government censorship and squeezed by public boycott campaigns, Hollywood studios established the Production Code Administration. Its job: enforce the moral guidelines known as the Hays Code, named for Will H. Hays, leader of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. The Code had been adopted four years earlier. Enforcement was spotty. Now it acquired teeth.

The Legion of Decency – backed by other religious groups and civic leaders – mobilized moviegoers against films it considered objectionable. The boycotts worked and studios suffered.

Officially voluntary and administered by the industry, compliance became mandatory for studio releases. The Code restricted various portrayals of sex, crime, violence, religion, and social behavior. Scripts and finished films passed through review, often requiring scenes or dialogue to be rewritten, cut, or reshot.

Film noir was squarely in the censors’ sights. Crooks and cops. Gang molls and private eyes. Antiheroes with flexible morals. Corruption everywhere. Bad acts without bad consequences. The place was begging for a cleanup.

Although the Code was a detailed, 22 page set of rules, most of the guidelines remained subjective. How much passion was excessive? When did a criminal become too sympathetic? Filmmakers nuanced and negotiated. Censors deliberated.

But one section of the Code was plain and simple: specific words that were forbidden. The selections below come from the Code’s profanity provision as amended in November 1939.

Historical note: The final group reproduces racial and ethnic slurs to document the language the Code addressed.

Insults and sexual slang

• alley cat, bat, broad - when applied to a woman

• chippie; coquette

• fanny

• fairy – in a vulgar sense, usually when referring to a male

• goose – in a vulgar sense

• in your hat – based on the then common expression “go shit in your hat.”

• madam – when relating to prostitution

• louse; lousy – likely considered vulgar because of its association with a horrible lice

• Nance – a variation “Nancy” – meaning a weak male, implying homosexuality

• nuts – except when meaning crazy. Otherwise, as an expression – “Aw, nuts!” –  it was regarded as reference to male testicles.

• pansy

• slut

• son-of-a…

• S.O.B.

• tart

• tom cat – when applied to a man

• whore

Profanity and religious expressions

·     God; Lord; Jesus; Christ – unless used reverently, not as an exclamation

·     Gawd; cripes

·     damn; hell – with limited exceptions under the 1939 amendment

Gestures and genres

·     the Bronx cheer and “razzberry” – the sounds

·     toilet gags

·     the finger

·     traveling salesman and farmer’s daughter jokes

Racial and ethnic slurs

A separate paragraph directed administrators to ban these expressions as offensive to American audiences, and particularly to audiences abroad.

Chink; Dago; Frog; Greaser; Hunkie; Kike; Nigger; Spic; Wop; Yid.

The Production Code Administration died by a thousand cuts, weakened by changing social attitudes, open defiance by studios, and a bevy of lawyers. It was replaced in 1968 by the Motion Picture Association of America rating system that conceded full artistic expression but mandated universally ignored warning labels:

The original categories were:

• G — General audiences: All ages admitted.

• M — Mature audiences: Parental discretion advised; children were admitted.

• R — Restricted: Children under 16 required an accompanying parent or adult guardian.

• X — Adults only: No one under 16 admitted.

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