A "SHORT" ON THE HAYES CODE
Every studio motion picture made in the U.S. between 1934 and 1968 was submitted to an official censor board for approval.
The miracle of film had invaded a still rural and socially conservative America. From the beginning, the “movies” are butting up against propriety and piety. As the rebellious “roaring 20s” fascinates and alarms the public, the film industry gives them what they want, and more, with depictions that prickled sensitive skin.
Not only were the stories provocative, even reckless, so were the people making them. Mass media turned the celebrated into "celebrities," and as stars become better known, not all that was known was better, much of it scandalous or made more scandalous by the tabloid press. Blame it on beloved comedian Fatty Arbuckle, whose career was ruined when charged with rape and manslaughter of a young actress. Or the mysterious poisoning death of a famous starlet married to Mary Pickford’s brother. Then there was the unsolved murder of a famous - rumored to be bisexual - film director. Screen personalities were dying of drug overdoses at “champagne and cocaine orgies.” It was a fascinating mess, and the public rubbernecked to see the wreckage. Movie houses were packed. At the end of the 1920s, weekly attendance reached almost one hundred million - virtually the entire population was regularly exposed to Hollywood, for better and for worse.
Little wonder that concerned citizens were alarmed. The Hollywood “problem” was metastasizing. Criticism rained down from pulpits and printing presses. Communities formed censorship boards that edited or banned films as studios faced a growing army of local arbitrators across the country. Rumblings of federal censorship had been giving studio execs ulcers for years - that patchwork quilt could turn into a stifling national blanket.
From the Hollywood perspective, it was a largely a public relations problem at this point. Set up an industry organization to informally oversee movie content before release. Promulgate positive stories and images of Hollywood. In consultation with community leaders, issue guidelines to the industry, such as “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” (1927). Of course, you need someone outside the studios, independent but conservative and reliable, to be the public symbol of the new integrity. Will H. Hayes, the sitting Postmaster General of the United States and a Presbyterian elder resigned his government post and accepted the formidable task. Thus began in 1922 the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). Cooperation was voluntary and everyone volunteered. There were no laws, no enforcement, and no change in industry practice. After almost a decade of MPPDA benign neglect, critics were losing patience. Change was coming.
In 1930, two prominent figures - publisher Martin J. Quigley and Jesuit priest and writer Daniel Lord - draft a detailed set of instructions and proscriptions for movies: A Code to Maintain Social and Community Values in the Production of Silent, Synchronized and Talking Motion Pictures. These guidelines, twenty pages long, have gone down in history, appropriately, as the “Hays Code.” It condemns movies which "lower the moral standards" of viewers, and dictates that "the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, or sin." The MPPDA surrendered and accepted the Code. There were no laws, no enforcement, and no change in industry practice. Critics were losing patience. Change was coming.
In the early, grim Depression years, movie-goers had less cash and more yearn to escape. Hollywood met the demand with the reliable standbys of sex and violence, even flirting with white slavery, drugs, adultery, and prostitution. More female sass and skin. Loose language. The roaring 1920s social rebellion survived on the big screen if not on the lean streets, now mixed with glamorous gangsters and class struggle. The “motion picture” became instantly more seductive with the introduction of sound in 1928 - a miraculous new avenue for obscenity and subversion, making the movie experience more realistic, more immersive, more compelling.
Waves of films pushed new boundaries. It went beyond B “exploitation” releases like Freaks and Maniac to include top studios and stars like Greta Garbo and Barbara Stanwyck, Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Norma Sherer in The Divorcee won the 1930 Best Actress Academy Award for the scandalous portray of woman who turns her scorn into a sexual weapon in the pursuit of power – a common theme in pre-code movies, flaunting female independence.
It was not film content per se that ruffled feathers. The heavily censored films of the 1940s and 50s had plenty of violent crime and female fatale sexuality. The characters were as loose and unsavory. The issue was the ethical tone of the narrative, the moral message the story conveyed. Critics accused pre-code movies of glamorizing lifestyles and salacious behavior by letting flawed characters slip through the grasp of "authentic" justice, legal or social. Vice can be tolerated but only when the perpetrators face real consequences, not just setbacks or casual regret. Redemption must be earned. Ambiguous characters and mixed moral messaging can dismay and confuse the public, leading some - especially impressionable youth - to unwholesome behavior.
Enter the National Legion of Decency, formed by Roman Catholic prelates in 1933. Here were the foot soldiers to enforce the rules formally declared but seldom applied in the Hayes Code. The Legion developed its own rating system for films: A (Morally Unobjectionable), B (Morally Objectionable in Part), and C (Condemned). B ratings were trouble for a studio; a C was the kiss of death. An estimated ten million Catholics signed a pledge "to refrain from viewing all objectionable movies or attending any theater that showed such films." Local boycotts of specific movies was widespread. It was the depths of the Depression. The box office was already suffering; the studios were vulnerable. That sword of Damocles - formal federal government censorship – dangled over the industry. The studios buckled. It wasn’t a question of establishing rules but enforcing existing ones. The new sheriff in town was Joesph Breen who would run the recently created Production Code Administration, an arm of the MPPDA, for twenty years. This is the formal inauguration of American movie censorship. The years from 1930 to 1934 will go down in history as the “pre-code” era, which is more accurately the “pre-code-enforcement” era.
Lest we blame the Catholic Church for movie censorship, most religious groups rally to the cause. A good swath of the general public along with civic leaders and politicians salute the bandwagon, even if not all jump on.
Members of the MPPDA, which included all the industry’s major movie producers and distributors, agreed to release only films that were Production Code Administration (PCA) approved. The most effective way of censoring films was also the simplest - to prohibit their circulation. Even if an outlaw producer could find stray theatres here and there, the studio would be levied a heavy fine for even trying.
The PCA staff was tasked with approving or rejecting story ideas, scripts, and final prints of films before public release, enforcing a set of speech, dress, and conduct rules until 1968. Language restrictions could be explicit, but virtually everything else was interpretation, and highly subjective. Writers and directors and censors figured it out on their own by trial and error. They operated on what would in 1964 become known as the “Potter doctrine” when Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, struggling with the meaning of “pornography” during a case, declared: “I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." Even cartoon characters had to behave: Betty Boop morphed from a sexy flapper to a refined, if rambunctious, career girl.
The PCA died by a thousand cuts, weakened by changing social attitudes and a bevy of lawyers. There were dents in the amour, then holes, and finally the armor was discarded.
A major hit to the Hays Code came in 1952 when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a 1915 ruling that declared motion pictures are not “speech” subject to First Amendment protections. The new wisdom declared movies to be a significant medium for communicating ideas, thus falling under the broad protection of the Constitution. The leverage of government censorship was collapsing.
In 1955, Otto Preminger released The Man With the Golden Arm lacking PCA approval. It proved a blessing in disguise. Audience interest was piqued by the controversy, and the studio had no trouble finding enough movie houses to turn a handsome profit. The following year the Code was revised by dropping various restrictions and loosening others. A current viewer should notice some difference in content and language after 1956.
In 1959, the PCA announced that if a "moral conflict" provided "the proper frame of reference," a Code-approved film could deal with virtually any subject but homosexuality. Movies like Psycho and Some Like It Hot tested the new waters.
The formal funeral for the moribund PCA came in 1968. It was replaced by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system that conceded full artistic expression in return for widely ignored warning labels:
G General Audiences
M Mature: parental guidance (now PG)
R Restricted: under 16 needs adult (now PG-13)
X No one under 17 admitted (now NC-17)
