In Separate Beds
Censorship and Creativity under the Hays Office
FACING A SWELLING TIDE OF CRITICISM in the early 1930s, the motion picture industry adopted a set of self-imposed content guidelines to determine what kinds of material were and were not permitted to appear in Hollywood films. The Production Code, sternly administered by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America's (MPPDA's) Hays Office, addressed a broad range of topics, from portrayals of sex and violence to questions of morality and justice. The enforcement of the Production Code forestalled government-imposed censorship and dramatically improved Hollywood's relationship with innumerable local censorship boards, but movie producers were forced to make countless artistic compromises to appease the Hays Office. Although the Code was abandoned in 1968, its presence during the film industry's formative years gave it a lasting effect on classical American filmmaking.
The first seeds of movie censorship were sown during the Jazz Age of the early 1920s. In a reflection of the loosening of morals that occurred in America following World War I, many movie producers packed their films with sexual content in an effort to attract audiences (Moley 25). By 1922, public backlash against these sensational pictures, as well as pending censorship legislation in thirty-two states, led the MPPDA to take the first steps toward cleaning up the industry's act. It created an office, headed by William H. Hays, a former Postmaster General, to deal with the looming censorship issue. Its four-point strategy was to warn studios to keep their films wholesome, dispatch lobbyists to oppose censorship in states and cities, provide a system of self-censorship, and educate the public so that they would appreciate more tasteful pictures (Moley 52-3).
In 1927, the MPPDA's Hollywood office, headed by Colonel Jason Joy, began developing a preliminary code of content
| The theory was that producers would come to see that the inclusion of controversial material would be more trouble that it was worth. |
To remedy this situation, the MPPDA approved an expanded Production Code (and a list of reasons behind it) in February 1930. The Code was written by Martin Quigley, a respected trade publisher, and Daniel J. Lord, a Jesuit professor of dramatics (Moley 70). The provisions of the Production Code ranged from the sensible to the downright silly. Perhaps the overriding theme of the Code, as laid out in its General Principles section, is that in filmed entertainment, 'moral values' must be enforced: that is, good must always triumph over evil in the end. Characters are permitted to act immorally, but by the end of the film they must face punishment for their sins (Martin 89). An example of this provision in action was Howard Hawks' 1931 film Scarface. The original ending depicted the villainous title character struggling against the police. The Hays Office rejected this disrespect of moral authority and forced producer Howard Hughes to reshoot the ending twice, eventually having a judge sentence Scarface to death, calling him 'vicious' and 'evil'. Introductory title cards deploring organized crime and a rather stilted scene where various upstanding members of the community discuss the gangster problem were also forcibly added (PBS).
Under the Code the defamation of religion was not tolerated, and foreign traditions and customs had to be treated accurately and respectfully (Moley 108-110). Also, for fear that accurate portrayals would "serve as a possible school in crime methods," specifics on how crimes were committed were banned (except in cases where "fantastic methods are employed which could not possibly be imitated") (Martin 120-1).
Much of the rest of the Code was devoted to restraining obscenities. These included bad language (even such seemingly innocuous terms as 'damn', 'hell', 'Gawd', and the initials 'S.O.B.')
| A particularly strange interpretation of the miscegenation rule held that although relations between whites and blacks and the "white and yellow races" were forbidden, whites were permitted to marry Polynesians and other Pacific Islanders. |
Despite the existence of the Production Code, by 1933, not much progress had been made in cleaning up the movie studios' acts. Much of Hollywood was ignorant of the Code, either unwittingly or by choice, and the production of sleazy films to draw Depression-era audiences continued more or less unabated. The problem was clearly that although the Code provided content guidelines, the MPPDA lacked any teeth in enforcing its provisions (Moley 75). In 1934, the organization would get an incentive to start enforcing the Code, as rising public outcry began to hurt the movie business. A Catholic organization called the Legion of Decency sprang up to protest what it deemed obscene, and other religious leaders nationwide joined Catholic bishops like Cardinal Dougherty in Philadelphia in demanding a boycott of Hollywood movies. To quell the complaints of these organizations, the MPPDA announced that it would institute a review process of all films produced by the major and minor studios, and pictures that failed to pass muster with the Hays Office would be denied exhibition and the producers fined $25,000 if caught trying to circumvent the Code (Moley 81-2).
With this act, censorship finally became a reality for Hollywood producers. Not only would treatments and scripts have to be passed by the Hays Office (then headed by Joe Breen) before production started, but industry censors would monitor costumes, sets, and other production elements while the cameras rolled, and upon completion, the entire movie would undergo a review with the censors authorized to demand that cuts or changes be made (Moley 92-3). In practice, the influence of the Code began even before preproduction in the financing stage, as banks were reluctant to make loans for pictures that were unlikely to receive a certificate of approval from the Hays Office (Leff 82).
Needless to say, countless artists and craftspeople in Hollywood resented the creative limitations now imposed on them by the Production Code. However, as one screenwriter at the time put it, the Code "forced writers not only to be cleaner but also to be cleverer," and numerous strategies were employed in trying to skirt the Code's provisions (Leff xiii).
| As one screenwriter at the time put it, the Code "forced writers not only to be cleaner but also to be cleverer." |
Another way to ensure a gentle treatment from the Hays Office was to make 'sophisticated' films, such as those based on works of literature. After much negotiation, the David O. Selznick-produced adaptation of Anna Karenina was permitted to show adultery and suicide, two subjects that were generally taboos (Leff 62). In 1939, Selznick would face another marathon of compromises in trying to get a certificate for Gone with the Wind, for everything from some mildly sexually suggestive scenes to the use of the word "nigger" and, most famously, the word "damn" in the film's final line (the backup Selznick shot in case of trouble was the far less punchy "My dear, I don't care") (Leff 94-9). The master of playing on the Code Administration's weakness for literature was Cecil B. DeMille, who was able to get all sorts of otherwise censorable material into movies like The Ten Commandments simply because they were taken straight out of the Bible (and how could the good Christians at the Hays Office object to that?) (Gardner 80-1).
Sometimes the way to skirt censorship was to substitute the implicit for the explicit. In directing the film adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Tay Garnett had to eliminate much of the novel's sexual content, but he moved these energies into other facets of the production: the "Man Wanted" sign prominent in a diner window "had the force of a sexual come-on," and sizzling meat on a grill "telegraph[ed] sexual arousal" (Leff 132). Another scene Garnett shot showed assorted wild cats tumbling about with one another, suggesting the Code-forbidden physical relationship between the protagonists. Filmmakers also had to become more clever about showing provocative clothing, as nightgowns, strapless evening gowns, low-cut "peasant blouses" (such as Jane Russell's in The Outlaw, subject of a lengthy battle before the film's release), certain bathing suits, and even tight sweaters were successively nixed by Breen (Leff 119; Gardner 30).
The first incident that challenged Hollywood's self-censorship system was the case of the American release of The Bicycle Thief in 1949. Although hailed worldwide, even winning an Academy Award, Joe Breen denied the film the certificate it needed for wide American release because of two scenes: one very non-explicit scene at a bordello, and another where the protagonist's son takes a break to relieve himself against a wall (Leff 150). Following heated, public exchanges between himself, the distributor, and even the ACLU, Breen steadfastly denied approval to the film. Three of the theater chains in the Association decided to release the film anyway, breaking the promise to exhibit only approved pictures and prompting Variety to proclaim that "the code ban has collapsed" (Leff 161).
The next blow to the Code's dominance came in 1955. Flying in the face of the Code's prohibitions on the portrayal of drug abuse, Otto Preminger directed The Man with the Golden Arm, a film starring Frank Sinatra as a heroin addict.
| By 1968, the Production Code system was scrapped entirely, giving way to the G/PG/R rating system in place today. |
Today, it is easy to look upon the Production Code as a prudish, overly conservative system that stifled creativity and forced Hollywood cinema into a mold where the good guys always win, profanity is nonexistent, and sexuality is the exclusive province of the imagination. There is clearly no denying that the Code had a tremendous impact on the content of Hollywood films, and that its reactionary regulations suppressed ideas that ran counter to the Code's puritanical ideals. However, the fact remains that the Code clearly helped the film industry to a certain extent, as it consolidated the objections of thousands of local censorship boards into a more streamlined system that allowed producers to meet one set of standards and be assured that a film would be viewable without objection almost anywhere. Perhaps this is just another way of saying that the Code forced Hollywood into appealing to the "lowest common moral denominator," but this denominator was a reflection of societal pressures that producers could not afford to ignore anyway. Dealing with the censors also seems to have brought out the cleverness in screenwriters of the time, as they were forced to suggest what they could not show outright, making their films that much more rich and complex. The fact remains that a great deal of films that are considered among the best in cinematic history were made under the watch of the Production Code - and perhaps not coincidentally, a golden age of American moviemaking in the 1970s immediately followed the Code's abolition.
Works Cited
Gardner, Gerald. The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934 to 1968. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. 1987.
Leff, Leonard J. and Simmons, Jerold L. The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code from the 1920s to the 1960s. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. 1990.
Martin, Olga J. Hollywood's Movie Commandments: A Handbook for Motion Picture Writers and Reviewers. New York: H. W. Wilson Company. 1937.
Moley, Raymond. The Hays Office. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1945.
PBS. Culture Shock: Flashpoints: Theater, Film, and Video: Howard Hawks' Scarface and the Hollywood Production Code. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/theater/hollywood.html.