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1. #PRETTY WOMEN IN HOLLYWOOD LIFE AND DEATH SITUATIONS IMAGES MOVIE#
2. #PRETTY WOMEN IN HOLLYWOOD LIFE AND DEATH SITUATIONS IMAGES CODE#

#PRETTY WOMEN IN HOLLYWOOD LIFE AND DEATH SITUATIONS IMAGES CODE#

Now, the Production Code was voluntary for film companies, who figured it was a nifty way to avoid government censorship. But you could hang a blanket across a motel room in It Happened One Night, and let Clark Gable embarrass Claudette Colbert into sleeping on the other side - with a mock tutorial on "how a man undresses."Ĭolbert fled - she got an Oscar for fleeing, in fact - and propriety was upheld.

Of course, you couldn't really do most of Shakespeare under those strictures. The mocking of religion and the depiction of illegal drug use were prohibited, as were interracial romance, revenge plots and the showing of a crime method clearly enough that it might be imitated. There was an updated, much-expanded list of "don'ts" and "be carefuls," with bans on nudity, suggestive dancing and lustful kissing.

"It states the considerations which good taste and community value make necessary in this universal form of entertainment."Īmong those considerations: that no picture should ever "lower the moral standards of those who see it" and that "the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin." "The code sets up high standards of performance for motion-picture producers," Hays proclaimed when the new code was unveiled. Of course, they were calls that Hays himself, working behind the scenes, had helped to make overwhelming - and he used the pressure to force filmmakers to toe his line and obey the new Production Code he eventually promulgated. DeMille's racy biblical epic Sign of the Cross - that calls for official government censorship became overwhelming. Moralists were so outraged, meanwhile - by Mae West's casual slatternliness in I'm No Angel, by Barbara Stanwyck's promiscuousness in Baby Face, by Cecil B. There were no penalties, no laws, no enforcement.

#PRETTY WOMEN IN HOLLYWOOD LIFE AND DEATH SITUATIONS IMAGES MOVIE#

Silent-film comic Fatty Arbuckle charged with manslaughter in the death of an actress a bisexual director found murdered movie stars dying of drug overdoses - small wonder the nation's religious leaders were forming local censorship boards and chopping up movies every which way to suit the standards of their communities.Īnd at first, when Hollywood studios banded together under former Postmaster General Will Hays to come up with a list of 36 self-imposed "Don'ts and Be Carefuls," it's no wonder no one believed them. But that early Hollywood wasn't always so innocent.įor decades, it's true, the major film studios were governed by a production code requiring that their pictures be "wholesome" and "moral" and encourage what the studios called "correct thinking."īut that code, which was officially abandoned 40 years ago this year, was the result of a nationwide backlash - an outraged reaction to a Hollywood that by 1922 had come to seem like a moral quagmire, even by the bathtub-gin-and-speakeasy standards of the Roaring '20s. When people talk about the "more innocent" Hollywood of years gone by, they're referring to an era when the movie industry policed itself. The Tony Curtis-Jack Lemmon comedy was an overwhelming success, weakening the authority of the code. With its cross-dressing and homosexual pairings, Some Like It Hot was released in 1959 without a certificate of approval from the Production Code Administration.