Hays` Hollywood: A motion picture Czar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joan_Blondell_banned_1932_publicity_photo.jpg

When you think about Hollywood, the first associations popping up in your mind might be ENTERTAINMENT, GREAT MOVIES, FABULOUS STARS and SUCCESS. The strong, artificial attributes of Hollywood. But looking at it in a more antiseptic way Hollywood is a big industry with a historical struggle in dominance and power of the studios, politics, economy, creatives and publicity.

It is not surprising that the choice of film material is predominantly guided by demands of the audience to produce successful movies. Talking about history, Hollywood faced difficult times during the great depression in the 1930s and it was more important than ever to allure people with modern, unconventional productions. But there was a problem, more specific a man, standing in its way to do so: Will H. Hays. After being the manager of Warren G. Harding's successful campaign for the U.S. presidential election in 1920 and subsequently being Postmaster General, the Republican resigned to become the President of the "Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America" (MPPDA) shortly after the organization was founded.

The MPPDA was founded in 1922 to establish a new self-regulating system in Hollywood , which seemed inevitable after the image of Hollywood suffered from obnoxious movies and off-set scandals. (e.g. one of America's most popular movie stars, comic Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, was accused of raping a young actress) Hollywood was considered to be corrupt, and many felt the movie industry had always been morally questionable, beside this there were a growing call by primarily Protestant groups for federal censorship of the movies.

To avoid political-ruled censorship, the studio leaders in Hollywood accepted the compromise of the "unpolitical" formation MPPDA with Hays at its peak, who was backed by the Catholic church and their Catholic Legion of Decency. Hays tried at first to give advice to the studios by creating certain guidelines and "The Don`ts and be Careful´s", but wasn´t quiet successful in changing the production output that still lead to calls for censorship. Again, the Catholic Church intervened, and proposed a censorship Code, that would later become famous as the "Hays code".
The code was divided into two parts. The first was a set of "general principles" which mostly concerned morality. The second dealt with "particular applications" which was a list of items which should´t be depicted. Some restrictions, such as the ban on homosexuality or the use of specific curse words, were never directly mentioned, but were assumed to be understood without clearly being transcribed.

And exactly this "Hays code" was facing Hollywood in the time of the great depression, when it was so important to produce movies with attention-seeking, violent and debatable content.
So once again the studios merely ignored the desired censorship because of the economical pressure, but also because the dominant liberal and social positions in Hollywood, judging the code as prudish and backward were reacting with reluctance. The Hays code was even openly mocked by the media: "the Hays moral code is not even a joke any more; it's just a memory."

But not for a very long time. An amendment to the code in 1934 made it an obligation to obtain a certificate by the production code administration (PCA) before any film could be released. Under Joseph Breen, who was appointed the head of the PCA, the enforcement of the Production Code became rigid and notorious. If a film was unacceptable and denied a "seal of approval", it wouldn´t be placed in theaters, and the studio would be charged 25 000 Dollars. Breen's power to change scripts and scenes angered many writers, directors, and Hollywood moguls.

Tim Dirks writes in his article about the 193o´s in Hollywood:

Regulations of the [production] code included censorship of language, references to sex, violence, and morality. The conservative and repressive code required, among other things, no promiscuity, no venereal disease, no excessive violence or brutality, twin beds for married couples, no ridicule of ministers of religion, the prohibition of various words ("sex", "hell", and "damn"), and no clear depictions of rape, seduction, adultery or passionate, illicit sex. There was to be no "excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embracing, suggestive postures and gestures." Sinful activity (such as criminality or sex outside marriage) could often exist in a film IF it was punished or if it ended in misery.

As a result, the Hays Code (and similar strictures laid down by the hugely influential Catholic Legion of Decency) directly influenced the content of almost every American film made between 1930 and 1966.