Hollywood's Self-Censorship
Beyond state and local censorship, what really worried industry leaders were the dual threats of impending federal censorship and incessant pressure-group demands. Attempts to keep the federal government out of the censoring business [1] led the movie industry to adopt a series of mea culpas and promises to self-regulate. In 1921, the year that so many state censorship bills were introduced, the industry created the “Thirteen Points,” a list of what the industry piously claimed it would no longer allow into its product. In reality, the list was a compilation of what state and local censors were objecting to, intended as a warning to producers of potentially troublesome content. Five years later, after three more federal censorship bills had been considered, Hollywood introduced another list, its “Don’ts and Be Carefuls.” Neither succeeded very well at protecting movie producers or mollifying moral critics. State and local boards continued to censor all movies shown within their jurisdictions.
Dealing with the threat of increasing censorship kept Hollywood leaders busy, but that was not their only challenge. Almost immediately at their introduction at the turn of the century, movies had been perceived by religious leaders as a threat. As a new national medium, movies were able to completely bypass the traditional communal filters—clergy, teachers, parents—putting into the hands of unknown strangers what innocent children might see. [2] Even more threatening, movies theaters were dark; they indiscriminately mixed previously separated classes, ages, and sexes; and their screens voyeuristically depicted scenes that many believed should remain private. At first it was Protestant leaders who led the charge against immoral or dangerous movies, favoring governmental censorship boards.
In the 1920s and '30s, Catholic leaders stepped forward, becoming the most vocal force for “clean” movies. Unlike their Protestant counterparts, Catholic clergy were less interested in legal censorship than they were in convincing the moviemakers to clean up their products at the source. So Catholic leaders launched a lengthy pressure campaign that convinced the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (later the Motion Picture Association of America or MPAA) to create yet-another list—this one written by part-time movie consultant and full-time priest Father Daniel Lord in 1930. It did not work. When the Great Depression caused a drop in attendance, Hollywood ramped up the sex and violence content, but in 1934, the Catholics finally got the movie moguls’ attention when they threatened a nationwide boycott. Potentially losing the nation’s Catholic audience convinced the leaders of the industry that lists were not going to cut it; they needed to create an enforcement arm with real muscle. Hiring a devout Catholic, Joseph Breen, the MPAA set up the Production Code Administration (PCA), empowering him to enforce the Code. Breen began work in 1934, approving scripts before shooting, watching during production, and reviewing the final product. From this point, member studios paid homage to the Code or their films could not be shown in major theaters.[3]
Henceforth, the PCA became a powerful force dictating what could and could not be seen in American movie theaters. From 1934 through the end of World War II in 1945, the PCA influenced so much movie content that governmental censors had much less to cut. So successful was Breen at controlling movie content after a few years that there were no new calls for federal censorship for ten years between 1938 and 1948.
[1] Between 1916 and 1948 Congress entertained proposals for a national motion picture commission no fewer than eleven times. ACLU file #1274, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University. .
[2] Garth Jowett, Film: The Democratic Art (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976), 12.
[3] On the PCA, see Gregory D Black, Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics and the Movies (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Gregory D Black, The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies 1940-1975 (Cambridge University Press, 1997); Frank Walsh, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Leonard J Leff and Jerold L Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code from the 1920s to the 1960s (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990).
Photo: Shorpy.com
The Majestic Theater in Chillicothe, Ohio in 1940--the height of the PCA's influence on American movie production.
Click on the photo to see an enlarged high-definition version of this photo, courtesy of Shorpy.com
Click on the photo to see an enlarged high-definition version of this photo, courtesy of Shorpy.com