Hays Code

Enforced: July 1, 1934-1950’s

Place: Los Angeles, California

Significance: This industry production code dictated the content of American films for a quarter of a century

Almost since its beginnings with Thomas A. Edison’s primitive kinetoscope, the American film industry has dealt with the specter of censorship. As the industry evolved from a side-show attraction to a mainstream art form attracting millions of patrons and billions of dollars in revenue, religious groups, citizens’ organizations, and governmental entities became increasingly concerned with controlling the content of what was shown to the public—particularly to young children. In its various changing forms the Hays Code was, for many years, the principal tool with which the industry policed itself to avoid being censored by outside organizations. It effectively controlled the content of mainstream American studio films through the mid-1950’s.

Early History of Film Censorship

Many of the short films shown in early kinetoscope arcades contained nothing more than interesting current events of their day, such as the famous belly dance of Fatima, the sensation of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. However, because the fully clothed Fatima’s performance was thought too shocking for general audiences, New York censors simply blocked out the offending portions of Fatima’s anatomy before allowing the film to be shown. This act began the history of film censorship.

As films grew longer and more complex, censorship efforts grew apace. The most often censored film of the early silent period—and perhaps the most censored film ever—was The Birth of a Nation (1915), which provoked a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision that motion pictures were “not to be regarded . . . as part of the press of the country or as organs of public opinion,” but were instead to be classed with “the theater, the circus, and all other shows and spectacles.” This decision effectively denied film producers an argument for protection under the First Amendment, thereby permitting all levels of government to censor or ban films at will.

Will H. Hays and the MPPDA

After World War I the content of American films grew increasingly sophisticated, risqué, hedonistic, and cynical—developments that attracted a growing chorus of criticism from outside the industry. Additionally, several prominent film personalities were involved in widely publicized scandals. In 1921 the popular comic actor Fatty Arbuckle was charged with murdering a young female actor. The following year the president of the Screen Directors Guild, William Desmond Taylor, was found murdered and revealed to have been part of a “love triangle.” That same year Wallace Reid, a popular “All-American” screen idol died of a drug overdose.

Under the pressure of negative publicity caused by these scandals, more than thirty-five states and the federal government began considering film censorship laws. This prospect created a major crisis for the industry; that crisis was aggravated by the birth of national commercial radio broadcasting in 1922. Radio threatened to compete with films for the public’s time and attention. Steep declines in film attendance in 1922 made the studios anxious to calm public opinion about the “perverted” nature of Hollywood films and filmmakers.

Hoping to stave off outside censorship, leaders of the film industry formed their own organization in March, 1922. Ostensibly designed to control film content, the new Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) was headed by Will H. Hays, a noted Indiana conservative who had been postmaster general during the Harding Administration. The Hays Office, as the MPPDA came to be called, developed an initial “Code of Purity” to govern film content that prohibited depictions of certain specific sexual and violent acts, and listed many other acts about which filmmakers were cautioned to “exercise extreme care.” (This latter list became informally known as the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls.”) The Hays Office also championed the concept of “compensating values,” whereby vice (such as murder) could be portrayed, but only if it was properly punished by the end of the film.

A refinement of the industry’s original code came in 1930 with the “Code to Maintain Social and Community Values.” It, like its predecessor, was voluntary. Because the Hays Office had no powers of enforcement, it engaged in little real censorship. It served mainly as a public relations tool, used by film producers to deflect threats of outside censorship, to manage industry news, and to calm public fears about film content.

The Coming of Sound Films

With the MPPDA as an effective news management tool, film production was barely affected by censorship throughout the 1920’s; however, a major change took place in 1927 with the introduction of sound to films. The coming of sound compelled two changes in the film industry that affected censorship: the institutionalization of the studio system and the increasingly violent content of mainstream films. With an entrenched production system, film content came to be more uniform, and the productions veered sharply toward subject matter that best exploited the possibilities of dialogue and sound effects. Musicals and gangster films were new genres that won instant and enduring popularity. At the same time, however, public fears about the effects of films started growing.

In 1928 a study commissioned by a citizen group called the Motion Picture Research Council assessed the impact of film on American youth. Over the next four years the council produced several volumes of findings—all of which indicated that young people were being adversely affected by the values and morals they observed on the screen. Henry James Forman summarized these findings in Our Movie Made Children (1933), a book that shocked the country and raised fresh cries for tough censorship. Alarmed film producers were also concerned about the substantial drop in revenue that occurred in 1933—an apparently delayed effect of the Great Depression.

In April, 1934, American bishops of the Roman Catholic church formed the Legion of Decency and called for boycotts of films deemed “indecent” by their church. With the rising storm of protest throughout the country, the film producers were ready to take drastic steps to ensure the profitable continuation of the film medium with American audiences.

Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code

In response to public pressure, Will Hays created the Production Code Administration (PCA) in 1934, placing it under the direction of a prominent Catholic layman, Joseph I. Breen. Along with Father Daniel A. Lord, a Jesuit priest, and Martin Quigley, a Catholic publisher, Breen created the film code that would govern film content for decades. The many things that the code forbade to be shown included “scenes of passion,” “excessive or lustful kissing,” drunkenness, aberrant sexuality, rape, seduction, cruelty to animals or children, and surgery— especially surgery relating to childbirth. The code also banned even mildly profane words—such as “nuts” and “cripes”— and directed that the sanctity of the home and marriage must be upheld at all times.

In a move designed to target the flourishing gangster film genre, the code’s proscriptions on depictions of crime and violence were especially severe. Weapons such as machine guns could not be shown; details of crimes and discussions of crime or weapons were not permitted; police officers were never to be shown killed by criminals; and if any criminal behavior was depicted in a film, it had to punished within the same film.

Unlike earlier incarnations of film production codes, the 1934 code contained enforcement provisions. Scripts had to be submitted for PCA approval at every level of production: from purchasing rights to the final cut. Rewrites were approved throughout the production process; scripts either were altered to meet PCA requests for changes, or were scrapped altogether. No studio belonging to the MPPDA could distribute or release a film without Breen’s endorsement in the form of a PCA seal of approval. Failure to comply could be punished by twenty-five-thousand-dollar fines—an inducement so strong that no fine was ever levied during the MPPDA’s entire history.

Conclusion

Although the Hays Code was later thought by many to have retarded the development of the American film industry through its severe restrictions on content, the fact that it arose at a critical moment in the industry’s history helped to ensure the industry’s survival by reassuring a worried public that their families could view motion pictures without having to worry about offensive content. By the time the Supreme Court’s Burstyn v. McCaffrey decision extended First Amendment protections to films in 1952, the public’s increasing sophistication, as well as the film industry’s solid economic foundations, had eliminated the political need for the Production Code. and Roger K. Newman’s Banned Films: Movies, Censors and the First Amendment (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1982) gives an overview of the development of film censorship, with detailed discussions of more than 120 films and a list of important court cases. De Grazia’s Censorship Landmarks (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1969) is a thorough rendering of law-making cases regarding censorship in all media, including film. David A. Cook’s A History of Narrative Film (2d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990) provides a succinct explanation of the economic and social conditions that led to the hiring of Will Hays and the development of the Production Code, as well as the circumstances surrounding the changes in the code’s content and enforcement. Gerald Gardner’s The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934-1968 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987) provides examples of letters from censors in the Hays Office to producers detailing reasons why particular films were deemed unacceptable under the Production Code. Finally, Gabe Essoe’s The Book of Movie Lists (Westport, Conn.: Arlington House, 1981) provides a complete listing of the early code’s three main principles, eleven “don’ts,” and twenty-five “be carefuls.”

Bibliography

Edward de Grazia