Motion Picture Association of America

Founded: 1922

Type of organization: Film industry support body

Significance: Founded as the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), the MPAA has worked to improve the film industry’s public image, protect it from government censorship, and perform other services for production companies

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, as films increased in popularity, fierce debates arose over the content and control of the new medium. Progressive reformers, civic and religious organizations, and other guardians of morality demanded that the government protect impressionable minds from the sexual license and criminal violence that they claimed dominated films. As early as 1907, the Chicago City Council empowered the police to prevent the showing of indecent films, and between 1911 and 1921 seven states and more than 150 cities established censorship programs. In 1916 representatives of the film industry formed the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI) in an unsuccessful effort to block further censorship legislation.

By 1921 the film industry faced a deepening crisis. A succession of high-profile Hollywood scandals led to a new outburst of legislative activity. Nearly one hundred measures to regulate films were introduced in thirty-seven state legislatures, and pressures for federal censorship were mounting. When the legislature of New York adopted a censorship program late in the year, industry leaders terminated NAMPI and formed a new, more powerful trade association. To head it, they selected U.S. Postmaster General Will H. Hays. A Presbyterian elder from Indiana, Hays had served as chair of the Republican National Committee, guiding the party to triumphs in 1918 and 1920. He offered both the moral authority and political contacts that the hard-pressed industry needed.

Creation of the Hays Office

On March 10, 1922, a charter of incorporation filed in Albany, New York, created the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. With Hays as president, the MPPDA was to be governed by a board representing the major film corporations. Vitagraph, Pathe, Goldwyn, Fox, Universal, Metro, Associated First National, and United Artists were among the charter members, which together accounted for 85 percent of America’s films. The MPPDA’s charter promised to promote wholesome pictures, but the new president’s principal function was to improve the industry’s public image and ease the growing pressure for censorship.

The first crisis that Hays faced was a Massachusetts referendum on censorship scheduled for November, 1922. Hays mounted a massive publicity campaign against the measure, which was soundly defeated. Concurrently, he created three working sections within the MPPDA: One concentrated on internal industry matters, such as labor arbitration and contracts; another focused on foreign markets for American pictures; and a third handled public relations. The first of these sections worked toward the establishment of standardized contracts in the industry and developed such innovations as the central casting office in Hollywood. The office focusing on foreign sales sought to develop contacts abroad in an effort to eliminate resistance to American pictures. The public relations department was staffed by professional writers and publicists who generated a continuous stream of press releases favorable to the industry. It issued a monthly magazine, The Motion Picture, drafted speeches for friends of the industry, sent free films to schools and churches and sponsored conferences. A newspaper and magazines department collected stories from the local press and authored countless personalized letters to editors and other community leaders to be sent over Hays’s signature.

This massive public relations effort was designed to discourage efforts to censor or regulate the film industry. In addition, the MPPDA maintained a corps of lobbyists, led by General Counsel Charles C. Pettijohn, which was mobilized whenever a legislative threat arose. Its efforts were clearly successful. After the establishment of the Hays Office, no new state censorship boards were created.

Self-Regulation

In his efforts to discourage government censorship, Hays consistently relied on one central argument—that the film industry should be allowed to police itself. He repeatedly promised that the MPPDA would establish an effective system of self-regulation capable of removing objectionable content from the films. Toward that end, in 1924 he introduced the “Formula,” a requirement that studios forward to the MPPDA copies of every play, book, or story under consideration for film treatment. The Hays Office would then advise the studios as to which projects contained undesirable elements. While this requirement had few teeth and was often circumvented, Hays did ban 125 plays and novels from the screen.

The MPPDA’s second effort at self-regulation took the form of a list of eleven items never to be treated on screen and twenty-six subjects that were to be handled only with special care. Endorsed by the MPPDA’s board in 1927, the list was compiled by the Studio Relations Office, which Hays had established in Hollywood in 1926. Under Jason Joy, this office collected data on the practices and predilections of the nation’s state and municipal censors. The list represented a distillation of his findings and was meant to steer Hollywood producers away from potentially censorable material. In addition, Joy served as an informal studio consultant, reviewing scripts and finished pictures and advising producers as to what material was most likely to be cut by the censors.

Motion Picture Production Code

These solutions failed to satisfy the industry’s critics. Since neither required producers to abide by Joy’s or Hays’s recommendations, the studios continued to produce controversial pictures. Amid mounting pressure for federal control, Hays introduced a third vehicle for self-regulation by the industry in early 1930, the Motion Picture Production Code. This twelve-page document contained a justification for restricting film content along with a detailed list of the types of material that could not appear on the screen. Popularly called the Hays Code, it was launched with much fanfare but, again, lacked effective enforcement. With the Great Depression came a drastic decline in film attendance and the studios turned to even more sensational film content. In 1934, pressured by a mass Catholic boycott directed by the Legion of Decency, the MPPDA created the Production Code Administration (PCA) and provided it with the authority to censor all studio-made films. Under the threat of a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fine, the studios were required to submit all scripts and films for PCA approval, and no film lacking the PCA’s seal could be exhibited in any MPPDA theater. In 1935 the board also required that all advertising copy be submitted to the Hays Office before release. Because the MPPDA member companies controlled the largest and most lucrative theaters in the country, even film producers beyond the MPPDA’s official control soon complied with the new system. By the end of the 1930’s, more than 90 percent of all films shown in the United States carried a PCA seal. Under the direction of Joseph I. Breen, the PCA eliminated much of the sex and sensationalism that had offended the industry’s critics, and the pressure for government censorship subsided.

In 1945 Eric Johnston, formerly president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, succeeded Hays as MPPDA president; shortly thereafter the organization’s name was changed to Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Also in 1945, the MPPDA’s foreign department became the Motion Picture Export Association, with Johnston as president and the same board of directors. Under Johnston, the MPAA continued to function much as it had under Hays. During the 1940’s Johnston worked to improve labor relations, defended the industry against charges of communist infiltration, and resisted foreign efforts to impose heavy taxes and quotas on American pictures. In 1948 the MPAA’s control of the industry was weakened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s antitrust ruling in United States v. Paramount Pictures which forced the studio corporations to sell their theaters. In the 1950’s the rise of independent and foreign production, the freedom of the newly divorced theater chains to select films not approved by the PCA, and the competition of television gradually undermined the MPAA’s system of self-censorship. Beginning with Otto Preminger’s The Moon Is Blue in 1953, theater owners booked pictures not carrying the PCA’s seal with increasing frequency. Despite efforts to modernize the Production Code in 1956, the erosion of authority continued into the 1960’s.

The Rating System

In May, 1966, the MPAA board selected presidential adviser Jack Valenti to succeed Johnston, who had died three years earlier. In November, 1968, Valenti implemented a new film rating system. This system, based on an agreement between the MPAA, the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), and the International Film Importers and Distributors of America, replaced the PCA with the MPAA Classification and Rating Administration. A new seven-member Rating Board was empowered to classify films with regard to their suitability for children. Originally, the agency assigned four different ratings: G (general audience); M (suggested for mature audiences); R (restricted—children under sixteen must be accompanied by an adult); and X (no one under sixteen admitted). In 1970 the M rating was changed to GP (parental guidance suggested), and the age limit on R and X-rated films was raised to seventeen. Later, GP became PG, and in 1984 a category called PG-13 was added to warn parents that such films contained violence unsuitable for children under thirteen.

Aside from the association’s X rating, all ratings were protected by copyright. Because the producers of pornographic features normally avoided the rating board and often applied the X to their films without approval, confusion resulted. In 1990, to distinguish officially rated pictures containing adult material from hardcore pornography, the MPAA replaced its X rating with the copyrighted NC-17. Advertising for rated films also had to be submitted to the MPAA’s Advertising Code Administration for approval. While distributors were not required to submit their features to the Rating Board, most found theaters reluctant to book unrated pictures, and many newspapers and television stations refused to run advertisements for unrated or X-rated films. To ensure the widest possible audience, producers and distributors learned to alter their pictures to gain a favorable rating. Decisions of the Rating Board could be appealed to the Rating Appeals Board, chaired by Valenti and composed of twenty-two representatives from the MPAA member companies, the NATO companies, and four independent film production companies.

Under Valenti, the MPAA continued to perform multiple functions for the American film industry. While supervising the rating system, Valenti emerged as the industry’s principal defender against renewed complaints that films undermined traditional values and contributed to the growing violence in American society. As member companies of the MPAA merged with larger entertainment conglomerates, Valenti broadened his defense to include television and cable programming. In addition to its expansive lobbying and public relations efforts, the MPAA also sought to ease international trade restrictions and to crack down on film and video piracy in the United States and abroad.

Bibliography

Raymond Moley’s The Hays Office (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1945), commissioned by the MPPA, is dated and uncritical but nevertheless affords useful information on the organization’s early years. The Memoirs of Will H. Hays (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1955) is similarly self-serving. Garth Jowett’s Film: The Democratic Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976) provides a wealth of material on the larger concerns of the film industry and its trade association. Gregory Black’s Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics and the Movies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994) offers a full account of the creation of the MPAA Production Code and its operation through the 1930’s. The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship and the Production Code from the 1920’s to the 1960’s (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990) by Leonard J. Leff and Jerold L. Simmons is an episodic history of the Production Code. Stephen Farber’s The Movie Rating Game (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1972) gives an inside look at the operations of the Rating Board.