Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era

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This book covers an approximate four year period between the start of the “talkies” and the establishment of an effective Hollywood censorship program. The author, Mark Viera, covers this period on a year by year, topic by topic, and film by film basis. This makes for a very comprehensive coverage of the subject.

Viera is obviously extremely knowledgeable about his subject. His coverage of movies introduced me to a number of movies that I've heard about but never had any interest in seeing, e.g., Little Caesar, She Done Him Wrong, and The Story of Temple Drake. I am really looking forward to watching some Mae West movies.

The book is filled with fascinating singles from the movies. Also interesting is Viera's descriptions of the cycles that swept Hollywood, e.g., after Little Caesar was a success, everyone was doing gangster movies. Then, there was the fallen women cycle. There was a “monster cycle,” which was when Paramount became known for Dracula - Bela Lugosi was paid a mere $3,500 - and Frankenstein, which made a star out of Boris Karloff.

Pre-Code movies are fascinating. The pictures occasionally featured nudity, which comes as a surprise to most of us with our prejudice that our grandparents and great-grandparents knew nothing about sex. Likewise, many of the story lines were “mature” in portraying prostitutes and adulterers. Finally, pre-Code movies occasionally featured homosexual and transexual characters and themes.

For all that, though, my sense is that these situations were treated lightly and non-seriously. The fact that they appeared at all is surprising, but I doubt that they were given the prurient attention they would be given in modern movies. Of course, Viera points quotes from viewers who had quite the vapors from watching these movies.

Ultimately, as Viera points out, the pre-Code era came to an end when an employee of the ineffective Hays ‘ office formed an alliance with “Midwest Catholics” to convince Protestants that the Jewish industry should be regulated. The result was a production code with teeth.