How early production code smothered movies

"JR in 3D," the ad read. This was in 1954, when I was starting to venture beyond the comics section of my hometown paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. That minimalist text made no sense at first, but finally I caught on: "JR" stood for the voluptuous Jane Russell. Hollywood had released 3-D flicks in which tomahawks flew at us and jungle cats leapt at us. Now, it seemed, Russell's bust would be coming our way. Sure enough, her new movie, "The French Line," had its world premiere in St. Louis the following week. Producer Howard Hughes had defied orders from Hollywood's Production Code office to tone down Russell's lascivious dancing and cover her up. Opening the film in St. Louis rather than Los Angeles or New York was Hughes' way of thumbing his nose at the establishment.

The Code flouted by Hughes dated from the Prohibition era, and the two movements shared a basic premise: A high-toned protectorate must enforce moral standards. But while the impetus for Prohibition had come from fundamentalist Protestants, for the Code we have Catholics to thank. The Code's co-authors were a Catholic layman and a Jesuit priest, and its chief enforcer was Joseph I. Breen -- not just a Catholic but, as Thomas Doherty puts it, one who "embodied the restraint, repression, and rigidity of a personality type known as the Victorian Irish." Breen stands at the center of Doherty's entertaining history of the Code.

The Code dates from 1930, but the first four years were a washout. The studios had agreed to abide by the Code so as to defang state and city censorship boards, which applied harsh and inconsistent standards. But the procedure for ensuring compliance was squishy -- studios could appeal adverse decisions to a board of movie producers. Bawdy vehicles for Mae West and crime-celebrating films such as "Scarface" were slipping by. Scandalized Catholics fought back by founding the Legion of Decency, which asked the faithful not to attend objectionable films, and Hollywood moguls took hits at the box office. The Code, they agreed, must grow stronger teeth. From now on, appeals boards would consist of hard-nosed New York studio execs. Unapproved films wouldn't get a seal of approval and thus would have limited, if any, distribution. And perhaps most important, Breen and his staff would vet scripts and head off problems before they developed.

A climate of timidity descended upon Hollywood and stayed for two decades. In deference to British taste, married couples had to sleep in twin beds -- even though millions of kids could see double beds in their parents' bedrooms. The guiding principle for storytelling was that "wrong must always be characterized as wrong." Who decided what was wrong? Breen et al., of course. Divorce, for example, might be legal, but it almost never happened in movies because it wasn't kosher for Catholics.

Hughes and Russell had run afoul of the Code before, with "The Outlaw" (1943). But it was director Otto Preminger in the 1950s, with "The Moon Is Blue," "The Man With the Golden Arm" and "Anatomy of a Murder," who fully exposed the Code's ability to sanitize and trivialize. Breen, who retired in 1954, was on the sidelines as the holy writ gave ground steadily, until in the 1960s it was replaced by the age-conscious rating system that survives today.

Doherty makes too little of the ingenuity with which writers and directors got around the Code, but until reading this book I'd never realized how many movies the Code smothered.

"Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen & the Production Code Administration"

Author:

Thomas Doherty

Publisher:

Columbia University, $29.50