Trigger Warning: The following references sexual assault.

Generally speaking, if films released between 1934 and 1968 were a flavor, they'd be vanilla, or outright flavorless altogether thanks in large part to the Hays Code. No curse words, no infidelity, no nudity, just "golly gee whillikers", married couples in separate beds, and clothing from head to toe. Most point to the late 1960s as when cinema broke out of its sanctimonious box, led by a visionary group of directors like Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola. And they aren't wrong, but what they are missing is the period of film history before cinema was put in the box — a time just as wild and hedonistic. So what happened in between? Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the aforementioned Motion Picture Production Code, or more commonly known as the Hays Code.

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Pre-Hays Code Hollywood Was Scandalous

Tod Browning's Freaks
Image via MGM

1920s Hollywood was, for all intents and purposes, the Sodom and Gomorrah of the film industry. Films began showing empowered women, racy and immoral content, and other material that kept pushing the boundaries. Off-screen, stories about wild parties, drugs, alcohol and other depravity spread like wildfire. Scandals were plentiful, with the murder of bisexual director William Desmond Taylor and silent-film comedy star Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's being charged with manslaughter over the death of actress Virginia Rappe, allegedly by violent sexual assault, were just two of many that made national headlines. The Great Depression only seemed to make things worse, with movie studios upping the ante with even more sex, violence and horror in films like Baby Face and Tod Browning's Freaks in order to make money, like the proverbial blood from a stone.

Will H. Hays Sr. Takes On Hollywood... With Hollywood Help

During this time, 1922 to be exact, former postmaster and chairman of the Republican National Committee Will H. Hays, Sr. became the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). He made it his goal to clean up Hollywood, and in 1927 began work on a new set of guidelines for the film industry. And he wasn't alone: Hays worked with big studio executives, a Jesuit priest and a Catholic layman on a self-governing set of rules, "The Don'ts and Be Carefuls." Finally, in 1930, the MPPDA released the formal introduction of these rules: The Motion Picture Production Code, aka the Hays Code, named after Hays himself.

The Code's rules were puritanical and severely limiting. The "Don'ts" stated that sex, drugs, and nudity were simply not allowed, nor were scenes of white slavery, childbirth, and sexual relations between people of different races. The impact of the Church influenced the "Don'ts" as well, with any ridiculing of the clergy or profanity using the Lord's name in vain disallowed (although God, Lord, Jesus, and/or Christ were okay in the context of reverential religious rites). The "Be Carefuls" warned that films shouldn't glorify criminal activity of any sort, had to tread the attitude towards public characters and institutions carefully, especially when it came to the use of the American flag.

The Hays Code Gets Teeth

The problem was that the MPPDA didn't have the authority to force studios to adhere to it, so while some made the effort to make changes, others flat-out ignored it. That changed in 1934 thanks to two prominent movements. The first was the brainchild of Catholic archbishop Rev. John Timothy McNicholas, who organized the Legion of Decency to counter films that he deemed offensive. The Legion coordinated boycotts of sin-riddled Hollywood features, and even went so far as to insist that Catholics stay away from Hollywood movies altogether unless changes were enforced.

The second front came from Washington, where Roosevelt's New Deal saw the creation of a number of regulatory agencies, and the threat of a federal agency in charge of censoring films was real. To placate the Legion of Decency and keep Washington from taking over, the MPPDA created the Production Code Administration (PCA) and appointed prominent Catholic and former newspaperman Joseph Breen to head it, a role he would hold on to for twenty years. The office enforced the Hays Code strictly, with one slight tweak where Breen stated that sin could be shown in movies, but there had to be a consequence to it. Screenplays were read before going into production, changes were demanded, and would only give a film its approval if it adhered to the Code standards.

The Hays Code Changed Film for Years

The impact of the PCA and Breen's enforcement of the Code was immediate and impactful. The legendary sex symbol Mae West, the reigning queen of the 1933 box-office ceded her crown to the utterly wholesome Shirley Temple. The ending of 1942's Casablanca, which saw Rick (Humphrey Bogart) shoot the Nazi Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt), had to be reshot so that Strasser would be seen pulling out his gun to shoot Rick, thus allowing Rick to be seen as acting in self-defense (shades of a certain Star Wars: A New Hope controversy, no?). David O. Selznick was fined $5,000 by the office in 1939 because Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) says, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" in the classic Gone With the Wind instead of the Code-approved, "Frankly, my dear, I just don't care." Even cartoon characters were forced to comply with the Code, with Betty Boop changing from curvaceous flapper girl in a short skirt to conservative, curve-less and far less interesting girl in a much longer skirt.

The Hays Code Dies With the Rise of the Classification and Rating Administration

Throughout the age of the Hays Code, filmmakers would actively work on ways to circumvent it, while some, like famed director Otto Preminger, perpetually undermined the Code. Scenes between a man and a woman would cut from the two drawing close to the actors smoking cigarettes, implying a sex scene but adhering to the Code by not showing it. Gay characters were referred to in coded language, using words like "pansy" or "dandy" to insinuate the homosexuality of a character without, again, outright declaring it. These efforts, among others, slowly began to crack the rigidity of the Code, and when the Supreme Court granted films the right to free speech in 1952, the legal backing of the Hays Code was eliminated. Soon, the competition from TV and foreign films that were outside the Code's scope led to movie companies loosening the reins.

The PCA continued to lose credibility when, in 1959, it openly declared that a Code-approved film could touch on any topic but homosexuality, only for Some Like It Hot, with stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag and Marilyn Monroe along for the ride, to be released that very same year, a film riddled with once-forbidden topics. To add insult to injury, the film was a box office smash, released without the PCA's approval. Films like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho kept kicking the Code while it was down, until 1968 when the Hays Code was officially replaced by a parental advisory rating board, the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA), which is what we still have today.

In retrospect, the Hays Code did have some positives come out of it. Racial and ethnic slurs were one of the enforced "don'ts" of the act, a rather progressive act at a time in history one wouldn't necessarily expect it, and it did challenge filmmakers to be creative, either in keeping within the Code or slightly pushing at its edges. However, in one last fitting irony, the Oscar for Best Picture would go to Midnight Cowboy at the 1970 Academy Awards. And it was an X-rated film.