Cinema Czar
Hays, a former Postmaster General, put the stricter film code into
effect
July 1, 1934
Movies' Moral Crackdown
By Richard Corliss
"Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!" a hatcheck girl says to Mae
West, who purrs, "Goodness had nothin' to do with it, dearie." That
line, from West's 1932 Night After Night, embodied the saucy
spirit of early talkies. Now that Hollywood could speak, it did so in
the tart cadences of fast-talking men and faster women. This freedom
created fresh stars (James Cagney, Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Harlow) and a
sexual impudence that riled the burghers of propriety.
In 1934 the
potent Roman Catholic lobby formed the Legion of Decency to rate films.
Soon after, Will Hays, the industry's political and moral arbiter,
called on Joseph Breen, a prominent Catholic, to enforce a rigorous
production code. Studios rushed to sanitize some projects (West got
married at the end of Belle of the Nineties) and dump others (MGM
had to wait 12 years to film The Postman Always Rings Twice).
Moviegoers that summer Sunday may have been shocked by the sudden
absence of shocking dialogue and situations.
But filmmakers evolved a
new "code," one that traded starkness for subtlety. Audiences quickly
learned this covert language in which a woman's knowing smile was its
own double entendre, and a kiss was never just a kiss.
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