Hays Code: When the Catholic Church censored Hollywood for over 30 years

When Hollywood came to be viewed as a place of the dammed and sinful, Will Hayes, a republican and Presbyterian, non-smoker, non-drinker, but wired to power in Washington and Wall Street, implemented the Hayes code which has been in force until the early 60s when it formally ended and was replaced by a rating system which rather warns than forbids. Ironically the enforcement of the code came as a challenge to script writers and directors and one can say that Hollywood’s most creative era was due to it. Clara and Julia Kuperberg selected clips to demonstrate how movies often reflected their time from pre-code sexuality to post-code soberness in line with a Puritan heritage.

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Chapters
▷ 0:00 - Intro
▷ 00:05 - Hays Code

#documentary #hollywood #hayscode #movies #1930s #precode #movies #usa
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With the Great Depression and evaporating income cinema attendance fell drastically, to counter this trend Hollywood became more and more violent and sexy, to a point that a call for censorship of some kind was in the air. Indeed the better organized catholic minority created the Catholic Legion of Decency and the clergy admonished their Sunday church goers to boycott certain cinemas and films. Hollywood became to be viewed as a place of the damned and sinful. As cinema became a tool of mass control, socially disturbing subjects were banned from screenplays. Hollywood had to convey an image that conformed to societal norms. Studios began to censor screenplays that were too explicit or took liberties with American moral codes. This code was ruthlessly enforced from 1934 onwards, with the arrival of the rigid Joseph Breen as head of the Censorship Board.

Original title: Hollywood Censored
Directed by Clara and Julia Kuperberg

© 2015, Licensed by Poorhouse International

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