A Code Is Born

How Catholic crusaders and New Deal regulators created the most intrusive censorship regime in Hollywood history

Thomas Doherty from the January 2008 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

On December 8, 1933, the MPPDA’s Will Hays, MGM’s J. Robert Rubin, and Paramount’s George Schaefer met in the White House with FDR and Gen. Hugh Johnson, head of the National Recovery Administration (NRA), the authority created by the NIRA to administer virtually all aspects of the U.S. economy. By then Hollywood had another Motion Picture Code to worry about—the one enacted under the provisions of the NIRA. No official record exists of the conversation between FDR, Johnson, and the emissaries from Hollywood, but trade press reports noticed that the motion picture executives “emerged [from the meeting] very glum” and that FDR, film fan though he was, felt that Hollywood fully warranted the “eagle eye” of federal oversight. In particular, “the subject of off-color films” was reported to have “caused some disturbance at the White House.”

The NRA divisional administrator appointed to regulate the motion picture industry was a loyal New Dealer named Sol A. Rosenblatt, a man whose mogul-like name belied any sympathy with the studios. Focused on economic recovery, not moral reformation, Rosenblatt was initially happy to keep Hollywood’s Code separate from Washington’s, but as the months passed and the former remained flaccid, the trade press detected a baleful change of heart. The “continual talk about making
the Hays Code of Ethics part of the NRA Code” was growing louder and more insistent, declared Harrison’s Reports.

In January 1934, Rosenblatt traveled to Hollywood to explain the New Deal in person and to deliver an uncoded message. He reminded studio executives that the NRA’s Code, unlike the MPPDA’s Code, held the force of law. Rosenblatt claimed not to be interested in “regulation, interference, or censorship,” but the whole purpose of the New Deal economic codes was to regulate and interfere with normal capitalist practice.

On January 30, Rosenblatt met Breen. Again, no transcript exists of this second pivotal face-off between the NRA and the MPPDA, but Breen certainly argued that the work of censorship should be a private affair, a matter of Hollywood self-regulation rather than Washington edict, and Rosenblatt certainly concluded that Breen was the man for the job.

That evening, speaking before the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers, Rosenblatt waved a New Deal carrot and stick. “I am opposed to government regulation of this phase of the industry [that is, the moral content of motion pictures] and I am opposed to the snooping activities of certain reforming organizations,” he began encouragingly, before lowering the boom: “Yet unless the facts are faced and present indications are taken into account, the industry is set for plenty of trouble.”

On February 5, 1934, less than a week after Rosenblatt’s visit, Breen was formally appointed to head the Studio Relations Committee (SRC), the office charged with approving or rejecting movies before they were released. Variety directly linked Breen’s promotion to Rosenblatt’s pressure: “Breen’s position [as head of the SRC] provides for his approving all scripts and films made by majors and indie producers. This is at the suggestion of Rosenblatt, who will insist that code enforcement be done [according to] the machinery set up by Breen. The administrator deems this the best method for carrying out the purpose of the code than if a commission be set up for the handling of the independent end of this matter.” Breen now had two powerful backers in his corner: the Catholics and the New Dealers.

After only two months on the job, Breen had rejected six pictures—as many as had been rejected during the previous three years. Producers bowed to Breen’s objections in four of the instances and appealed his decisions twice. In both cases, Breen was overruled by the Producers Appeal Board.

The first incident involved a Fox musical with the risible title Bottoms Up. After Breen rejected the film, producer B.G. “Buddy” DeSylva appealed the decision to the three-man producers board, which obligingly overruled the SRC. After winning the appeal, DeSylva, sensing the future downside to crossing Breen, decided voluntarily to eliminate the objectionable scene.

The other, more consequential dispute involved Queen Christina, a star vehicle for Greta Garbo directed by the Russian-born master Rouben Mamoulian and produced by Walter Wanger. The film featured the regal Swedish goddess playing a tomboy Swedish monarch who falls hard for a dashing Spanish envoy (John Gilbert), a star-crossed affair blocked by her malevolent ministers and xenophobic peasantry.

Plenty about the courtly intrigues warranted disapproval from the new management at the Studio Relations Committee. A male valet attends the queen at bed; the queen bestows a wet kiss on her lady-in-waiting; a buxom serving wench is groped by drunken soldiers; and an innkeeper moonlights as a pimp. Carefully drawing his line in the sand, Breen focused his objections on a sexy tryst between the queen and the envoy.

The coupling revolves around a bit of unlikely gender confusion when the chilly Swede, incognito both in status and sex, encounters the hot-blooded Spaniard in a snowbound inn. Clothed in mannish attire, she is mistaken for a young lad, so why shouldn’t the youth and the envoy spend the night together in the only available bed in the inn? “Aren’t you going to undress?” inquires the Spaniard when the two are behind closed doors. “Yes,” whispers his demure companion, who unbuttons her jacket to reveal her feminine contours. The Spaniard is momentarily startled—and then delighted.

The next morning, the couple snuggles in bed, concealed from view by bed curtains, but the elated voice of the Spaniard from behind the drapery makes clear he is not alone. In fact, the inn being snowbound, the couple is together for three days of very unwedded bliss. After the 72-hour sleepover, still ecstatic, Garbo slinks around the bedroom, glowing with postcoital rapture, caressing the furniture, to imprint every detail of the magic idyll in her memory. The extended foreplay and languid aftertaste—the couple entering the bedroom, the tango before disrobing for bed, the unveiling of the queen’s true identity, the lovers hidden from sight but snuggling in bed the next morning, and Garbo’s radiance while gliding around the love nest—pulsate with erotic heat.

Breen wanted the entire sequence left on the cutting-room floor. In italics, he told MGM to delete “all the intervening scenes, action, and dialogue which are played in the bedroom” and to make sure Garbo was “kept away entirely from the bed.” To studio chief Louis B. Mayer, Breen explained that the Gilbert-Garbo tryst was too guilt-free to stand: “Sexual immorality is here presented as ‘attractive and beautiful’ and is made to appear ‘right and permissible,’ and thus comes the definite Code violation.”

Besides raising Breen’s hackles, the case of Queen Christina highlighted the design flaws in the Code’s mechanism. Though Wanger had dutifully sent a script to the SRC for review and politely listened to suggestions for revision, he had simply ignored the advice. “It is quite apparent from the examination of the files that Mr. Wanger paid very little attention to our several letters on this [bedroom sequence], or what was said at the conference between himself, Colonel Joy, or Dr. Wingate,” Breen complained, after viewing the completed film with the bedroom pas de deux intact.

With Wanger and Breen irreconcilable, the kabuki show commenced: Breen held Queen Christina in violation of the Code, Wanger appealed the decision, and a jury of producers overruled Breen.

Comments

|12.4.07 @ 10:06AM|#

Not having seen any of the films from that four year golden era, I have to wonder exactly how risqué these films actually were, and whether there were any films that were both "dirty" and *good*.

ObLibertarian: Censorship bad! But Boycotts are a good and right way for consumers to tell businesses what to do. So confused!

|12.4.07 @ 10:14AM|#

I knew it: the Catholics run hollywood!

|12.4.07 @ 10:55AM|#

ObLibertarian: Censorship bad! But Boycotts are a good and right way for consumers to tell businesses what to do. So confused!

Nothing to be confused about. You said it succinctly from the get go.

|12.4.07 @ 11:01AM|#

I am somewhat surpised that the artilcle mananged to avoid mentioning the queen of the anti-prudes, Mae West. The woman aws constantly at war with the censors, bigots and homophobes of her day. I propose inducting her in the Libertarian Hall of Fame.

|12.4.07 @ 11:37AM|#

"Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality."

I don't have any problem with people exercising their Freedom to (not) Assemble but why do they forever have to tell me about it? Can't you just sterilize yourself to save the planet without running your yap? Can't you just drive the hybrid and leave off the "look at me I'm special" bumpersticker? It seems to me that if you know what you're doing is the right thing to do then you don't need affirmation from the masses. Or, do you only do the right thing if the right thing is the easy thing to do?

Decide how you should be living your life and leave me out of it. I can, and do, make my own decisions.

Jesse Walker|12.4.07 @ 11:47AM|#

I am somewhat surpised that the artilcle mananged to avoid mentioning the queen of the anti-prudes, Mae West.

She's in the book from which the article was excerpted.

|12.4.07 @ 11:55AM|#

I am somewhat surpised that the artilcle mananged to avoid mentioning the queen of the anti-prudes, Mae West. The woman aws constantly at war with the censors, bigots and homophobes of her day. I propose inducting her in the Libertarian Hall of Fame.

I second the motion. Mae West had it going on.

|12.4.07 @ 11:57AM|#

Not for nothing, but I wish Reason would hold back on putting the print articles online. I just got my copy yesterday.

|12.4.07 @ 11:59AM|#

I knew it: the Catholics run hollywood!

So does this mean Catholics are the new Jews?

|12.4.07 @ 12:00PM|#

She's in the book from which the article was excerpted.

Thanks, do I have to read it now? ;-)

Shannon Love|12.4.07 @ 12:37PM|#

I suppose its taboo to point out that changes that the moral conservatives in the article warned about did in fact take place, that the harms they warned against did actually manifest and that entertainment media in all forms appears to have been one of drivers of that change?

Only our advancing technology has blunted the ill effects of these cultural changes. In the 1930's, syphilis remained a major disease. A one night stand could lead to ones death while screaming insane a decade or more later. Birth control was ineffective by modern standards. It wasn't intellectually indefensible to argue that anything that fostered promiscuity presented a danger to the general society. Indeed, it is only by fluke that AIDS did not spread easily by heterosexual sex and thereby create a plague that could have killed millions. If that had happened, the old fogies who opposed the sexual revolution wouldn't look so stupid today.

I think that moralism represents a poorly studied behavior. We conventionally write it off as a mere power grab but I think it arises from an attempt to suppress behaviors that (1) cause no individual-->individual harm (2) don't cause harm if a small percentage of the population engages in them but (3) does cause significant harm if a critical mass of the population engages in it.

If my suspicion proves true then moralism represents a major stumbling block for the wide acceptance of libertarianism. People will revert to the use of state power to suppress behaviors they intuit will cause widespread harm if allowed to spread.

ed|12.4.07 @ 12:58PM|#

Not for nothing, but I wish Reason would hold back on putting the print articles online.
I just got my copy yesterday.

Does that make you feel like a sucker for subscribing, Warren? See today's post about making South Park and The Daily Show and others freely available online to all at no cost.

|12.4.07 @ 2:20PM|#

Does that make you feel like a sucker for subscribing, Warren?

Hey, I recently sprung for a subscription, knowing full well that every article in it would be posted online. Figured it was time to reward Reason for running this awesome website.

Plus, I get to enjoy the pained look on my non-libertarian wife's face when she sees the magazine each month.

|12.4.07 @ 2:21PM|#

Not to mention the cognitive dissonence from having subscriptions to both Reason and Ensign magazines ...

LarryA|12.4.07 @ 6:24PM|#

We conventionally write it off as a mere power grab but I think it arises from an attempt to suppress behaviors that (1) cause no individual-->individual harm (2) don't cause harm if a small percentage of the population engages in them but (3) does cause significant harm if a critical mass of the population engages in it.

Actually most moralists act because they find a behavior icky, however they define that, and want to prohibit for everyone what they won't do themselves.

People will revert to the use of state power to suppress behaviors they intuit will cause widespread harm if allowed to spread.

You've stumbled on the heart of the problem. "Intuit." Like gun ban advocates who think firearms are icky and ignore widespread evidence that bans don't work. Like drug warriors who find chemical mood enhancement icky despite obvious evidence that the WoD causes far more problems than it solves. Like the B.M.I. nazis who fail to notice that icky "overweight" people live longer than those of "normal" weight.

Personally, such folks belong in the middle of the "intelligent design" crowd. No reason required.

Mad Max|12.4.07 @ 9:12PM|#

"The NRA divisional administrator appointed to regulate the motion picture industry was a loyal New Dealer named Sol A. Rosenblatt, a man whose mogul-like name belied any sympathy with the studios."

What do you mean, "mogul-like name?" What are you suggesting?

". . . establishing a censorship regime that ceded dominion of Hollywood cinema to Irish-Catholic theology for the next 20 years."

I'm a sucker for happy endings!

"Only our advancing technology has blunted the ill effects of these cultural changes. In the 1930's, syphilis remained a major disease. A one night stand could lead to ones death while screaming insane a decade or more later."

Fortunately, nowadays you can no longer get deadly diseases from sexual activity.

"Birth control was ineffective by modern standards."

Yeah, the illegitimacy rate was incredibly high back then, in contrast to today. In our enlightened era, while illegitimate births occur, it's not the norm in any segment of society, and . . . wait a minute, I've got my eras reversed.

"It wasn't intellectually indefensible to argue that anything that fostered promiscuity presented a danger to the general society."

Today, we know that fostering promiscuity is perfectly safe.

|12.4.07 @ 10:16PM|#

The spirit of the Decency League is alive and well: the Catholic League, i.e. Bill Donohoe and his hard-core followers (all seven of them) have called for a boycott of the new film The Golden Compass due to perceived anti-Catholic themes in the source novels.

Now, I have never read The Golden Compass, nor had I intended to see the movie - until I heard about the attack by the League. I don't care if they're both complete crap; I'll buy the book for all my friends and enemies, see the movie, and when the DVD comes out, I fully intend to link it to my blog. Fuck you, Donohoe...

MJ|12.4.07 @ 10:58PM|#

The anti-Catholic themes are not merely "perceived", the author has said that he wrote the story as an attack on Catholicism and Christianity in general. If you don't like Donohoe and his group, that's one thing, but they are not wrong about this. Sometimes when someone ocmplains of bias in a work the claim us legitimate.

|12.5.07 @ 9:24PM|#

...the author has said that he wrote the story as an attack on Catholicism and Christianity in general.

Not all of us think that's a bad thing...

Fuck Donahoe anyway.