Public outcry over perceived immorality in Hollywood and the movies, as well as the growing number of city and state censorship boards, led the movie studios to fear that federal regulations were not far off; so they created, in 1922, the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (which became the
Motion Picture Association of America in 1945), an industry trade and lobby organization. The association was headed by
Will H. Hays, a well-connected Republican lawyer who had previously been
United States Postmaster General; he derailed attempts to institute federal censorship over the movies. In 1927, Hays compiled a list of subjects, culled from his experience with the various US censorship boards, which he felt Hollywood studios would be wise to avoid. He called this list "the formula" but it was popularly known as the "don'ts and be carefuls" list. In 1930, Hays created the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) to implement his censorship code, but the SRC lacked any real enforcement capability. The advent of
talking pictures in 1927 led to a perceived need for further enforcement.
Martin Quigley, publisher of a Chicago-based motion picture trade newspaper, began lobbying for a more extensive code that not only listed material inappropriate for movies, but also contained a moral system that the movies could help promote — specifically a system based on
Catholic theology. He recruited Father
Daniel Lord, a
Jesuit priest and instructor at Catholic
Saint Louis University, to write such a code. On March 31, 1930, the board of directors of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association formally adopted it. This original version in particular was once popularly known as the Hays Code, but it and later revisions are now commonly called the
Production Code. Depression economics and changing social mores resulted in the studios producing racier fare that the Code, lacking an aggressive enforcement body, was unable to redress. This era is known as
Pre-Code Hollywood. An amendment to the Code, adopted on June 13, 1934, established the Production Code Administration (PCA), and required that all films released on or after July 1, 1934 obtain a certificate of approval before being released. For the three-plus decades that followed, virtually all motion pictures produced in the United States and released by major studios adhered to the Code. The Production Code was not created or enforced by federal, state, or city government. In fact, the Hollywood studios adopted the Code in large part in the hopes of avoiding government censorship, preferring self-regulation to government regulation. The enforcement of the Production Code led to the dissolution of many local censorship boards. Meanwhile, the
US Customs Department prohibited the importation of the
Czech film
Ecstasy (
1933), starring an actress soon to be known as
Hedy Lamarr, a prohibition upheld on appeal. In 1934,
Joseph I. Breen was appointed head of the new Production Code Administration (PCA). Under Breen's leadership, until his retirement in 1954, enforcement of the Production Code became rigid and notorious. Breen's power to change scripts and scenes angered many writers, directors, and Hollywood
moguls. The PCA had two offices, one in
Hollywood, the other in
New York City. Films approved by the New York PCA office were issued certificate numbers beginning with zero. The first major instance of censorship under the Production Code involved the 1934 film
Tarzan and His Mate, in which brief
nude scenes involving a
body double for actress
Maureen O'Sullivan were edited out of the master negative of the film. Another famous enforcement case involved the
1943 western The Outlaw, produced by
Howard Hughes.
The Outlaw was denied a certificate of approval and kept out of theaters for years because the film's advertising focused particular attention on
Jane Russell's breasts. Hughes eventually persuaded Breen that the breasts did not violate the Code and the film could be shown. Some films produced outside the mainstream studio system during this time did flout the conventions of the Code, such as
Child Bride (1938), which featured a nude scene involving 12-year-old actress
Shirley Mills. Even cartoon sex symbol
Betty Boop had to change from being a
flapper, and began to wear an old-fashioned housewife skirt. In 1936,
Arthur Mayer and
Joseph Burstyn attempted to distribute
Whirlpool of Desire, a French film originally titled
Remous and directed by
Edmond T. Greville. The legal battle lasted until November 1939, when the film was released in the U.S. In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court in
Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson unanimously overruled its 1915 decision and held that motion pictures were entitled to First Amendment protection, so that the
New York State Board of Regents could not ban "The Miracle", a
short film that was one half of ''
L'Amore'' (1948), an
anthology film directed by
Roberto Rossellini. Film distributor Joseph Burstyn released the film in the U.S. in 1950, and the case became known as the "Miracle Decision" due to its connection to Rossellini's film. That in turn reduced the threat of government regulation that justified the Production Code, and the PCA's powers over the Hollywood industry were greatly reduced. At the forefront of challenges to the Production Code was director
Otto Preminger, whose films violated the Code repeatedly in the 1950s. His
1953 film
The Moon is Blue, about a young woman who tries to play two suitors off against each other by claiming that she plans to keep her virginity until marriage, was the first film since the
pre-code Hollywood days to use the words "virgin", "seduce", and "mistress", and was released without a certificate of approval. Preminger later made
The Man with the Golden Arm (
1955), which portrayed the prohibited subject of drug abuse, and
Anatomy of a Murder (
1959) which dealt with
rape. Preminger's films were direct assaults on the authority of the Production Code and, since they were successful, hastened its abandonment. In
1954, Joseph Breen retired and
Geoffrey Shurlock was appointed as his successor.
Variety noted "a decided tendency towards a broader, more casual approach" in the enforcement of the Code.
Billy Wilder's
Some Like It Hot (
1959) and
Alfred Hitchcock's
Psycho (
1960) were also released without a certificate of approval due to their themes and became box office hits, further weakening the Code's authority.
The Pawnbroker and the end of the Code In the early 1960s, British films such as
Victim (1961),
A Taste of Honey (1961) and
The Leather Boys (1963) offered daring social commentary about gender roles and
homophobia that violated the Hollywood Production Code, yet the films were released in the U.S. The American
women's rights,
gay rights,
civil rights, and
youth movements prompted a reevaluation of the depiction of themes of race, class, gender, and sexuality that had been restricted by the Code. In addition, the growing popularity of international films with more explicit content helped discredit the Code. In 1964,
The Pawnbroker, directed by
Sidney Lumet and starring
Rod Steiger, was initially rejected because of two scenes in which actresses
Linda Geiser and
Thelma Oliver fully expose their breasts, and a sex scene between Oliver and
Jaime Sánchez, which it described as "unacceptably sex suggestive and lustful". Despite the rejection, the film's producers arranged for Allied Artists to release the film without the Production Code seal and the New York censors licensed
The Pawnbroker without the cuts demanded by Code administrators. The producers also appealed the rejection to the Motion Picture Association of America. On a 6–3 vote, the MPAA granted the film an "exception" conditional on "reduction in the length of the scenes which the Production Code Administration found unapprovable." The exception to the Code was granted as a "special and unique case", and was described by
The New York Times as "an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent." The requested reductions of nudity were minimal, and the outcome was viewed in the media as a victory for the film's producers. It featured excerpts from a lecture by Dr.
Helen Caldicott about the effects of nuclear weapons interspersed with shots of the effects of
the atomic bombs and scenes from
Jap Zero, a military educational film from 1943 featuring
Ronald Reagan. The subsequent uproar over that action gave the film a
publicity boost, and it later won the
1982 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). ==In return for military access==