# Pre-Code Hollywood Films
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [November 26, 2016, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040 "2016-11-26T14:29:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 19
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/21 "2016-11-27T13:32:47Z")
> [@Chefguy](#):
>
> One of my favorites. The nude swimming scenes were great.
Mine too. Even the highly edited version I saw on TV as a kid provided proof that I was a straight male when Jane first appeared wearing a skimpy outfit.
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### Author:  [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/22 "2016-11-27T14:21:06Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> And, of course, Marie Dressler’s classic line (and doubletake) from _[Dinner at Eight.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQNQqwFK-OM)_
I was going to mention this as an example. Being released in 1933, [_Dinner at Eight_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023948/combined) is technically post-Code, but it was before they got serious about it. I kind of suspect it’s one of the reasons why. It included:
[ul]
[li]All the (young) women sleeping around, in and before marriage.[/li][li]A male defense of adultry. (“Wives have to realize it doesn’t have anything to do with them!”)[/li][li]An astonishing amount of side-boob when Kitty (Harlow) is sitting at her dresser in a thin robe.[/li][li]Hell, Harlow even when she was dressed.[/li][li]An on-screen suicide.[/li][/ul]
I can kind of understand why the church got up in arms after its release.
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### Author:  [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/23 "2016-11-27T14:32:44Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Please read more carefully. I said that the _remake_ was a 3D film. Which it was.
Actually, you did say 3D again in the next paragraph, apparently referring to the original. As **RivkahChaya** noted, you probably meant to say “color” there.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/24 "2016-11-27T15:47:38Z")
> [@bienville](#):
>
> I recently read a great [biography of Frances Marion](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1634551.Without_Lying_Down) and was surprised to see the number of times that she, as a screenwriter, was called into meetings to censor parts of her works during this supposed “Pre-Code” era. Actually, one of the particularly interesting things in reading this biography is seeing how the censorship creeps in over time- unlike the imagined overnight change suggested in most discussions of Pre-Code Hollywood vs. the Hays Code Era. Frances Marion’s career as a screenwriter started in the 'teens and went into the 40s. Even though Marion is the focus, her biography serves as an excellent look at all aspects of early Hollywood and the emergence of the film industry.
I said not \*\*strongly \*\*enforced. That’s not the same as not enforced or anything goes. The obvious license given to producers and directors in the early sound era riled the Church and it battled back continuously, winning some, losing others.
It didn’t like losing. In 1933 it started the Catholic Legion of Decency. That rated films. Movies in the lowest categories couldn’t be seen by good Catholics. And, as I said, the Church called for a boycott of movies. A huge amount of antisemitism was involved, as virtually all of the movie heads were Jewish and minions for the Church kept up a steady attack on these un-Americans with loose morals.
Breen, surprise, surprise, was a virulent anti-Semite. He was installed on July 1, 1934. The change after Breen came in is tremendous. Breen did not creep in. He slammed in like Prohibition had (ironically just as Prohibition was ending). The fact that dozens, if not hundreds, of lurid examples from pre-Breen can be put forward and virtually none after that shows a pronounced dividing line, even if some level of censorship had always existed.
The industry survived, even thrived, under Breen, true. But that mostly reflects the huge increase in national prosperity from the 1929-1934 to the 1934-1939 period. That the overall content of film changed from being under a light hand on censorship to being under Monty Python’s giant foot of censorship is I think incontrovertible.
I haven’t read that particular biography, but I agree that Frances Marion is a hugely unappreciated figure in early Hollywood, except by buffs.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/25 "2016-11-27T16:43:36Z")
**Chandu The Magician** is essentially a '30s adventure serial done as a full-length movie, so (a) don’t expect a masterpiece for the ages; but (b) for what it _is,_ it’s pretty terrific, with Bela Lugosi in ‘cinematic villain with an old-timey death ray’ mode, and our hero pulling off daring rescues - and the occasional prank - with a helping hand from the most cutting-edge special-effects magic of the day.
And, as far as I can tell, if you squint juuuuuuust right it’s arguably the first-ever “costumed superhero uses his powers to fight bad guys” movie, and maybe _story,_ which means it’s kind of inventing the genre that’s now swallowed Hollywood.
But as for what makes it stand out as pre-code, it’s the scene where an underage blonde in an incredibly sheer slip is terrifiedly being auctioned into white slavery. _Probably couldn’t get away with that now,_ is what I’m saying. Like, it was all just wholesome fun when this thread was talking excitedly about Maureen O’Sullivan’s grown-up anatomy, but let’s _not_ dwell on the nipples on the breasts of this girl.
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### Author:  [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/26 "2016-11-27T17:03:15Z")
> [@salinqmind](#):
>
> I just watched one of my favorites again last night, ‘Red Dust’ from 1932 with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable. Set on a rubber plantation in French Indochina, Gable is a hard-working he-man, and Harlow is very clearly a prostitute stranded on his property. Also Mary Astor as a proper married lady who has arrived with her husband, and Gable has an affair with HER. It’s a bit racey when Ms. Harlow takes a bath in a water tank and wears beautiful skimpy chiffon dresses in the hot humid climate. Those were REAL movie stars, a fun, memorable little movie.
Where is **Eve** when we need her? She wrote the classic Harlow biography.
> [@TriPolar](#):
>
> Mine too. Even the highly edited version I saw on TV as a kid provided proof that I was a straight male when Jane first appeared wearing a skimpy outfit.
Yeah, right? No doubts. No doubts. Fuckin’ A, no doubts!
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### Author:  [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/27 "2016-11-27T18:06:36Z")
> [@Katriona](#):
>
> Wasn’t Mogambo a remake of this one?
Yes, it was a remake of sorts. Grace Kelly played the proper lady, Ava Gardner played the stranded floozie, a much aged Clark Gable was the lead. It was set in Africa, with Gable capturing wild animals for zoos! ☹
I prefer ‘Red Dust’, it has a grubby charm, and I love Jean Harlow, she looks just edible here. (Her real life producer husband committed suicide during the filming)The story is so much like the short stories of William Somerset Maughm, he wrote dozens about the planters in French Indochina, Malaysia, all kinds of exotic places. With colonials mixing it up with the natives, their ‘native wives’ vs. their ‘English wives’ - hellaciously addictive reading.
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### Author:  [@NeonMadman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NeonMadman)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/28 "2016-11-27T19:20:15Z")
When I was 15, the movie _The Graduate_ was released in theaters. This was just a year or two before the movie rating system took over. _The Graduate_ was advertised as a mature film, with nobody under 18 permitted to see it (essentially, under the not-yet-instituted Code, this was the equivalent of an “X” rating). For any who may be unfamiliar with the film, the theme was adultery between a middle aged woman (Anne Bancroft) and a young man, a recent college graduate (Dustin Hoffman). There was no on-screen sex that I can recall, though at one point, Bancroft’s breasts are shown in a series of two or three quick still shots, almost too fast for the eye to see. You only realized afterward that you had actually seen exposed breasts.
I was 15 when it came out, as I said, but I was big for my age, so I managed to pass for 18 in order to get in to see it in the theater (the ticket-sellers didn’t really give enough of a crap to check ID).
Today, you can buy the uncut film on DVD or Blu-Ray. It’s rated PG.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/29 "2016-11-27T20:57:28Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#):
>
> **Chandu The Magician** is essentially a '30s adventure serial done as a full-length movie, so (a) don’t expect a masterpiece for the ages; but (b) for what it _is,_ it’s pretty terrific, with Bela Lugosi in ‘cinematic villain with an old-timey death ray’ mode, and our hero pulling off daring rescues - and the occasional prank - with a helping hand from the most cutting-edge special-effects magic of the day.
Chandu the Magician is a film I talk about on my [Flying Cars and Food Pills website](http://www.flyingcarsandfoodpills.com/chandu-the-magician), although strictly for the death rays. No nipples at all. Still, you might find the background to be fun.
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### Author:  [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/30 "2016-11-27T23:15:59Z")
It’s interesting how even the most shocking, scandalous pre-code films would barely be rated PG or PG-13 today. How times have changed.
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### Author:  [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2016, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/31 "2016-11-27T23:38:44Z")
heck todays pg13 would of been an R 10 or so years ago
I think the mpaa silenty caved in and loosened up the rules because the studios and such learned pg 13 was the money maker rating so …
Although today you see or hear things in kids cartoons that would of gotten them banned 10 years ago like the word sucks and such
And in basic cable tv apparently the only word you cant say is the f word …
Funny thing is the movie critics said that would happen when the pg 13 rating first came out about what 85 ?
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2016, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/32 "2016-11-28T01:46:40Z")
> [@nightshadea](#):
>
> Funny thing is the movie critics said that would happen when the pg 13 rating first came out about what 85 ?
You mean they predicted the continuation of a trend already in place for 50 years? What a amazing feat of insight!
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### Author:  [@Grumbacher\_Red](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumbacher_Red)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2016, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/33 "2016-11-28T03:38:05Z")
One of my favorites is the 1933 ‘When Ladies Meet’ about a female writer (a career woman!) who is writing a novel about a love triangle while in one herself. It stars Myrna Loy and Robert Montgomery. There is an older actress in it named Alice Brady who plays a character named Bridget Drake, and she delivers this memorable line about the plight of the modern woman:
“I tell you this is an awfully hard age for a good woman to live in - I mean a woman who wants to have any fun. The old instincts of right and wrong merely hold you back. You’re neither one thing nor the other. You’re neither happy and bad, nor good and contented. You’re just discontentedly decent.”
Discontentedly decent, indeed! Have things really changed all that much for us this many decades later? The costuming is stylishly fabulous, the dialogue is witty, and I was surprised at the very frank conversations about divorce and lovers, considering they weren’t really that long after the Victorian and Edwardian eras, this must have been shocking! And what was very refreshing was that Myrna Loy’s character was in a love triangle, but it wasn’t that she was vying for the attention of a man from another woman, she was trying to decide between 2 men. She was the one with the power, not them.
It was remade later in the forties with Greer Garson, and of course, lost all the pre-code bite.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2016, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/34 "2016-11-28T13:46:42Z")
> [@Grumbacher\_Red](#):
>
> One of my favorites is the 1933 ‘When Ladies Meet’ about a female writer (a career woman!) who is writing a novel about a love triangle while in one herself. It stars Myrna Loy and Robert Montgomery. There is an older actress in it named Alice Brady who plays a character named Bridget Drake, and she delivers this memorable line about the plight of the modern woman:
The movie is based on a play by [Rachel Crowthers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Crothers), whose plays “often dealt with contemporary social themes and moral problems affecting women, including the sexual double standard, trial marriage, “free love,” divorce, prostitution, and Freudian psychology.” Remember this was 1933, after Prohibition. The whole of the 1920s were occupied with divorce and frank sexual talk.
Crowthers herself was an older woman, having been born in 1878, one of a number of older women to write provocatively about sex. Gertrude Atherton and Elinor Glyn were others whose scandalous 20s works were made into scandalous 20s movies. The New York book and stage worlds were light years ahead of Hollywood in sophistication and discussion of real world emotional problems. Most plays got watered down in Hollywood, pre-Code or no, but every successful play got remade there sooner or later in some form. (So did the unsuccessful ones.)
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### Author:  [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2016, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/35 "2016-11-28T14:17:39Z")
I don’t know much about the code, but Wiki tells me, “The production code sought not only to determine what could be portrayed on screen but also to promote traditional values… All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience… Under some circumstances, politicians, police officers, and judges could be villains, as long as it was clear that those individuals portrayed as villains were the exceptions to the rule”. Wiki also says the code was adopted in 1930 but not strictly enforced until 1934.
All of which explains how a gloomy, dark, anti-authority film like _[I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Fugitive_from_a_Chain_Gang)_ got made in 1932. Corrupt police and judges, brutal prison guards, sympathetic inmates, a marriage based on blackmail, and one of the most depressing endings of any film. The evil are not punished; moral codes are not upheld; authority is not respected.
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### Author:  [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2016, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/36 "2016-11-28T18:16:42Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#):
>
> Two of my pre-code favorites are THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS and DOCTOR X, both 1932.
>
> The first is an adaptation of H.G. Wells’s _The Island of Dr. Moreau_, about a surgeon who experiments on changing full-grown mammals into human simulations. Banned in England for, like, forever. Also thought to be a “lost film.” Charles Laughton chews the scenery delightfully. The “Panther Woman” provides the forbidden fruit, and Laughton’s obvious sadism at herding the “things” into his surgical “House of Pain” for biological updates is something that wouldn’t have happened after 1934.
>
> LOST SOULS is also the source of “The natives are restless tonight.” And the Recital of the Law by the Beast Men, shouted in response to Laughton’s whip-cracks, is the source of “Are we not MEN???”
>
> Altogether, a great piece of early '30s Weird Cinema. I watch it at least once a year.
>
> DOCTOR X is just…bizarre. Like MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM it was filmed in two-tone Technicolor, and starred Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. Just watch it. “Artificial…FLESSSHHHHHH…!”
>
> And oh god yes you should watch BROKEN BLOSSOMS. Fell in love with Lillian Gish when I first saw it at age 13.
Why do you say it was considered lost? I remember seeing it on Creature Features in 1970 and many times after until the VHS came out.
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### Author:  [@Grumbacher\_Red](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumbacher_Red)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2016, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/37 "2016-11-29T00:07:05Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> The movie is based on a play by [Rachel Crowthers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Crothers), whose plays “often dealt with contemporary social themes and moral problems affecting women, including the sexual double standard, trial marriage, “free love,” divorce, prostitution, and Freudian psychology.” Remember this was 1933, after Prohibition. The whole of the 1920s were occupied with divorce and frank sexual talk.
>
> Crowthers herself was an older woman, having been born in 1878, one of a number of older women to write provocatively about sex. Gertrude Atherton and Elinor Glyn were others whose scandalous 20s works were made into scandalous 20s movies. The New York book and stage worlds were light years ahead of Hollywood in sophistication and discussion of real world emotional problems. Most plays got watered down in Hollywood, pre-Code or no, but every successful play got remade there sooner or later in some form. (So did the unsuccessful ones.)
Interesting insights, thanks!
I have been wracking my brain before I replied, trying to think of what movie it was I was watching on TCM a few weeks back. Ben Mankiewicz was giving his commentary and brought up that the ending of the movie and the fate of the villain had to be changed due to the fact that the picture was post-code, and the villain could not be allowed to go unpunished or suffer any consequences, as in the original work…but for to save my life I can’t recall the name of the film. Sorry, I don’t have something more concrete to contribute, but I imagine there were other cases where similar alterations were made.
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### Author:  [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2016, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/38 "2016-11-29T02:44:35Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#):
>
> Why do you say it was considered lost? I remember seeing it on Creature Features in 1970 and many times after until the VHS came out.
Lucky you! I had to wait until I was an adult and ISLAND OF LOST SOULS showed up on some film geek program.
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine had a feature in the early '70s of Beast Man photos from scenes that had been edited out due to Overt Horrificness. The heavily bowlderized print was what was showing up back then on the teevee.
You can now buy a gorgeous unedited version from the Criterion Collection. And you should do it RIGHT NOW! Best horror movie EVAR.
“Mr. Parker…do you know what it means to feel like GOD?” A similar line was cut from Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN when it was re-released post-Code. I’m sure it didn’t get to stay in Charles Laughton’s mouth…
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### Author:  [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2016, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-code-hollywood-films/773040/39 "2016-11-29T05:20:44Z")
I was always extremely squicked out by post-code **American Beauty** , which has a teenaged girl dancing around with her breasts exposed.
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