The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code

3. Welcome Joe Breen!

3 Welcome Joe Breen! Joseph Ignatius Breen "spoke Hollywood." Tough and brash and larger than life, he was "just dumb enough," one associate recalled, and could see clear through the tinsel of the Tinseltown moguls. Sons ofimmigrants, the Breen men were reared on the streets of Philadelphia. One brother graduated from St. Joseph's College and maintained a long association with the Jesuit campus; another became a priest. Joe had attended St. Joseph's but had dropped out by 1908 to learn the newspaper trade. Rather like the moguls who inflated studio vitae to complement their new status, however, Breen always called himself a college graduate. Breen worked for several hometown papers in Philadelphia, traveled overseas as foreign correspondent, then moved to Chicago. There he directed press relations for the 1926 Eucharistic Congress and later for the World's Fair and the Peabody Coal Company. He had pals in the newspaper business, the censor boards, and the Church, and he could read them all. Breen knew when to josh and when to genuflect: he addressed the Right Reverend Monsignor Joseph M. Corrigan as "my dear Bozo" and Chicago censor board maven Father Dinneen as "Father." Breen also knew when to glad-hand and when to backstab. He understood and respected power but would not be cowed. No less than Hannibal, Breen loved war. He had survived "the confusion we had in England and Belgium during the Grand Fracas of 1914-1918 (I saw no service in France) and the chaos that followed in Germany, Poland, Austria et aI, in 1919." Though peace was good, war was better. War compelled devotion to cause. It demanded what Hemingway called grace under pressure. Europe in the teens, however, was "nothing to compare" to Hollywood in the early thir- Welcome Joe Breen! 35 ties. The moguls owned the battlefield in 1933. and they controlled more loose women than General Hooker. Could DoctorWingate rout them alone? Breen thought not. As early as September 1931, when Chicago censor Pinkie Sigler rampaged through Waterloo Bridge, Breen had run interference for Universal and the Studio Relations office. Breen approached Father Dinneen, whom he knew through Quigley, and convinced the priest to speak with the Chicago board. Breen performed other such services throughout 1931, and within nine months of the Waterloo affair was regularly screening pictures in Hollywood. By December 1932, with Joy en route to Fox and Wingate mired in controversy , Breen found himself meeting with the Hollywood Jury that examined-and approved-A Farewell to Anns. He soon understood that handling Hays Office public relations was much like janitorial work: better to control the moguls than clean up after them. He also understood that the Association neededProduction Code enforcement, and that real Production Code enforcement would call for a real Production Code chief, perhaps someone whose exploits during the Grand Fracas would steel him for the inevitable Production Code wars. Breen may well have ruled the college basketball arena at St. Joseph's, as he often claimed; he certainly had the hardness and drive of a competitor on the court. During his early months in the Hollywood office, however, he appeared content to defer to Martin Quigley. Breen and Quigley, two Catholic power brokers, respected yet never wholly trusted each other. Breen called Quigley "Pops." The nickname irritated Quigley, less because he was the younger man than because he was the more important and the name debased him. Hollywood producers made pictures and read Variety, bankers and film company presidents made money and read the Motion Picture Herald ; Quigley published the latter. Though the Herald concentrated on exhibition and distribution, Quigley made the Production Code his hobbyhorse. He frequently reported and editorialized against Production Code violations, for he knew that Herald readers in corporate suites could force stronger compliance. Perhaps more important, Quigley also knew that the mainstream American press raided the Herald for hints ofrough-and-tumble Hollywood in-fighting and that studio heads feared the publicity and the embarrassment. Breen un- 36 The Dame in the Kimono derstood the delicate balance that existed between the movies and the media, especially when Martin Quigley controlled the scales. In early March 1933, Breen wrote to Will Hays that "Q. is very much discouraged about the whole Code business. He feels that our folks here ... continue to ignore it. ... He feels that the staff which succeeded Col. Joy is not a good one.... I never saw...