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

4. Dead End

4 Dead End "We're off for Hollywood," Princess Tamara purred in The Women, "where dear Mr. Hays will protect me." The Princess Tamaras of the world assumed that it was Will Hays who had tamed the movies; using his administrative skills and Washington contacts, he had certainly improved the climate for trade and contained the prospect of antitrust action. Across the country, however, on the West Coast, producers and industry observers knew that one ofHays' lieutenants had more directly affected the nature ofscreen content. The English trade paper Film Weekly called Hays "a mere Hindenberg," reserving for Joseph Breen the title "the Hitler of Hollywood." By 1935, Breen had earned it. Breen cut an imposing figure in Hollywood, a town where image mattered. His two hundred-pound frame suggested authority, his personality exuded it. He cashiered properties, rewrote screenplays, supervised directors, and edited films. The moguls employed him (at least technically) but could not intimidate him. "The responsible heads of the studios are a cowardly lot. They are, too, an ignorant lot," he told Hays. Zanuck could threaten, Selznick could rant, Mayer could cry: once Breen drew his thin lips together and fixed his wide-set eyes, he would not move. With the powder-puffHollywood Jury sent home and the Motion Picture Association board chastened by the Legion of Decency, Breen could issue authoritative decisions without much fear ofreversal. In 1934 and 1935, the Code was the Word, the gospel according to Breen. "It is still a hell of a battle to keep [the producers] in line," one Breen associate told another. "If you could see some of the scripts in Joe's office, you would not believe there had ever been any contro- 60 The Dame in the Kimono versy at all." The Production Code director never let down. He not only whipped the lions but attempted to make them like it. "I am looking at pictures morning, noon, and night until I am almost frantic ," he wrote to an East Coast colleague in summer 1934. "So far, so good. We have noted a disposition on the part of the studios to do the right and proper thing. Our difficulty comes by way of the task of convincing them that that which we seek to have them do is the right and proper thing." For Breen, though, the job was manageable. When the stout Irishman traveled abroad later that summer, he boasted that he and the Code had reformed Hollywood. Really reformed Hollywood. No blarney. The screen would no longer "leave the question of right or wrong in doubt or fogged." Or "throw the sympathy of the audience with sin, crime, wrong doing, or evil." Or "present evil alluringly." Virgins in cellophane were out of fashion; buttons would henceforth be buttoned, zippers zipped. Those "nude and semi-nude beauties who have for so long adorned Hollywood 'musicals,'" the Production Code director told Film Weekly, "will be sent back to the dressing room to discard their transparencies." As Depression squalls turned to showers and sunshine, the nation and Hollywood recovered their balance. Studio bookkeepers used more black ink, theater attendance approached pre-Depression levels , and the twin threats of federal regulation and Catholic boycotts faded away. With the clinking glasses-and the reformers-silent, the press hailed the movies' self-control. A North Carolina paper cheered the producers' movement from the "sensationalized sex-madness " of the recent past to the current "level ofcultural achievement," while the Rocky Mountain News asked readers to recall "the pictures you have seen during the past year" and the "high percentage" that were "clean entertainment." Will Hays so loved the encomiums that he reproduced six pages of them in the Association annual report of March 1936. Hays won two more blessings three months later. The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ commended the work of the Production Code Administration, and Pope Pius XI broadcast an encyclical letter (probably authored by Martin Quigley) that noted the improved moral content of American films. The Pope, who praised Catholic vigilance more than Hollywood control, used some telling Dead End 61 qualifiers: "crime and vice are portrayed less frequently; sin no longer is so openly approved or acclaimed; false ideals of life no longer are presented in so flagrant a manner to the impressionable minds of youth." Hays overlooked the "less frequently" and "so flagrant," and tabbed the papal message a valentine. No less welcome...