Motion Picture Production Code - Background

Background

In 1922, after some risqué films and a series of off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars, the studios enlisted Presbyterian elder Will H. Hays to rehabilitate Hollywood's image. Hollywood in the 1920s was expected to be somewhat corrupt, and many felt the movie industry had always been morally questionable. Political pressure was building, with legislators in 37 states introducing almost 100 movie censorship bills in 1921. Hays was paid the then-lavish sum of $100,000 a year. Hays, Postmaster General under Warren G. Harding and former head of the Republican National Committee, served for 25 years as president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), where he "defended the industry from attacks, recited soothing nostrums, and negotiated treaties to cease hostilities." The move mimicked the decision Major League Baseball had made in hiring judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as League Commissioner the previous year to quell questions about the integrity of baseball in the wake of the 1919 World Series gambling scandal; The New York Times even called Hays the "screen Landis". Hays introduced a set of recommendations dubbed "The Formula" in 1924, which the studios were advised to heed, and asked filmmakers to describe to his office the plots of pictures they were planning on making. The Supreme Court had already decided unanimously in 1915 in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio that free speech did not extend to motion pictures, and while there had been token attempts to clean up the movies before, such as when the studios formed the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI) in 1916, little had come of the efforts.

New York became the first state to take advantage of the Supreme Court's decision by instituting a censorship board in 1921. Virginia followed suit the following year, with eight individual states having a board by the advent of sound film. But many of these were ineffectual. By the 1920s the New York stage, a frequent source of subsequent screen material, had topless shows, performances filled with curse words, mature subject matters, and sexually suggestive dialogue.

Early in the sound system conversion process, it became apparent that what might be acceptable in New York would not be so in Kansas. In 1927 Hays suggested studio executives form a committee to discuss film censorship. Irving G. Thalberg of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Sol Wurtzel of Fox, and E. H. Allen of Paramount responded by collaborating on a list they called the "Don’ts and Be Carefuls" based on items that were challenged by local censor boards, and which consisted of eleven subjects best avoided, and twenty-six to be handled very carefully. The list was approved by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Hays created the SRC to oversee its implementation. But there was still no way to enforce tenets. The controversy surrounding film standards came to a head in 1929.