Morality and Entertainment - The Origins of The Motion Picture Production Code

Morality and Entertainment: The Origins of the Motion Picture Production Code
Author(s): Stephen Vaughn

Source: The Journal of American History , Jun., 1990, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Jun., 1990), pp.
39-65
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American
Historians
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Morality and Entertainment:
The Origins of the Motion
Picture Production Code
Stephen Vaughn
Few new technologies have affected communication and society more profoundly
than motion pictures. A "far more elastic medium" than the stage, movies made
ideas previously restricted to comparatively small groups of readers and urban
theatergoers accessible to virtually everyone by projecting them on film screens
everywhere, from the largest city to the smallest village.' By speaking to mass au-
diences directly, movies all too easily bypassed traditional agencies of socialization -
the church, the school, the family. For many they came to symbolize the important
changes taking place in the structure of power and influence in the early twentieth-
century United States, and those groups who feared that their own influence in so-
ciety was diminishing viewed them as a threat. Fierce debates over the content and
control of this new medium arose in the early days of silent film and intensified with
the advent of sound technology. Out of these controversies emerged efforts to regu-
late motion picture entertainment, efforts that culminated in the Motion Picture
Production Code of 1930, an attempt to bind movies to Judeo-Christian morality.2
Stephen Vaughn is associate professor of mass communications history in the School of Journalism and Mass Com-
munication, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
1 On comparison of movies to the stage, see Martin J. Quigley, "A Keen Comment," Exhibitors Herald-World,
June 15, 1929, p. 88.
2 Historical scholarship on the origins of the Motion Picture Production Code has been based primarily on pub
lished accounts of the participants. It has not utilized either the Will H. Hays Papers (Indiana State Library, Indi-
anapolis), the Daniel A. Lord Papers (Jesuit Missouri Province Archives, Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus,
St. Louis), the Archdiocese of Chicago Archives (Archives and Records Center, Archdiocese of Chicago), the Wilfrid
Parsons Papers (Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington), or the Production Code Administration
Files (Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills). Consequently, a confusing picture of
the code's inception emerges from these accounts. See Martin Quigley, Decency in Motion Pictures (New York,
1937), 51; Martin Quigley to Editor, America, March 31, 1956, p. 705; Daniel A. Lord, Played by Ear: The Autobi-
ography of DanielA. Lord, Sj. (Chicago, 1955), 303-5; and Will H. Hays, The Memoirs of Will H. Hays (Garden
City, N.Y., 1955), 439-42.
Histories of the Production Code vary on its authorship. See Paul W. Facey, The Legion of Decency: A Sociolog-
ical Analysis of the Emergence and Development of a Social Pressure Group (New York, 1945), 38-40; Ruth A.
Inglis, Freedom of the Movies: A Report on Self Regulation from the Commission of Freedom of the Press (Chicago,
1947), 117; Raymond Moley, The Hays Office (Indianapolis, 1945), 70-71; Neville March Hunnings, Film Censors
and the Law (London, 1967), 156; Richard S. Randall, Censorship of Movies: The Social and Political Control of
a Mass Medium (Madison, 1968), 199-200; Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American
Movies (New York, 1975), 173-74; Garth Jowett, Film: The Democratic Art (Boston, 1976), 241; and Edward de
Grazia and Roger K. Newman, Banned Films: Movies, Censors, and the First Amendment (New York, 1982), 33.
The Journal of American History June 1990 39

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40 The Journal of American History June 1990
As a democratic art form accessible to the masses, motion pictures quickly gener-
ated both enthusiasm and alarm. Their attraction seemed irresistible. To some ob-
servers, they offered "limitless possibilities" for serving humanity. They promised
to stimulate local business and world trade, promote international understanding
and goodwill, and transmit great literature and the latest medical techniques to the
hinterlands. To others, this new medium, which had emerged from urban ghettoes
and achieved extraordinary popularity well before World War I, presented a cor-
rupting potential. Jane Addams, in 1912, warned about the magnetic power of the
local movie theater. This "house of dreams," which broke "the blankness and gray-
ness" of everyday life, she wrote, threatened to fill youthful minds with that which
was "filthy and poisonous," leaving them with "a sense of dreariness" and "a skepti-
cism of life's value." In the minds of many critics, whose anti-Semitism often per-
meated the controversies surrounding cinema, the responsibility for this pernicious
form of entertainment rested with those first- and second-generation Jewish im-
migrants who seemed to control motion pictures.3 The young Jesuit priest Daniel
A. Lord, who helped write the Production Code, alluded toJewish control of cinema
as he protested film's subversive influence on Christianity. He realized early in his
career that when he watched the movies he was "in the presence of a medium so
powerful that it well might change our whole attitude toward life, civilization, and
established customs."4
Progressive reformers and religious and civic organizations, as well as local
authorities, tried with varying degrees of success to suppress pictures that dealt with
a wide range of controversial themes: criminal violence, the depiction of national
or ethnic groups, birth control, suicide, drinking, abortion, sexual license, and ra-
cial relations.5 As early as 1908, Chicago police refused to permit nickelodeons to
show Night Riders (1908) because it encouraged "malicious mischief, arson, and
murder." In 1915, New York City's license commissioner banned The Ordeal (1914),
fearing that its story about the Franco-Prussian War would be offensive to Ge'rman-
Americans. Two years later, the city prohibited the showing of Birth Control (1917),
which depicted the work of Margaret Sanger. The following year, Kansas banned
The Easiest Wazy (1917) because it told about a fallen woman's road from urban night
life through attempted suicide to her ultimate redemption in the arms of the man
she loved. Both NewJersey and New York (in 1926 and 1928 respectively) suppressed
The Naked Truth (TIN.T.) (1924), which was about venereal disease. In 1929 Bir-
mingham, Alabama, banned The Road to Ruin (1928), which dealt with female
drinking, abortion, and incest.6
3Martin J. Quigley, "Aiding Humanities," Exhibitors Herald-World, Oct. 26, 1929, p. 22; Jane Addams, The
Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York, 1912), 81, 80, 103; Patricia Erens, The Jew in American Cinema
(Bloomington, 1984), 2-4, 53-54, 75-77; and Lester D. Friedman, Hollywood's Image ofthejew (New York, 1982),
4-9. On the origins of the early film industry, see Jowett, Film, 35-42; Russell Merritt, "Nickelodeon Theaters,
1905-1914: Building an Audience for Movies," in The American Film Industry, ed. Tino Balio (Madison, 1985),
83-102; Sklar, Movie-Made America, 3-32; and Lary May, Screening out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and
the Motion Picture Industry, 1896-1929 (New York, 1980).
4Lord, Played by Ear, 273.
5 Many Progressives, of course, also saw a positive side to motion pictures as a medium through which to teach
the principles of Americanism.
6 De Grazia and Newman, BannedFilms, 180. See also ibid., 7-9, 13, 177-80, 183-84, 186-88, 195-96, 203-5,

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Morality and Entertainment 41
Critics were worried not merely about the content of specific films. The problems
went deeper, into the nature of the movie community and into the technology of
film itself. Of concern were the influence of cinema upon its audience and which
agencies should be permitted to communicate society's values. Although no age
group was thought to be immune from the seductive power of film, the nation's
young seemed especially vulnerable. For some critics it was axiomatic that actors and
actresses were licentious, and as role models for the young or otherwise impression-
able they were poor if not dangerous substitutes for the examples to be found in
the family, church, or school. When a woman died in 1921 after a Labor Day
weekend party featuring bootleg liquor in the San Francisco hotel room of Roscoe
"Fatty" Arbuckle, the comedian became "a symbol of everything objectionable"
about Hollywood. The problem, though, was not simply with the Arbuckles of the
acting world; it was with the means of communication that had provided them with
their notoriety. "Everywhere, all about, is the movie," Alice Miller Mitchell wrote
about children and film in 1929, "flashing shadows of life on a screen, shadows
which Youth thinks are real," yet which in reality were reflections of experiences "far
beyond their years" and which robbed them of "the preciousness of childhood."
"The movie is the story-book of the age," and "the whole world sits and turns the
pages of this huge story-book." Film so towered above other forms of communication
in "its influence upon human conduct," wrote the Catholic publisher Martin J.
Quigley, that it threatened to destroy "those principles upon which home and civili-
zation are based" and thus become "the curse of the modern world."7
How, then, did one harness this powerful new medium? Was it possible to resolve
the tension between values and ideas that this innovation brought? What kinds of
restraints were desirable? Was control even possible? Out of such questions grew the
controversy over whether motion picture entertainment should be bound to a stan-
dard of morality independent of public taste. Hollywood producers, who constantly
sought to expand their freedom, wanted films to be judged by their audiences.
Many critics, both religious and civic-minded, wanted movies tied to traditional
Judeo-Christian ethics. The Catholic hierarchy in particular became a powerful par-
ticipant in this debate and played an important role in the ultimate adoption of
the Motion Picture Production Code in early 1930. A victory for the critics in that
it sought to commit cinema to the Ten Commandments and imposed prior censor-
ship on all film scripts, the code represented a major effort by the film industry
self-regulation.
In retrospect, it is remarkable that the Production Code of 1930 came into being
at all. That studio executives, who only grudgingly acknowledged the need for any
guidelines, would pledge themselves to such a document can best be explained by
208-9. Chicago authorities also prohibited The james Boys in Missouri (1908), "the first known reported case of
a movie banned through official denial of a permit required by law," ibid., 178.
7On Roscoe Arbuckle as symbol, Alice Ames Winter to Will Hays, telegram, [1930?], An American Tragedy
file, Production Code Administration Files. Alice Miller Mitchell, Children and Movies (Chicago, 1929), 147, 148,
4. Quigley, Decency in Motion Pictures, 99, 3, 4. On the "Fatty" Arbuckle trials and scandal, see de Grazia and
Newman, Banned Films, 23-24; and Sklar, Movie-Made America, 78.

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political, social, and economic developments coinciding with the movie industry's
transition to sound technology during the late 1920s.
The "magical transformation" to sound, as Harry Warner (of Warner Bros.) called
it, made cinema even more lifelike and dynamic.8 By giving voices to actors and ac-
tresses, a gift that was professionally fatal to some but that enhanced the com-
municative powers of many others, sound enhanced the illusion of reality in film,
making it even more attractive to audiences. It also dramatically enlarged the range
of screen entertainment because it became possible to be both more forthright and
more subtle in conveying thoughts. The double entendre, a sly emphasis upon an
appropriate or inappropriate word, could alter the meaning of an entire scene. Be-
cause it was now easier to circumvent the spirit if not the letter of any code of con-
duct imposed on the film industry, sound increased the worries of those who wished
to regulate movies. The new sound technology posed an even graver threat to the
status quo than silent pictures, with the result that public demands for government
censorship intensified.
Even before the advent of sound technology, film producers had to contend with
government controls at many levels. As early as 1907, the city of Chicago established
a board to control movies, and by 1922 seven states had similar censorship bodies.
Proposals for federal regulations appeared regularly before Congress. Foreign re-
strictions, threatening the significant market abroad, were also a persistent worry
for Hollywood executives. The arrival of talking pictures made the problem of cen-
sorship even more acute. The cutting or banning of movies that had been produced
with sound was a much more expensive proposition than alteration of silent films.
Furthermore, studios that chose to fight this external regulation found little comfort
in the courts because the American judicial system considered motion pictures a
"business pure and simple." Not until 1952 were movies granted protection under
the First Amendment.9
Prior to the transition to talking pictures, Hollywood was able to deflect many
efforts to impose external governmental regulations by creating in 1922 the Motion
Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA). An example of what one
scholar has called "Hooverian associationalism," the MPPDA was among several self-
regulatory organizations that emerged in the 1920s whose origins traced back to the
"new associationalism" of the Progressive Era. Although the MPPDA was the execu-
8 "Harry Warner Tells Story of Birth of Sound Pictures," speech to League of American Penwomen, Jan. 10,
1930, p. 1, Hays Papers.
9 Censorship boards existed in Florida, Kansas, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Mas-
sachusetts had passed a censorship law in 1921 although it was defeated in a referendum. By 1929, about a hundred
municipalities of over 2,500 people had passed censorship legislation-a comparatively small percentage of the
incorporated cities then in existence. SeeJowett, Film, 114, 118-19, 166-68; and Ford H. MacGregor, "Official Cen-
sorship Legislation," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 128 (Nov. 1926), 170. The
Supreme Court considered movies "a business pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit like other spec-
tacles, and not to be regarded as part of the press of the country or as organs of public opinion." See Mutual Film
Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, 236 (1915) US. Reports at 230. See also de Grazia and Newman,
Banned Films, 5, 80-83. On international film censorship, see Hunnings, Film Censors and the Law. On movie
attendance in the United States in 1930, see Andrew Bergman, We're in the Money: Depression America and Its
Films (New York, 1971), xi.

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tive arm of a trade association and not part of

respects it functioned "as a quasi-governmenta
regulatory resources that had allegedly develop
remember, though, that the MPPDA, establish
the industry was serious about self-regulation, was also a public relations agency
whose goal was to put the best face possible on Hollywood. The regulation of films
was not an end in itself but rather a means by which more severe restrictions could
be avoided. The MPPDA's members paid Will H. Hays, whose name later became
synonymous with censorship, a hefty salary of more than $100,000 a year to serve
as its president.
An apostle of American progress who was optimistic about cinema's potential for
good, Hays accentuated the positive qualities of film, as one might expect a
spokesperson for the industry to do. He championed movies as promoters of
trade "animated catalogs" that advertised American goods throughout the world.
He emphasized film's educational and inspirational value, pointing out that it could
bring the best in music, literature, science, and medicine to nearly everyone, no
matter how isolated. And if one could harness this new technology for positive ends,
he reasoned, civilization would have a powerful engine that would lift it to new
heights. Motion pictures, Hays told a radio audience early in 1930, would help to
raise living standards everywhere and prove to be "the greatest of all agencies"
promoting world peace."
Hays began his career as a small-town lawyer in Indiana and rose through the
state's political ranks to become a figure of national prominence. A Presbyterian and
political conservative, he became chairman of the national Republican party in 1920
and later postmaster general under President Warren G. Harding. A man of many
faces, Hays could wear "the most meticulously knotted evening tie on Broadway"
and also "out-whittle anyone" in his hometown of Sullivan, Indiana. 0. 0. McIntyre
called him "a slicker among the worldly," and he was without a doubt a skillful poli-
tician; he succeeded in blocking federal and state censorship of the movies between
1922 and 1929, in part by convincing the public that the movie industry was serious
about self-regulation.12
Indeed, for Hays, government control was the greatest disaster threatening Holly-
wood, and self-regulation offered the best and perhaps the only viable alternative.
The MPPDA's original charter in 1922 had called on studios to maintain the highest
possible "artistic" and "moral" standards. To persuade the public that the MPPDA
was in fact attempting to achieve this goal, Hays established a public relations
department in March 1925 and opened its doors to representatives from women's
associations, civic groups, and members of the general public who wished to com-
ment on motion pictures. To critics, he pointed to two codes adopted by the in-
10 See Ellis Hawley, "Three Faces of Hooverian Associationalism: Lumber, Aviation, and Movies, 1921-1930,"
in Regulation in Perspective: Historical Essays, Thomas K. McCraw, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 97, 97, 115, 101.
11 Will H. Hays, "The Film Is an International Salesman," speech delivered to National Trade Council, Los An-
geles, May 22, 1930, p. 1, Hays Papers; Will H. Hays, radio address, March 29, 1930, mimeographed, p. 5, ibid.
12 0. 0. McIntyre, "The Truth about the Czar of the Movies," New Movie Magazine, 2 (March 1930), 44.

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00
Will H. Hays (center, holding hat) poses beside Jack Warner (in shirt-sleeves) on a Warner
Bros. set shortly after his arrival in Hollywood. Courtesy Warner Bros., Inc.,
and USC Warner Bros. Archives. All Rights Reserved.
dustry. The first, "The Formula," adopted in 1924, asked studios to present ques-
tionable scripts to the MPPDA for inspection. The second set of guidelines, the
"Don'ts and Be Carefuls," was drawn up three years later by one of Hays's associates,
Jason Joy, who had visited several state censorship boards in 1927; it presented a
list of the eleven "don'ts" and twenty-six "be carefuls" that most often troubled po-
litical censors. In reality these guidelines were little more than window dressing be-
cause Hays had little means of enforcing them.13
With the advent of talking movies, neither the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" nor
Hays's political acumen could silence calls for government controls or mollify many
13 On the early articles of incorporation of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association
(MPPDA), see "Organizing Production to Meet Public Taste: Industry Relations," memorandum, p. 1, Hays Papers.
Although this memorandum is filed "[1930]?" it was surely drafted later, possibly in 1933. The "Don'ts and Be
Carefuls" forbade showing profanity, nudity, "illegal traffic in drugs," sexual perversion, white slavery, miscegena-
tion, "sex hygiene and venereal diseases," scenes of childbirth, children's sex organs, "ridicule of the clergy,' and
"willful offense to any nation, race or creed." Among those subjects that had to be treated with care were arson,
sedition, showing methods of crime, marriage, the "deliberate seduction of girls:' and "excessive or lustful kissing,
particularly when one character or the other is a 'heavy."' See Inglis, Freedom of the Movies, 114-16. See also de
Grazia and Newman, Banned Films, 31-32; Inglis, Freedom of the Movies, 97-116; and Jowett, Film, 176-78,
233-40.

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groups already profoundly unhappy with Hollyw

pervision took at least two forms. Many critics w
tent of films; others, worried about the studios
the distribution and exhibition of movies, want
industry's monopolistic practices. Some measure
ies can be found in a memorandum prepared fo
counsel, Charles C. Pettijohn. He estimated that m
latures meeting in 1930 would consider film cen
the Brookhart bill, proposed by Sen. Smith Bro
threatened to outlaw block booking. Although t
producers could not rest easy; President Herber
ment, alarmed by the growing power of the lar
action against the movie industry. With threats
overhead, most Hollywood executives were willi
content.14
The Hoover administration became increasingl
such studios as Warner Bros. and Fox Film Corpo
The Republican Hays had access to Hoover, but h
met with the president in late August, Hoover
was "causing . .. a lot of worry" and had left "t
not care anything about the Clayton Act." The
especially tried Hoover's patience. Hays offered t
these problems; he began negotiating with John
torney General William D. Mitchell, but by earl
Hays's efforts had not appeased the Justice Dep
that criminal proceedings against offending stud
These threats of government intervention tro
them extremely sensitive to critics of the indus
tion to defuse the arsenal of its opponents. The
content came from many sources, including civ
the National Congress of Parents and Teachers and the General Federation of
Women's Clubs. Some of the most vociferous critics, though, were Protestant and
Catholic groups with grave misgivings about motion pictures. Their doubts had ex-
isted long before the industry's conversion to talking pictures, and they feared that
the new sound technology would further undermine Christian civilization. Unim-
pressed by the MPPDA, they accused Hays and his associates of being little more
than "moral masks" hiding Hollywood's depravity.16
14 C. C. Pettijohn to Hays, memorandum, 1929, p. 2, Hays Papers. See also Moley, Hays Office, 195.
15 On Herbert Hoover's impressions, see Hays, memorandum, Aug. 28, 1929, Hays Papers. See also Hays to
Dear Chief [Herbert Hoover], Aug. 28, 1929, ibid.; and John Lord O'Brian to Hays, Oct. 8, 1929, ibid.
16 By January 1930, for example, the General Federation of Women's Clubs had preview committees in every
state except Oklahoma, Indiana, and Vermont. Other women's groups monitoring films in cooperation with the
MPPDA included the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae and the National Society of the Daughters
of the American Revolution. See Alice Ames (Mrs. Thomas G.) Winter, "Women's Organizations and the Films,"

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Those Protestants and Catholics most upset by films saw a connection between
moving pictures and disturbing trends in modern literature and art that had be-
come especially pronounced since the end of the Great War. They believed that
these currents in contemporary thought espoused abandoning self-restraint and
reveling in self-indulgence, thus undermining family life, religion, and established
order. Implicit in their concerns, one senses, was a fear that motion pictures could
dissolve the internal checks of conscience necessary for the maintenance of Chris-
tianity. Quigley later summarized these fears when he wrote that contemporary
literature and film promoted "false sex standards, incitements to sexual emotion,
glorification of crime and criminals and debasing brutality."917
Criticism varied widely. Some indictments took on an anti-Semitic character as
they pointed to the Jewish origins and control of the motion picture industry.
Scarcely an issue of the Methodist publication Churchman, for example, failed to
attack the MPPDA in the latter half of 1929, accusing Hays and his secretary, Carl
E. Milliken, of being "a smoke screen to mask" the "meretricious methods" of
"shrewd Hebrews who make the big money by selling crime and shame." Other criti-
cisms of the movies reflected a deeper uneasiness about modern life and philosophy
in general. Even Hays himself came under attack. Divorced in 1929 after a twenty-
seven-year marriage and rumored to be engaged to an attractive divorcee, he found
himself in a vulnerable position; his personal life did little to strengthen his
standing among people already convinced that movies were undermining the
family.18
Despite the viciousness of some criticism, Hays understood why the intensity of
attacks on film increased as sound became more widespread. "The very fact that the
'Don'ts' and 'Be Carefuls' were too often flaunted," he later wrote, demonstrated
"that the child had grown and had a right to know the reasons for the rules." During
the summer of 1929, he brooded about the problem of censorship and yearned "for
a corpus of philosophy" to support the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" - if only to placate
his critics.19
At about this time Hays received a telephone call from Martin Quigley, who ap-
parently had committed the rudiments of such a philosophy to paper. As publisher
of the Exhibitors Herald-World, a Hollywood trade journal, Quigley felt himself in
Nov. 30, 1929, Hays Papers. See also press release of General Federation of Women's Clubs, Jan. 9, 1930, ibid.;
Jowett, Film, 177-80; and Herbert Shenton, The Public Relations of the Motion Pictures (New York, 1971), 144-51.
17 Quigley, Decency in Motion Pictures, 31. For the cultural transformation the United States experienced in
the early twentieth century, see the work of such scholars as Daniel Joseph Singal, Lewis A. Erenberg, T. J. Jackson
Lears, Edward A. Purcell, Jr., J. David Hoeveler, Jr., Stow Persons, Henry F. May, Henry Steele Commager, and
Frederick J. Hoffman. Protestants and Catholics were by no means unified in their attitudes toward film. Some,
like Hays, a leader in the Presbyterian church, expressed genuine enthusiasm for the medium.
18 For attacks on Hays and the MPPDA, see the Churchman, July 6, 1929, p. 8; ibid., Aug. 3, 1929, pp. 8-9;
ibid., Sept. 21, 1929, p. 14; ibid., Nov. 2, 1929, p. 9; ibid., Dec. 7, 1929, p. 9; and ibid., Dec. 28, 1929, p. 14.
The Hays Papers reveal that the MPPDA president was under attack during 1929 and early 1930 not only by the
Churchman but by the Christian Century. After World War I, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian
groups also passed resolutions critical of motion pictures, as did the Central Conference of American Rabbis. See
de Grazia and Newman, Banned Films, 22. For rumors about Hays's remarriage, see Ulashington Post, Jan. 4, 1930,
p. 2.
19 Hays, Memoirs, 439.

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an awkward situation. As a Catholic, he professed to be deeply troubled by contem-

porary films. Nevertheless, to finance his publication, he accepted advertising that
publicized movies in an often salacious manner. He presumably had come to realize
that something more had to be done to regulate moving pictures. To Hays, who
knew that a new code would soon be necessary, Quigley's call could hardly have
come at a better time. The publisher seemed nicely situated to gain the ear of movie
producers.20
Quigley's position regarding motion pictures represents something of a paradox.
The Exhibitors Herald-World enthusiastically promoted movies. No less than Hays,
Quigley manifested optimism about the technology of this new medium, and his
publication was a leader in urging studios and theater managers to convert to sound.
Like Hays, Quigley abhorred government censorship, believing it threatened "the
successful development of sound pictures" not merely with "mutilation" but with
"ruination" itself. But more than Hays, Quigley was privately becoming increasing
disillusioned with the content of modern films. The genuineness of his disgust,
mostly likely rooted in his Catholicism, comes through in his corrspondence in late
1929, although there is comparatively little in the pages of the Exhibitors Herald-
World condemning specific movie themes or advertisements before January 1930.
In 1937, however, Quigley would write at length about film and morality in his book
Decency in Motion Pictures, claiming the existence of "objective moral standards"
and arguing that the "wisdom of the ages" had been set down concisely in the Ten
Commandments. Movies, intentionally or not, were agents of morality that molded
character. At the very least, pictures should seek not to "debase"; ideally, they should
itennoble."21
At the center of Quigley's 1937 concerns about motion pictures was his apprehen-
sion over "modern" thinking. Disgusted with what appeared to be accelerating
trends in post-World War I literature, he attacked literary works that emphasized
sexual, violent, or otherwise pessimistic themes. The "degraded character" of such
fiction was not merely a step backward but "a greased toboggan slide" toward new
depths.22
For cinema to fulfill its moral responsibility, therefore, censorship was essential.
Because film was so mobile and so easily dispersed, it was virtually impossible to
control once it had been produced and distributed. The problem required a drastic
prescription. The only adequate solution, Quigley argued, was prior censorship,
stopping the problem "at the source of production."23
Whether Quigley could have written about movie censorship with such clarity
and forcefulness in mid-1929 is uncertain. What is clear, though, is that the publi
Quigley- the writer of editorials for Exhibitors Herald-World- revealed a differen
tone, one that sounded very similar to that of the studio executives. The "gravest
20 Ibid.
21 MartinJ. Quigley, "Free Speech," Exhibitors Herald-W~orld, April 6, 1929, p. 22. Quigley, Decency in Motion
Pictures, 3, 13, 10, 9.
22 Ibid., 28.
23 Ibid., 49.

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question," he wrote in late summer and autumn 1929, was not morality in entertain-
ment but stabilizing and standardizing the industry's transition to sound.24
Throughout much of 1929, Quigley argued that Hollywood should be given
greater latitude.25 In many respects, he was saying what Hollywood executives
wanted to hear. In the final analysis, Quigley believed regulation must rest with
Hollywood. "Motion picture entertainment is the industry's responsibility," Quigley
wrote in June 1929, taking a position remarkably similar to the stand producers
would take several months later in the discussions leading up to the Production
Code. "It must be made with the industry's best judgment and then submitted,
without further complications to the public's judgment." Small wonder that Hays
would come to consider Quigley a puzzle.26
Many consider Quigley a co-architect of the Production Code; after World War
II he boasted sole authorship, a claim surely open to question. Hays considered
Quigley a devout Catholic, an experienced journalist with valuable Hollywood con-
tacts, "but not primarily a moralist." Quigley undoubtedly participated in the
deliberations that led to the drafting of the code, but his major contribution to t
adoption of the code was probably that of mediating between the movie industry
and the Catholic hierarchy.27
Other individuals also played critical roles in formulating the code and in getting
it adopted. These men included the Rev. Daniel A. Lord, George Cardinal Mun-
delein, and Harold S. Stuart. Lord, an outspoken critic of modernism, did more
than perhaps any other person to give the code its tone.28 Mundelein threw the pres-
tige of the Catholic church behind the new guidelines and helped persuade Stuart,
the president of the Halsey, Stuart investment firm, that the code should be ac-
cepted. And Stuart, by early 1930, occupied a powerful position in Hollywood's
financial affairs, one that gave him considerable influence among studio executives.
In a move that revealed his political sagacity, Hays in 1929 turned to Daniel A. Lord
for help in giving the new code a solid foundation in moral philosophy. Lord, then
a young Jesuit priest and dramatics teacher at St. Louis University, had a long-
24 MartinJ. Quigley, "The Great Question," Exhibitors Herald-Wbrld, Sept. 7, 1929, p. 20. See also Quigley
"The 'Herald-World' Award," ibid., Nov. 16, 1929, p. 18; Quigley, "The March on Memphis," ibid., Oct. 12, 1929,
p. 12; Quigley, "Forward!" ibid., Sept. 21, 1929, p. 18. On the need to standardize film, see ibid., Aug. 31, 1929,
p. 26; and Quigley, "Standard," ibid., Sept. 21, 1929, p. 18.
25 Unlike Hays, Quigley did not believe in trying to appease criticism by inviting groups from outside the in-
dustry to comment on films. See Quigley, "Meddling in Probation," ibid., June 1, 1929, p. 16; and Quigley, "Mrs.
Winter Comes," ibid., Oct. 19, 1929, p. 18. On Quigley's opposition to the Brookhart bill, Sunday blue laws, and
state and foreign censorship, see Quigley, "Small Town Institutions," ibid., April 20, 1929, p. 32; Quigley, "Mr.
Brookhart Interferes," ibid., May 18, 1929, p. 16; Quigley, "Legislative Nuisances," ibid., May 25, 1929, p. 18;
Quigley, "Censorship Abroad," ibid., July 27, 1929, p. 18; Quigley, "Calendar Morals," ibid., Nov. 2, 1929, p. 16.
26 Quigley, "Meddling in Production," ibid., June 1, 1929, p. 16. See Quigley, "The Moral Ear," ibid., April
13, 1929, pp. 22, 29; Quigley, "Free Speech," ibid., April 6, 1929, p. 22.
27 Hays, Memoirs, 440.
28 Lord's writings (as well as Quigley's Decency in Motion Pictures) reveal opposition to ways of thinking that
recent scholars have labeled "modernism." See Daniel Joseph Singal, "Towards a Definition of American Mod-
ernism," American Quarterly, 39 (Spring 1987), 7-26; and DanielJoseph Singal, The War Within: From Victor
to Modernist Thought in the South, 1919-1945 (Chapel Hill, 1982), 7-8.

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Rev Daniel A. Lord

Courtesy jesuit Mfissouri Provi'nce Archi'ves.
standing interest in motion pictures and was already deeply worried about wh
perceived to be cinema's pernicious influence. He worked closely with Hay
Quigley during the remainder of 1929.
An extraordinarily energetic and prolific writer and editor, Lord was no str
to Hollywood; he had earlier advised Cecil B. DeMille during the filming of Th
King of Kings (1927), a story of the life of Christ. Lord began his publishing
in 1913 when he became assistant to the editor of the Queen's Work, a nat
Catholic magazine of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He would later
come its editor, a position he held for many years. Beginning in early 193
Queen's Work, with Lord at its helm, helped lead a Catholic' literary revival i
United States, one that sought to counter modern "irreligion" and "immoralit
In addition to editing this publication, Lord wrote more than two hundred
pamphlets and scores of books, plays, and musicals.29
29 Lord wrote 227 pamphlets (usually thirty to fifty pages in length), 30 books, 12 "booklets," 48 volumes for
children, 25 plays, 12 pageants, 3 musicals, and at least 5 other pieces of music. This summary of Lord's publica-
tions, most of which are located in the Lord Papers, does not include magazine articles, book chapters, and other
miscellaneous writings. For an account of how Lord completed his autobiography, see Leo P. Wobido, "Gallant
Knight," Queen's Work (April 1955), 4. For Lord's work in the Catholic literary revival and his leadership in the

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Lord probably came to the attention of Hays and Quigley through a mutual
friend, the Rev. FitzGeorge Dinneen, S.J. Dinneen and Lord developed a close re-
lationship through their common interest in youth, entertainment, and censorship.
As pastor of the St. Ignatius parish on Chicago's North Side, Dinneen did not hesi-
tate to ask parishioners to boycott offensive films shown at the large Granada Theater
just two blocks from his church. As early asJune 1918, Dinneen's militancy attracted
the attention of George W. Mundelein, then archbishop of Chicago, who asked him
to help the police censor movies in Chicago. Later both Dinneen and Lord sub-
scribed to the Exhibitors Herald-World and came to know its editor.30
Lord's fascination with movies went back to his boyhood in Chicago where he
"watched for small companies of actors who suddenly appeared, used the front of
a synagogue for a bank, shot a robbery, an escape, and the pursuit by police all at
one's doorstep, and then folded their equipment and silently stole away."31 But if
Hays preached that film was a manifestation of American progress in 1929, and
Quigley preferred to celebrate publicly cinema's potential for good, there is little
doubt that Lord had profound reservations about the modern age and film's place
in it. His first article, published in the Catholic Wlorld in 1915, attacked George Ber-
nard Shaw's satire on the supernatural character of martyred Christians in Androcles
and the Lion. He considered Shaw's work part of an "ultra-fashionable" attempt to
undermine Christianity and civilization: "What the centuries were spent in con-
structing," Lord wrote, "the present age is bent on destroying." He wrote later that
Hollywood troubled him not merely because of its "false" living, which "burned
up human life too fast," nor because studios reflected the capriciousness of popular
tastes. The problem ran deeper. Cinema had taken Shaw's ultra-fashionableness
away from the confines of Broadway and spread it to every corner of the globe in
a language almost universally recognizable. What was under attack was nothing less
than the biblical account of man's place in the universe.32
Lord interpreted the biblical story of man's creation and fall literally. To Lord,
the modern-day attacks on traditional faith were nothing more than "fashionable
sin," which adopted a variety of disguises. Among the many evils that Lord con-
demned in his writings during the 1920s and early 1930s were contemporary litera-
ture, art, and dance, Darwinism, modern education, mixed marriage (i.e., marriage
of Catholics and non-Catholics), abortion, birth control, and Soviet communism.
His writings also reveal a hint of anti-Semitism, although it was by no means as pro-
nounced in his work as in some other Christian publications critical of film. Indeed,
Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Catholic youth organization that claimed perhaps a million members, see
Arnold J. Sparr, "The Catholic Literary Revival in America, 1920-1960" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin,
Madison, 1985), 74-127.
30 FitzGeorge Dinneen and Quigley, in fact, often talked about the best strategy to combat the sinister effects
of cinema. See Lord, Played by Ear, 287-89, 292-93. On Dinneen's appointment to the Chicago Board of Censor-
ship, see George W. Mundelein to Francis J. Sullivan, June 10, 1918, Archdiocese of Chicago Archives.
31 Lord, Played by Ear, 272; see also ibid., 270, 275.
32 Daniel A. Lord, "Martyrs according to Bernard Shaw," Catholic World, C (Feb. 1915), 577; see also ibid.
579, 584. Lord, Played by Ear, 284; see also ibid., 269-77, 283.

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Lord took a strong stand against anti-Semitism in a 1939 pamphlet, Dare We Hate
Jews?33
At the heart of Lord's diatribes against many motion pictures was his traditional
Catholic interpretation of postlapsarian man. Lord recoiled from "the vicious attack
of the immoralists which began when science decided that men and women were
merely animals from whom only animal morals could be expected." "Modern
pagans" raised this biological interpretation of humankind against the reality of sin.
It was biology's presupposition "that evolution makes man just a more highly
differentiated beast and hence obviates the need of a creator and the possibility of
an immortal soul and free will," he wrote. By encouraging man "to trace his relation-
ship with the orangutan," the theory of evolution destroyed "not only the necessity
of morality but its very possibility."34
Lord launched an attack against modern education, holding it responsible for
"dynamiting religion" and undermining the internal restraints that checked pas-
sion. In 1929 he wrote, "University students sit in rapt attention under professors
who teach them the need of a new morality (it will begin with a repeal of the Ten
Commandments), the biological necessity of what was once called sin, and the obso-
leteness of Christian morals." To unleash the emotions could have disastrous conse-
quences, Lord argued. They were "violent rebels that must be kept in check by every
motive and power." The university professor, however, had "used brilliant books and
scholarly sounding lectures" to tear down "the bars to these turbulent passions,"
stripping the young of that which held them back from "moral ruin."35
Modern education, Lord asserted, was only part of the threat to Christian civiliza-
tion. Perhaps even more insidious, because it reached a wider audience, was contem-
porary literature, theater, art, and dance. Such work too often emphasized the
erotic, the hedonistic, the egotistic, the narcissistic. When the modern pagan wrote
about the "joys of sin," he usually meant "sins of the flesh." Lord traced at least part
of the complacency toward adultery and sensuality to "modern French literature,
drama, and ethics."36
Such entertainment, dreadful enough when confined to urban theater districts,
clearly was inappropriate for unsophisticated mass audiences -women, children,
and "the morons of the world." But during 1929- "those final days of Lust and
Crime Let Loose" -little appeared capable of checking the movie industry "which
knew that it had found a bottomless mine of gold and that nothing could ever stop
the cash from rolling into the box office."37
33 Lord wrote: "The German attack on theJews is essentially pagan, not Christian.... Anti-Semitism is simply
anti-Christianity." Daniel A. Lord, Dare We Hate Jews? (St. Louis, 1939), 6, 9.
34 Lord, Played by Ear, 274-75; Daniel A. Lord, Fashionable Sin: A Modern Discussion ofan UnpopularSubject
(St. Louis, 1929), 25; Daniel A. Lord, Murder in the Classroom (St. Louis, 1931), 16-17; Daniel A. Lord, Revolt
against Heaven (St. Louis, 1933), 26.
35 Lord, Murder in the Classroom, 16; Lord, Fashionable Sin, 5; Daniel A. Lord, Speaking of Birth Control
(St. Louis, 1930), 21; Lord, Revolt against Heaven, 22; Daniel A. Lord, You Can't Live That Way (St. Louis, 1930),
8, 8.
36 Lord, Fashionable Sin, 19, 19; Lord, Speaking of Birth Control, 15. See also ibid., 9, 10-11; and Lord, Revolt
against Heaven, 26-30.
37 Lord, Played by Ear, 291, 295.

195.221.71.72 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:44:11 +00:00
..-..-....-.__. .. .. ........
... . 111 If is.............~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...........
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. _.. ..._..
An d ,'. .~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...... . .
George Cardinal Mundelein.

Courtesy Archdiocese of Chicago, Archives & Records Center
By late November 1929, Lord, Quigley, and Hays, in uneasy collaboration, began
to make progress on drafting a new code. Dinneen also participated in these deliber-
ations and he, Lord, and Quigley kept Cardinal Mundelein informed of their prog
ress. Mundelein's role was important not only because of his position in the Catholic
church but also because he had contacts with the bankers who had assumed impor-
tance in Hollywood's affairs, most notably Harold Stuart. Lord, Quigley, and Din-
neen, of course, kept Hays abreast of their work, and they were aided by several
people on Hays's staff, including Pettijohn andJoseph I. Breen, a Catholic layman
and former Philadelphia reporter. The relations among these men were not always
harmonious. Quigley offended the Catholic hierarchy in Chicago by charging that
Hollywood, when it really wanted to, could market films in the city over the objec-
tions of censors. He also distrusted Hays and had suspicions that the movie "czar"
would not push film reform to the producers unless forced. Hays, for his part, con-

195.221.71.72 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:44:11 +00:00
sidered Quigley an enigma and instructed his staff "to look for evidences of amity
and help discourage discord" while they decided "how to catch Mr. Quigley."38
And so the work began. By November 22, Quigley let Pettijohn look at an "out-
line of what motion pictures ought to be." This first draft, apparently put together
by Quigley, incorporated suggestions from Breen and Wilfrid Parsons, Sj., editor
of America, a Catholic weekly.39
Three days later, Lord sent his revised copy of the code to Quigley. In it he devel-
oped the sections of the Quigley-Breen-Parsons draft dealing with dancing, dress,
titles, set locations, and advertising. Lord insisted that the code prohibit nudity or
seminudity. "That a nude or semi-nude body may be beautiful does not make its
use in films moral," he maintained. Film titles, according to Lord, should never be
misleading, indecent, suggestive, or contain double meanings. What worried him
about set locations were scenes filmed in brothels and bedrooms. Movie advertising
especially interested Lord - as it did Quigley. Even before starting work on the code,
Lord had confronted Pettijohn about Hollywood advertising, insisting that the
source of this "evil" lay not with theater managers or exhibitors but rather with the
studios. Lord's guidelines for advertising attempted to ensure that movie billboards
follow the spirit, as well as letter, of the code.40
Dinneen forwarded a draft of the code to Cardinal Mundelein on December 11.
The cardinal had been discussing censorship with Pettijohn andJoy of the MPPDA
at least since early November. On New Year's Day, 1930, Mundelein, having exam-
ined the document, called Lord to Chicago for consultation. The cardinal indicated
that he wished Lord and Quigley to continue as his "contact men." He then in-
structed Lord that he and Quigley should make "whatever arrangements" they could
up to the last step before the industry adopted the code. At that point the cardinal
would commit the prestige of his office. Shortly after Lord's meeting with Mun-
delein, the cardinal let it be known that he wanted Quigley, Lord, and Pettijohn
to meet with Hays and industry heads in California.41
The producers' positions regarding new guidelines differed fundamentally from
the Lord-Quigley-Mundelein Code. At the center of this disagreement was the ques-
tion of what responsibility Hollywood should take for public morality. The
producers' ideas were set down in a memorandum, possibly written by Irving Thal-
38 Hays to Mr. Wilstach, memorandum, Dec. 13, 1929, Hays Papers. See also Wilfred Parsons to Editor,
America, May 26, 1956, p. 213.
39 Pettijohn to Martin J. Quigley, Nov. 22, 1929, "Quigley, Martin-Movie Code" folder, Lord Papers.
40 See Daniel A. Lord to Quigley, Nov. 25, 1929, ibid., Lord Papers; Quigley to Lord, Nov. 26, 1929, "SSCA-
1957" folder, ibid.; and "Adopted Code to Govern the Production of Motion Pictures," n.d., pp. 9, 10, 11, "Motion
Picture Code Publicity" folder, ibid. For Lord on the evil of studios, see Lord, Played by Ear, 290.
41 Lord to Quigley, Jan. 2, 1930, "SSCA-1957" folder, Lord Papers. See Jason S. Joy to Hays, Nov. 12, 1929,
Hays Papers; Quigley to Lord, Dec. 11, 1929, "Quigley, Martin-Movie Code" folder, Lord Papers. Quigley
preferred a strategy whereby the studio executives committed themselves directly to the cardinal. Meanwhile,
Quigley's editorials began to take on a different tone, as he condemned such specific movie themes as birth control.
See Quigley to Lord,Jan. 3, 1930, "SSCA- 1957" folder, Lord Papers. See Quigley's condemnation of "propaganda
for birth control," in "Helpful Harrison," Exhibitors Herald-World, Jan. 11, 1930, p. 16. Quigley also later criticized
"cheap, sensational" advertising in "Theatre Advertising," ibid., Feb. 1, 1930, p. 14.

195.221.71.72 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:44:11 +00:00
berg, who headed production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). The memo ac-

cepted the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" as a foundation for a new code but de-
emphasized cinema's connection with morals and manners. The social influence of
films had been greatly overrated, the producers argued. Movies were most similar
to newspaper headlines and stories, with average theatergoers noticing only what
interested them before their attention quickly moved to something else. Motion pi
tures were first and foremost entertainment and could not be considered education
or "even indirectly as an essentially moral or immoral force." They were "literall
bound to the mental and moral level of their vast audience." People influenced film
far more than movies influenced them, the producers concluded.42
Although this memorandum acknowledged that sound had greatly increased the
range of screen entertainment, this fact should not cause alarm, the producers ar-
gued. Instead, it was a reason to give filmmakers more freedom. In a passage that
sounded much like a Quigley editorial some months earlier, the producers main-
tained that characters could now "speak delicately and exactly of subjects" that "by
no stretch of the imagination" could they indicate in pantomine. But the producer
took Quigley's position one step further. It should now be legitimate for studios
"to use any book or play which has attained wide notice or attracted general intere
even though the book or play borders on the censorable," they contended. Simply
because a work gained "unfavorable notoriety . . . when circulated in its original
field is not a genuine barrier to its presentation as a motion picture providing th
motion picture is itself produced with taste and decency." It was therefore unfair
to prejudge a movie simply because its source had a doubtful reputation. The
producers suggested that if a story did touch unacceptable themes, "compensating
moral values" could be written into the script to "make a point of defending and
upholding accepted moral and spiritual standards." Use of compensating moral
values, we should note, was later to play a major part in the MPPDA's attempt to
assure quality entertainment.43
The main objective for producers in the struggle to turn out higher quality enter-
tainment, though, was to avoid alienating the audience. They recommended con-
tinuing the effort to cooperate with "social improvement groups," an idea not unlike
Hays's open door policy. They urged that "a liberal from each important group" be
cultivated to encourage attendance at quality pictures. They opposed adopting
"artificial standards" because it would be a "small social service to raise the moral
or spiritual standard of entertainment at a rate which caused the crowd to walk
out."44
This memorandum, which Hays and his staff quite possibly had a hand in
crafting, surely came close to reflecting the industry's thinking about movies and
42 "General Principles to Govern the Preparation of a Revised Code of Ethics for Talking Pictures," memo-
randum, unsigned and undated, p. 1, "Smith, Lawrence W. (Rev.)" folder, Lord Papers. Irving Thalberg's name
is written in pencil on the first page of this memorandum. It is possible, too, that Hays or someone on his staff
helped to prepare this draft. See also Lord, Played by Ear, 297.
43 "General Principles to Govern the Preparation of a Revised Code of Ethics for Talking Pictures," memo-
randum, unsigned and undated, pp. 2, 2, 5, "Smith, Lawrence W. (Rev.)" folder, Lord Papers.
44 Ibid., 2.

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censorship in 1929. Hays probably could have be

position had the proponents of moral reform
for the maintenance of the status quo, for con
under "The Formula" and the "Don'ts and Be Ca
dards not to values in theology but to popular
found increasingly distasteful and one that Lo
ered frankly intolerable. From their perspecti
"a business pure and simple" for the executives.
Quigley traveled to California in late January 1930 to present his case for a new
code. Hays stood behind him in support. The producers retreated somewhat. They
now acknowledged that no story lacked moral influence and that in the field of en-
tertainment films were "directly responsible for spiritual and moral progress." They
agreed that the public required them to "build up and not destroy our national
ideals. of government, of family and social relations and religious reverence." The
producers still wanted the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" as the foundation for the code
and continued to express willingness to include "compensating moral values" to
offset questionable themes.45
But if the producers retreated, they had not surrendered. They still argued that
sound had opened "hitherto undreamed of possibilities" and insisted that they be
allowed greater freedom in choosing subjects for stories. They continued to main-
tain that the educational and moral qualities of films were only "incidental." Movies
were but "one vast reflection of every image in the stream of contemporary life," and
again they warned against imposing artificial standards. "No material presented
with good taste," they urged, should be taboo unless specifically forbidden by the
"Don'ts and Be Carefuls." They pledged themselves to make "a sincere effort" to
"clean up" characterizations that might violate public taste. But the primary con-
cern for the producers remained the box office. If a picture "does not please its au-
diences," they explained, "it is a failure."46
From Quigley's perspective, the producers had not gone far enough. To allow mo-
tion picture entertainment to be regulated by public taste would be to build the
code on shifting sand. Uncertain of Hays's commitment, Quigley urgently wired
Lord on February 2, telling him that it was "highly advisable" that he come to Los
Angeles at the earliest possible moment. Lord, then lecturing at Creighton Univer-
sity, hurriedly completed his business in Omaha and two days later boarded a train
for the West Coast.47
When Lord arrived in Los Angeles, he met first with Quigley and Hays. Hays dis-
cussed the producers' position and the 1924 "Formula" that the producers felt had
been imposed upon rather than adopted by the industry. Hays confided to Lord and
45 Quigley left for Los Angeles onJan. 22. See Margaret H. Mulhern to Lord, Jan. 23, 1930, "Quigley, Martin-
Movie Code" folder, Lord Papers. Memorandum, Jan. 28, 1930, pp. 1, 4, "Motion Picture Code Publicity" folder,
ibid. See also Exhibits A and B attached to this memorandum.
46 Memorandum, Jan. 28, 1930, pp. 2, 3, 1, Exhibit B, p. 3, "Motion Picture Code Publicity" folder, ibid.
47 Quigley to Lord, telegram, Feb. 2, 1930, "Quigley, Martin-Movie Code" folder, ibid.; and Lord to Mun-
delein, Feb. 4, 1930, "SSCA Correspondence" folder, ibid. See also Secretary to Rev. F. X. McMenamy, Feb. 5,
1930, "Motion Picture Correspondence SJ" folder, ibid.

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Quigley that their new code was better designed to meet the industry's problems.
Hays then brought Lord before a meeting of studio executives. Those present in-
cludedJesse Lasky, who represented Famous Players-Lasky Corporation; Thalberg;
Benjamin Percival Schulberg of Paramount Pictures; Jack L. Warner of Warner Bros.
Pictures; Sol Wuertzel from Fox Studios; and representatives from Pathe, First Na-
tional, and Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corporation (RKO). In addition, JasonJoy from
the MPPDA's Studio Relations Committee and Alice Ames Winter of the women's
public relations group working with Hays's office attended. Hays turned the
meeting over to Lord, who explained the new code in detail and later fielded ques-
tions from the studio heads. Quigley felt that Lord made "an extremely favorable
impression" on this group. Lord was also immediately pleased and considered the
experience "a rather remarkable opportunity . . . to explain Catholic ethics." He
sensed that the audience's response had been "almost entirely favorable."48
The following day, a subcommittee of executives consisting of Thalberg, Schul-
berg, Wuertzel, and Warner spent three and one-half hours going over the code
with Hays and Lord. Lord was able to condense the document to about four pages.
The studio heads insisted that features from the earlier codes be incorporated into
the new guidelines. Following the meeting, Hays and Lord took the original docu-
ment presented by Lord and Quigley and revised it. This section became known
as the "Reasons Underlying the Code," the rationale behind the new guidelines.
Lord considered it "an excellent opportunity for bringing moral and ethical reasons
before the motion picture industry."49
All that remained was the formality of getting the movie industry to ratify the
code officially and breaking the news to the public. With his work at least tem-
porarily completed, Lord boarded the Chief for the long train ride back to St. Louis.
Along the way he wrote optimistically to Cardinal Mundelein about what had been
accomplished. While he was en route on the evening of Friday, February 14, Valen-
tine's Day, the complete committee of studio heads voted unanimously to approve
the new Production Code. On March 31, the MPPDA's Board of Directors formally
ratified the document. The following day, April 1, Hays officially released the docu-
ment to the press. (An advance copy had been leaked to Variety some time earlier,
much to Quigley's consternation.)50
Hollywood's acceptance of the Production Code resulted not from a commitment

to its values but rather from a perception of economic realities. Why did the motion
48 Lord to Mundelein, Feb. 14, 1930, "SSCA Correspondence" folder, ibid. For Quigley's evaluation of Lord's
impact, see Quigley to "Your Eminence" [Mundelein], Feb. 17, 1930, "SSCA-1957" folder, ibid. For Lord's impres-
sion, see Lord to Father Provincial, Feb. 17, 1930. "Quigley, 1933-1936" folder, ibid. See also Lord, Played by Ear,
300.
49 On Lord's satisfaction with the "Reasons," see Lord to Father Provincial, Feb. 17, 1930, "Quigley, 1933-1936"
folder, Lord Papers. Lord to Mundelein, Feb. 14, 1930, "SSCA Correspondence" folder, ibid.
50 Hays to Lord, Feb. 14, 1930, "SSCA Correspondence" folder, ibid.; Lord to Mundelein, Feb. 14, 1930, "SSCA
Correspondence" folder, ibid.; Hays to Lord, telegram, Feb. 14, 1930, "Movie Code" folder, ibid.; Hays to Calvin
Coolidge, Feb. 18, 1930, Hays Papers; Carl E. Milliken to Lord, March 29, 1930, "Movie Code" folder, Lord Papers.
See also Variety, Feb. 19, 1930, pp. 9, 66.

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picture executives endorse the Production Code and ultimately agree to its enforce-
ment? The new code offered a solution to their dilemma. It promised to forestall
costly-not to mention stifling-government censorship. It appeared to provide a
middle ground between license and state control. It seemed a step that might stabi-
lize the industry economically.
Motion picture moguls did not necessarily arrive at the decision to adopt the code
on the basis of these reasons alone. The wishes of creditors often swayed their deci-
sions. Indeed, several people associated with movie censorship have pointed to the
role that investment bankers played in the adoption of the code. Hays acknowledged
their importance in a long letter to former president Calvin Coolidge in mid-
February 1930, when he explained that banks had assumed a critical position in
studio affairs by financing productions and the purchase of new theaters. In return,
the bankers demanded security for their investments. Scorning extravagance and
waste, they wanted a "stabilized industry" and were willing "to deal only with
responsible businesses." Years later, Lord commented on these developments and
speculated that his efforts with the code had only been successful as a consequence
of the Great Depression, when "the pressures of a great many events began to
squeeze the situation into a manageable form." Movie companies "found themselves
faced with bankruptcy, thrown into the hands of the banks, and suddenly handled
by the bankers themselves." With obvious satisfaction, Lord recounted how film
producers - those "pants pressers and glove merchants turned financial geniuses" -
had almost overnight found themselves "begging for lunch money." Jack Vizzard,
who worked in the Hays office during the 1940s and 1950s, also confirmed the im-
portance of financiers. Before bankers would release money to support a production,
he stated, they required producers to get "a letter of clearance" from the MPPDA
stating that "the script was at least basically acceptable."51
Hays, Lord, and Vizzard correctly commented on the influence of financiers, but
to imply that this power came only with the depression was misleading. The eco-
nomic vulnerability of motion picture studios and the involvement of investment
bankers in the affairs of Hollywood predated the depression and was connected to
the industry's expansion and conversion to sound during the late 1920s. Such corpo-
rations as Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., and Fox Studios, the pioneers of talking mov-
ies, launched major expansions during the late 1920s, vastly increasing their theater
holdings in order to lift themselves out of the second echelon of studios. Moreover,
the cost of equipping each movie theater with the new sound technology usually
ranged from $7,000 to $15,000; and some estimates for the total conversion expense
to the industry, which also included upgrading studios, ran as high as $500,000,000.
As a result most film companies, including Warner Bros. and Fox, were forced to
turn increasingly to outside sources - investment bankers - to finance this modern-
ization and growth.52
51 See Hays to Coolidge, Feb. 14, 1930, p. 2, Hays Papers; Lord, Played by Ear, 293; and Jack Vizzard, See No
Evil: Life inside a Hollywood Censor (New York, 1970), 94.
52 On the cost of converting to sound, see Will H. Hays estimate in New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 14, 1929,
p. 21. On the role of investment bankers in the American film industry, see F. D. Klingender and Stuart Legg,

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The financiers, for their part, by this time had come to see movie companies as
good investments likely to realize substantial profits. Some even viewed the industry
as depression-proof. Such investment firms as Halsey, Stuart, and Company;
Goldman, Sachs, and Company; Hayden, Stone, and Company; Dillon, Read, and
Company; Kuhn, Loeb, and Company; and J. & W. Seligman and Company in-
vested heavily in motion pictures studios, often underwriting expansions. When the
stock market crashed in 1929, threatening many producers with economic disaster,
the bankers assumed an even greater leverage over the affairs of the film business.
They saw the Production Code of 1930 as a means to secure their investments be-
cause it promised to decrease the number of expensive changes required by govern-
ment censorship and to curtail the criticisms made of film content.53
Warner Bros., for example, had become one of the industry's major studios by
1930 largely through the advice of Waddill Catchings of Goldman, Sachs, and Com-
pany. Warner Bros. was not hit immediately by the market crash in 1929 and in fact
lauched a major expansion in the spring of 1930. During this period a seven-man
executive committee was empowered to act for its board of directors. The committee
was composed of the three Warners, Harry, Jack, and Albert, the corporation's secre-
tary Abel Cary Thomas, and three investment bankers - Catchings, Walter Sachs
(also of Goldman, Sachs), and Richard L. Hoyt of Hayden, Stone, and Company.
The bankers, therefore, by mid-1930, had a voice equal to that of the three
Warners.54
More to the point were William Fox's vast holdings, which had been built during
the late 1920s in large part on loans from Halsey, Stuart, and Company and from
Electrical Research Products, Inc. (ERPI), a subsidiary of AT&T. Speaking over the
radio to a nationwide audience on NBC's Halsey Stuart Hour in early May 1929,
Fox had proclaimed motion pictures a fertile opportunity for the conservative in-
vestor. The prognosis "for growth and development" was "almost limitless." In the
stock market crash a few months later, however, Fox lost about $50,000,000 almost
immediately. In early December 1929, he was forced to accept a three-man trustee-
ship composed of himself and his two largest creditors, Harold Stuart (of Halsey,
Stuart) and John Otterson (of ERPI). Indeed, on the initiative of Stuart and Ot-
terson, Fox's holdings were reorganized in the fall of 1931 and Fox eventually had
to declare bankruptcy.55
Money behind the Screen: A Report Prepared on Behalf of the Film Council (London, 1937); Balio, ed., American
Film Industry, 193; Douglas Gomery, "The Coming of Sound: Technological Change in the American Film In-
dustry," in American Film Industry, ed. Balio, 236; Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System (New York,
1986), 83-84, 103, 109; Janet Wasko, Movies andMoney: Financing the American Film Industry (Norwood, 1982),
47-102; GertrudeJobes, Motion Picture Empire (Hamden, 1966), 193-330; N. R. Danielian, A. T & T: The Story
of Industrial Conquest (New York, 1939), 158, 159.
53 See Balio, ed., American Film Industry, 193; and Upton Sinclair, Upton Sinclair Presents Wtilliam Fox (Lo
Angeles, 1933), 97.
5 Warner Bros., Board of Directors Minutes, meetings of March 3, 8, 20; April 7, 17; May 15; June 3, 19; a
Aug. 7, 1930, Warner Bros. Archives of Historical Papers (Princeton University Library, Princeton).
s5 Exhibitors Herald-World, Dec. 14, 1929, p. 21. See also Benjamin B. Hampton, History of the American
Film Industry from Its Beginnings to 1931 (New York, 1970), 337-38, 391-93; Jobes, Motion Picture Empire, 252;
Douglas Gomery, "Problems in Film History: How Fox Innovated Sound," Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 1
(Aug. 1976), 318, 324.

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It was in late 1929 that Cardinal Mundelein's position in the negotiations for a
new Production Code became important. The cardinal had long been on good
terms with Stuart and had sometimes called upon him for short-term loans to the
church during the late 1920s. The two men often lunched together. By late De-
cember 1929, Stuart occupied a position from which he could exert leverage on one
of Hollywood's mightiest empires. When the cardinal met with Lord on New Year's
Day, 1930, he told the young priest that Stuart was going to be "the powerful man
in the industry" and that he was "already arranging for the next step." Stuart and
Mundelein deliberated the following day in Chicago and the cardinal, who appar-
ently had convinced the financier that the code was needed, then passed along a
copy of the new regulations to his influential friend. When Lord met with Quigley
and Pettijohn on January 10, Pettijohn assured them that Hollywood executives
would adopt the code because of the support given it by Stuart and by Adolph
Zukor of Paramount, who next to Fox controlled perhaps the industry's largest cor-
poration. By this time Stuart and Zukor were planning to call on the cardinal to
explain the industry's position and to give their guarantee that the guidelines would
be accepted by the producers.56
When Quigley and Lord went before the producers in early 1930, they did so
from a position of strength. The market crash had hurt some executives almost at
once and surely had made many others nervous. Even studios such as Warner Bros.
that still dared to expand saw investment bankers assuming a larger share of control
over policy. Next to profits, these financiers wanted stability, which the code offered
because it promised to forestall costly and unpredictable government censorship.
By eliminating the most controversial parts of movie scripts, the code also helped
to insure that paying audiences would not be offended. When Lord spoke to the
producers, he knew that Mundelein had already gotten pledges of support from two
of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Because of their backing at a time when
economic conditions continued to deteriorate rapidly, it was unlikely other pro-
ducers would reject the new guidelines. Soon after Lord spoke, Stuart and Zukor
called on the cardinal to discuss the best means for publicizing the code.57
The Production Code as adopted endorsedJudeo-Christian values; it sought to
protect the sanctity of the family and the authority of the state. One writer mai
tains it was a quilt of many patches, representing "a common denominator of all
morally conservative points of view." Hays, perhaps fearing the strong anti-Catho
sentiments embedded in American culture, denied until the end of his career that
56 See Mundelein to H. L. Stuart, Jan. 2, 1930, General Chancery files, Archdiocese of Chicago Archives. S
also Mundelein to Stuart, March 18, 1930, ibid. Gomery, "Problems in Film History," 321, 324; Danielian, A. T
& T, 155; andJobes, Motion Picture Empire, 288. See also Edward R. Kantowicz, "Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago
and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century American Catholicism," Journal ofAmerican History, 68 (June 1981), 60;
and A. E. Bryson, Halsey, Stuart & Co., Inc., 1901-193 7: A History of the House with Observations on the Bond
Market andIts Economic Backgroundsince the Turn of the Century [Chicago? c. 1945], 34. Adolph Zukor's auto-
biography is silent on developments leading to the 1930 Production Code, although he did reveal sympathy for
the need to regulate movies. See Adolph Zukor, The Public Is Never Wrong: The Autobiography of Adolph Zukor
(New York, 1953), 204-5.
57 Lord to Quigley, Jan. 2, 1930, "SSCA-1957" folder, Lord Papers; Lord to Mundelein, Jan. 10, 1930, "SSCA
Correspondence" folder, ibid.

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the code was narrowly Catholic. He and his office downplayed the contributions of
Lord, Quigley, and the Catholic hierarchy. 58 Lord, who at this time wished to remain
anonymous, recognized that the challenge was to appeal to a broad public. "Here
was a chance to tie the Ten Commandments in with the newest and most widespread
form of entertainment," he wrote. "Here was an opportunity to read morality and
decency into mass recreation." But the code had to be designed so that it "would
stand up before the immoralist, the amoralist, the skilled dramatist, the producer
who had risen from the slums, the auditor, the audience, the films of the day and
of fifty years from now," so that "the follower of any religion, or any man of decent
feeling and conviction, would read it and instantly agree."59
Hollywood thus bound itself for a time to this codified standard of morality that
was independent of public taste. But it was only a set of unusual circumstances that
made the Production Code as envisioned by Lord and Quigley a possibility. Ironi-
cally, the very sound technology that had so alarmed critics, and that had served
as a catalyst for revising the code, temporarily weakened many studios and made
them vulnerable to external control. The costly conversion to sound and the overex-
pansion it encouraged, when coupled with the Great Depression, threatened to take
control of the movies from the executives and give it to the investment bankers. The
time was right to gain concessions from the executives. The politically astute Hays,
an enthusiastic champion of film, realized that effective self-regulation might be
the last chance to turn back a rising tide of public sentiment for government regula-
tion. Quigley, who publicly sounded more like the producers in 1929 and Lord in
1937, was in a good position to play the role of mediator between the movie execu-
tives and the Catholic hierarchy. Mundelein, who could commit the prestige of the
Catholic church, suddenly found himself in an influential position with Stuart, an
individual who could push the industry in the desired direction. It was Lord, a vocal
critic of the "modern" thought, who seized the opportunity to "put solid theological
and moral bones" into the new code. More than any single person, he appears to
have influenced the tone of the new rules that would govern movie entertainment.6
Unfortunately from the perspective of Lord, Quigley, Dinneen, Mundelein, and
others interested in committing motion picture entertainment to Judeo-Christian
ethics, the battle had not been won; in fact, it had barely begun. The Production
Code offered little effective means for enforcement. A long struggle lay ahead. Just
one year later, Lord would call the code a failure, claiming that a "fundamentally
dangerous . . . philosophy of life" had crept into contemporary pictures in their
treatment of "morals, divorce, free love, unborn children, relationships outside of
marriage, single and double standards, the relationship of sex to religion, marriage
and its effect upon the freedom of women." He was appalled, for example, after
seeing Clark Gable and Carole Lombard's No Man of Her Own (1932), with its "se-
ries of attempts at seduction." And he and Quigley were shocked by Jean Harlow
58 Inglis, Freedom of the Movies, 181; see also ibid., 127, 128. See also Hays, Memoirs, 440.
59 Lord, Played by Ear, 298.
60 Wilfrid Parsons to Editor, America, May 26, 1956, p. 213.

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in Howard Hughes's Hell's Angels (1930) when she tried to seduce a pilot "in the
most candid and detailed fashion." Examining MPPDA files on a regular basis
during 1930 and 1931 with Hays's associateJasonJoy, Lord singled out several other
pictures he felt were representative of this harmful trend. They included such movies
as Confessions of a Co-ed (Paramount, 1931), Back Street (Universal, 1932), Just a
Gigolo (MGM, 1931), Good Bad Girl (Columbia, 1931), and Laughing Sinners
(MGM, 1931).61
Confessions of a Co-ed, as described by Lord, was a "college picture" about two
men in love with the same woman, one a "college sheik," the other a "virtuous man"
but "the drudging type." The former was expelled from college and left his girl-
friend behind, carrying his child. With her lover gone, the woman then married
the drudge. Later when the lover returned he, and not the faithful husband, was
portrayed in a sympathetic manner. At the end of the film, the lover and the woman
were on the verge of being reunited. Lord objected to this film's theme of illicit love
and to the fact that "an unborn child [was] the dominating factor in the girl's de-
cision to marry." In addition, he was offended that the "evil" lover was shown to be
attractive while the virtuous husband was portrayed as unappealing and was in effect
punished for his faithfulness.62
The treatment of crime also remained a source of concern for Lord and other
critics of cinema. Movies such as Vice Squad (Paramount, 1931), City Streets (Para-
mount, 1931), The Finger Points (First National, 1931), The Last Parade (Columbia,
1931), Quick Millions (Fox, 1931), The Secret Six (MGM, 1931), Little Caesar (First
National, 1930), and The Public Enemy (Warner Bros., 1931) upset many people
who believed they either made heroes of criminals or vilified law enforcement
officials. Lord objected to Vice Squad because it implied that "all police officers on
duty at night [were] untrustworthy and criminals." The picture's many crime scenes
became merely "a catechism of blackmailing, framing, seduction, hotel prostitu-
tion, . . . evil police, etc."63
Hays, perhaps hoping to defuse Lord's criticism, asked a former policeman, Au-
gust Vollmer, to watch several of these films and to offer an evaluation. Vollmer
thought none of the pictures would encourage crime. He praised The Public Enemy,
which starred James Cagney and has often been regarded as the quintessential pic-
ture glamorizing the life of a gangster; Vollmer contended that it would deter
wrongdoing. "It shows clearly that even if the gangster does escape the clutches of
the law," Vollmer wrote to Hays, "death swift and certain is inevitable for all so-
called 'big shots."' Vollmer also liked the movie because it showed the social origins
of crime and suggested that "the gangster problem cannot be solved entirely until
the factors that produced the gangster are eliminated." What Vollmer, Joy, and Hays
61 Lord, Played by Ear, 307. Daniel A. Lord, "The Code-One Year Later," April 23, 1931, p. 3, "Class Atten-
dance" folder, Lord Papers. See also ibid., 1-2, 6-8. Lord's original analysis did not mention the films by name,
but they are penned in on another copy of this document, Lord, "The Code-One Year Later," c. Nov. 23, 1931,
Hays Papers.
62 Lord, "The Code-One Year Later," c. Nov. 23, 1931, p. 7, Hays Papers.
63 Ibid., 9.

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apparently either ignored or failed to grasp about this film was the powerful attrac-
tion the charismatic Cagney projected through his screen characterfr4
The Hays office attempted to enforce the Production Code rigorously between
1931 and 1934. The MPPDA's Public Relations Department under Jason Joy and
later under Dr. James Wingate cooperated with such groups as the National Council
of Teachers of English and the General Federation of Women's Clubs. Altogether
the MPPDA reviewed scripts for 1,391 feature films between 1931 and 1933 and
declined to recommend almost 20 percent of them. Even Lord acknowledged that
the public had "no conception of the criticism to which scripts [had] been sub-
jected." Nevertheless, Hollywood's critics were not mollified. Part of the problem
lay with the men who enforced the code. Joy, one suspects, was in basic sympathy
with the producers who wished to judge movies by the standard of public taste
rather than by the guidelines set down by Lord, Quigley, and the Catholic church.
Wingate, who had worked for the New York State Censor Board, was clearly sym-
pathetic to the intentions of the code's authors, but he was ill at ease with theJewish
producers, resistant to compromise, and unclear in explaining to the studios what
was required to make a script acceptable under the code.65
Even among those who had helped draft the code, many were dissatisfied with
its enforcement and remained both suspicious of Hays and hostile to Jewish
producers. Breen, who soon would head the powerful Production Code Administra-
tion (PCA), was convinced by October 1932 that the code had failed and had be-
come an object of ridicule in Hollywood. He was also contemptuous of Hays and
deeply anti-Semitic. He confided to Wilfrid Parsons that while his boss was well
meaning, he was weak and lacked "guts." "Hays," Breen wrote from Hollywood,
"sold us a first-class bill of goods when he put over the Code on us. . . . It may
be that Hays thought these lousyJews out here would abide by the Code's provision
but if he did then he should be censured for his lack of proper knowledge of the
breed." Singling out for attack those Jews who had recently arrived from eastern
Europe and who seemed to dominate the film industry, he continued: "They are
simply a rotten bunch of vile people with no respect for anything beyond the
making of money. . . . Here we have Paganism rampant and in its most virulent
64 At Hays's request, Vollmer watched The Public Enemy, The Finger Points, The Last Parade, Quick Millions,
The Secret Six, and City Streets. He considered City Streets, for example, psychologically "innocuous." Vollmer
to Hays, memo on "The Public Enemy (Warner Bros.)," April'20, 1931, The Public Enemy file, Production Code
Administration Files. See also Vollmer memorandum on City Streets, April 17, 1931, City Streets file, ibid. See
alsoJoy to Darryl Zanuck, Jan. 26, 1931, ibid. See also Vollmer to Hays and attached memoranda, April 20, 1931,
Hays Papers.
65 Lord, "The Code- One Year Later," p. 1. See Joy's comments on Confessions of a Co-ed and Back Street
in Joy to Hays, memo, April 17, 1931, Confessions of a Co-ed file, Production Code Administration Files; Joy to
B. P. Shulberg, Oct. 7, 1930, ibid.; Joy to Carl Laemmle, Jr., March 4, 1931, Back Street file, ibid.; andJoy to Sydney
Singerman, July 15, 1932, ibid. On James Wingate, see Oral History with Geoffrey Shurlock, American Film Insti-
tute, 1975 (Feldman Library, Beverly Hills), 88-90. Also on the enforcement of the code underJoy and Wingate,
see LeaJacobs, "Industry Self-Regulation and the Problem of Textual Determination," The Velvet Light Trap (forth-
coming). During 1931, the MPPDA reviewed 438 feature films and designated as "not recommended" 100 of them;
in 1932, 63 of 476; in 1933, 109 of 477. Between 1931 and 1933, the MPPDA reviewed 2,074 "short subjects" and
failed to recommend 417, or about 20 percent, of these films. For the numbers of films reviewed and not recom-
mended, see "Annual Report, Public Relations Department," Feb. 5, 1934, p. 30, Hays Papers.

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form.... TheseJews seem to think of nothing b

gence. . . . They are, probably, the scum of the scum of the earth."66
Pressure on the film industry continued to mount. In February 1932, Senator
Brookhart, who claimed the Hays office had "done nothing toward improving the
moral tone of the movies," introduced a resolution to investigate Hollywood. Ap-
proximately forty national educational and religious organizations had endorsed
resolutions urging federal regulation of motion pictures by the end of the year.67
In 1933, the attack on Hollywood gained further momentum with the publica-
tion of the Payne Fund Studies. Popularized by Henry James Forman's book Our
Movie Made Children, these studies by social scientists accused motion pictures of
having a deleterious effect on the nation's youth. Movies, according to the re-
searchers, constituted "an institution of informal education, socially uncontrolled
and wholly unsupervised." They disturbed sleep patterns, altered social attitudes,
aroused sexual passion, lowered the quality of schoolwork, encouraged delinquency,
and made adjustment to reality more difficult. Their influence was "proportionate
to the weakness of the family, school, church, and neighborhood."68 The Payne Fund
Studies threw Hays and the MPPDA on the defensive. Protestants, Catholics, and
other critics readily appropriated this research to support conclusions they had al-
ready drawn.
The worsening economic crisis also gave Hollywood's opponents new opportuni-
ties to strengthen their influence. Prior to the depression the fear of government
censorship had provided the most effective means for controlling the studios. Even
as late as January 1931, William Randolph Hearst could tell Hays that without this
threat, "your effort to keep the producers within bounds would be futile." By the
fall of 1932, however, efforts were under way to bring additional pressure to bear
on Hollywood in the form of economic sanctions. Breen recommended using the
bankers again. For the Production Code to work, he told Parsons, "we shall have
to get next to the men who have their money tied up in these producing companies.
It can't be that the bankers, once their attention is drawn to the situation, will stand
idly by and allow our people throughout the nation to be debauched by the Jews."
Lord, indicting motion pictures for betraying America, also called upon Americans
in 1934 "to register their disgust . .. at the only place that the producers themselves
know or regard or recognize: the box office." But even if the box office could be hurt,
Mundelein despaired of ever reforming the producers. "The background here is
lacking," he wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. These men whose standards
had "come up from burlesque houses" simply did "not know different."69
66Joseph I. Breen to Wilfrid Parsons, Oct. 10, 1932, box 3, Wilfrid Parsons Papers. Breen's antipathy forJewish
producers does not appear so much in the Production Code Administration Files or in the Hays Papers, but it
is often explicit in his correspondence with other Catholics such as Parsons and Lord.
67 Inglis, Freedom of the Movies, 119.
68 Henry James Forman, Our Movie Made Children (New York, 1935), 282; see also ibid., 2 73-84. Herbert
Blumer and Philip M. Hauser, Movies, Delinquency, atnd Crime (New York, 1933), 202; see also ibid., 198-99.
69 William Randolph Hearst to Hays, Jan. 2, 1931, Hays Papers. Breen to Parsons, Oct. 10, 1932, box 3, Parsons
Papers. Daniel A. Lord, The Motion Pictures Betray America (St. Louis, 1934), 3. Mundelein to Franklin D.
Roosevelt, June 8, 1934, George Cardinal Mundelein Papers, Archdiocese of Chicago Archives.

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It was not until the creation of the Legion of Decency in April 1934 and the estab-
lishment of the PCA, with Breen as its head, inJune of that year that the code finally
gained the strength necessary for its enforcement. The legion ultimately pledged
seven to nine million of the country's twenty million Catholics to boycott offensive
films. In addition to this tremendous backing, in Breen the PCA finally had an in-
dividual who could apply the code on a daily basis in a forceful, effective manner.
In July 1936 the legion and the PCA were further endorsed with moral authority
by a papal encyclical from Pope Pius XI. The encyclical, which Lord helped to draft,
praised the Legion of Decency and the PCA while suggesting they could serve as
models for other nations wishing to censor films. This combination of support for
the code was effective within the context of the mid- and late 1930s. As long as the
country remained in the grip of the depression, the legion's boycotts proved a
powerful weapon; and Breen's intimidating presence dominated the PCA until
1954.70
From 1934 on, the Production Code was exceptionally effective in regulating what
people saw in theaters, and it continued to influence the tone of cinema well into
the 1960s. But ultimately this experiment in binding movie entertainment to moral
standards independent of public taste proved short-lived. Challenges to the code
were present from the beginning and cracks in its foundation were clearly visible
by the 1940s. With the country returning to unprecedented prosperity after World
War II, with the breakup of the large theater chains, with Americans becoming more
and more skeptical about religious faith, the code's foundations began to crumble.
The movie industry found a more sympathetic judicial system by midcentury as
well. In the so-called Miracle case of 1952 (Burstyn v. Wilson), the Supreme Court
for the first time granted motion pictures protection under the First Amendment.
Important personnel changes occurred in the MPPDA and the will to enforce the
code also diminished. Hays resigned and was replaced in September 1945 by Eric
Johnston, the former president of the United States Chamber of Commerce. When
an ailing Breen stepped down as head of the PCA in 1954, he was replaced by
Geoffrey Shurlock. Shurlock did not see himself in the role of shielding American
audiences from the harmful effects of film but rather as protecting the movie in-
70 Breen, for example, refused to give a certificate of approval to Paramount in 1936 when the studio sought
to reissue City Streets, and he rejected Columbia's attempt to revive GoodBad Girl: Breen toJohn Hammell, Dec.
10, 1936, City Streets file, Production Code Administration Files; and Breen to Harry Cohn, July 14, 1937, Good
Bad Girl file, ibid. On Lord's participation in the drafting of the papal encyclical letter Vigilanti Cura of July 2,
1936, see excerpts from E. Cardinal Pacelli in John Killeen, SJ., to Lord, July 8, 1936, "Papal Encyclical Movies"
folder, Lord Papers. See also Motion Pictures: EncyclicalLetter of His Holiness, Pope Pius XI (Washington [1936]),
17. See also Moley, Hays Office, p. 87. On the number of Catholic pledges in the Legion of Decency, see Facey,
Legion of Decency, 58.
Although Protestants were often in the forefront of the effort to censor or otherwise control motion pictures,
it is likely that the Catholics were more effective because of the church's hierarchical organization. The creation
of the Legion of Decency was testimony to this fact. Its ability to mobilize boycotts of films also came at an oppor-
tune time because the studios had been weakened by the depression. See "A Financial Review and Brief History:
Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., 1923-1945," p. 28, Warner Bros. Archives of Historical Papers. See also Gomery, Holly-
wood Studio System, 102. For a recent view that the influence of the Legion of Decency on film scripts has been
overestimated, see Jacobs, "Industry Self-Regulation," and Lea Jacobs, "Reforming Women: Censorship and the
Feminine Ideal in Hollywood, 1928-1942" (unpublished manuscript, Lea Jacobs, University of Wisconsin,
Madison).

195.221.71.72 on Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:44:11 +00:00
dustry from an enraged public. In 1956, the code was amended substantially and
became, in the eyes of many, "a body of instructions to producers rather than laws."71
In an increasingly pluralistic society, the consensus of values to which Hays had
referred so confidently in 1930 no longer existed. By midcentury, the anthropologist
Hortense Powdermaker could argue that the code reflected values and attitudes no
longer "representative of society or any considerable section of it." Even many within
the PCA sensed that Powdermaker's observation was true. This new, revolutionary,
almost irresistible form of communication, motion pictures, fueled by the drive for
profit, had simply overwhelmed those who had tried to contain it.72
71 The Miracle (Italy, 1948) was shown in the United States in 1950. For subsequent cases affecting movie censor-
ship, such as Times Film Corporation v. Chicago (1961),Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), and Freeman v. Maryland (1965),
see Paul L. Murphy, The Constitution in Crisis Times, 1918-1969 (New York, 1972), 396-98. See also ibid., 296.
See also de Grazia and Newman, Banned Films, 80-84, 108-9, 110, 127, 264. Oral History with Geoffrey Shurlock,
82, 85-86. On the 1956 revisions, see de Grazia and Newman, Banned Films, 92. The revisions removed absolute
restrictions on showing such subjects as prostitution, abortion, illicit narcotics, and kidnapping. The code's ban
on miscegenation was also dropped.
72 Hortense Powdermaker, Hollywood, the Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers
(Boston, 1950), 77. The harmful effects of popular entertainment became a major concern again during the 1950s.
SeeJames Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America's Reaction to Juvenile Delinquency in the 1950s (New York, 1986),
esp. 3-10 and 162-95.

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Morality and Entertainment - The Origins of The Motion Picture Production Code

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The Journal of American History June 1990 39

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tive arm of a trade association and not part of

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groups already profoundly unhappy with Hollyw

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an awkward situation. As a Catholic, he professed to be deeply troubled by contem-

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Rev Daniel A. Lord

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censorship in 1929. Hays probably could have be

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