Censoring Hollywood: How Joe Breen and the Production Code Administration Changed Hollywood Forever

Censoring Hollywood: How Joe Breen and the Production Code Administration Changed Hollywood Forever While today motion pictures are generally considered an art form, it did not start out this way. The Supreme Court ruled in 1915 that free speech protection did not extend to motion pictures and was not overturned for almost 50 years (Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio). The silent era of Hollywood was considered by many to be immoral and perpetrating smut to the masses and the advent of sound only made people more worried. No system was in place to monitor what ended up on screen and the federal government was threatening to start censoring films themselves. These factors lead to the creation of The Motion Picture Production Code in 1930, Hollywood’s first attempt at self-regulating. It wasn’t until 1934 however when a man named Joe Breen was put in control of the new and extremely powerful Production Code Administration (PCA) which gave him the power to change and alter nearly every part of a film however he pleased. The Motion Picture Production Code, Joe Breen, and PCA had a large negative impact on how films portrayed a variety of subjects and American culture. The Production Code covered a variety of topics such as sex, violence, language, and even how villains and heroes acted. William Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and creator of the Production Code, outlined the primary purpose of the code in the first general principle listed in the Motion Picture Production Code which reads -- “No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin” (Hays).
Thomas Doherty, Professor of American studies at Brandeis University, describes the code in an article written for the Washington Post as “… no mere list of Thou-Shalt-Nots but a homily that sought

Bibliography: Bernstein, Matthew. Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era. Rutgers depth of field series. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. Print. Black, Gregory D. Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. Cambridge studies in the history of mass communications. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Print. Couvares, Francis G. "Hollywood, Main Street, and the Church: Trying to Censor the Movies Before the Production Code." American Quarterly. 44.4 (1992): 584-616. Print. Doherty, Thomas P. Hollywood 's Censor: Joseph I. Breen & The PCA. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Print. Doherty, Thomas P. Pre-code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930- 1934. Film and culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Print. Doherty, Thomas P. "The Code Before 'Da Vinci '" Washington Post. The Washington Post, 20 May 2006. Web. 01 Apr. 2013. Hays, W. H., & Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. (1930). Motion Picture Production Code. Leff, Leonard J, and Jerold Simmons. The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Print. Leff, Leonard J. "The Breening of America." Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 106.3 (1991): 432-45. JSTOR. Web. 25 Mar. 2013. Mutual Film Corporation v Industrial Commission of Ohio Noriega, Chon. ""Something 's Missing Here!": Homosexuality and Film Reviews During the Production Code Era, 1934-1962." Cinema Journal. 30.1 (1990): 20-41. Print. Shurlock, Geoffrey. "The Motion Picture Production Code." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 254 (1947): 140-146. Print. Vaughn, Stephen. "Morality and Entertainment: the Origins of the Motion Picture Production Code." The Journal of American History. 77.1 (1990): 39-65. Print.