When we left it, the Hays Code was pretty much at the height of its power. This was the 1930’s and 1940’s and though I mentioned a film or two from later, I didn’t go much beyond that time. After WWII it was a different world, just about all around the globe and certainly in Hollywood and the rest of the US Entertainment/Arts part of it. Over the decade from the late 40’s to the late’50’s the code began to lose some of its often great but always ephemeral power. There were several reasons for this–judicial/legal, competitive, and technological being among the most important.

Also, somewhat nuanced and more subtle, I think there was simply a change of tastes, impossible to explain in each and every way, but undeniable, which challenged and eventually ruined the code in a way somewhat similar to the way determined resistance of private and public people had doomed Prohibition. If a great many people simply refuse to obey a law or a code and if no one is willing to engage in actual or metaphorical violence for it, it will go–possibly it will take awhile, but it will go though maybe leave behind a long and possibly quite influential legacy.

First of all, there was television which seemed to leap out of nowhere as the war ended and, after a brief breaking in time, to dominate American culture fairly quickly. Now TV had actually, technically, been around for a long time. Herbert Hoover was the first US President to see a television signal but Harry Truman was apparently the first to appear on TV. There is a great deal about this and the development of TV on the internet and I encourage you to take a look if interested, I shall stick to a few significant facts.

The Federal government licensed television broadcasting(OK-telecasting) in 1941 and it appears the first station out of the starting gate was WCBS of New York City. WCBS seems to have gone “on the air” 07/01/41. This meant that TV was there to announce the US entry into WWII the following December but few people saw it since there were almost no active TV sets at the time.

For obvious reasons the development of TV was almost non-existent during the war, but it broke out quickly with peace. By 1948 it was one of the dominant aspects of US culture and by the early ’50’s it was nearly everyone’s obsession. This, of course, was a challenge to the movies, one they seem not to have anticipated early on or planned for very well. Now they had to find a way to get people to leave their homes and spend money to see a movie when they could stay home and watch TV for free. Though there is no direct line of development here, one of the possibilities is obvious–give them something in the movies that they can’t get on television. But then there was the code, wasn’t there?

Circumstances, however, conspired in favor of the movies vs the code, and a little bit in movies vs TV. In 1948 in “US v Paramount Pictures”(“The Paramount Decision” in popular parlance) the US Supreme Court nixed “vertical integration” as contrary to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 and all the elaborations on it in later years. “Vertical integration” means a company owning all aspects of making money from something, usually manufacturing, distributing and selling. In the movies this would be making the movies, distributing the movies and showing them. The second and third of these(or at least the third) would require that the movie maker(MGM, United Artists, whoever)would own the theatres where its films were shown.

This is a wide ranging and complex decision which also is know as the one that finished the “star system” in Hollywood. To stick to our own particular interest and keep it simple, suffice it to say that this meant the movie studios would no longer own the theatres where people went to see their films. The decision of what to show was up to the management of the theatres and while I think it would be naive to assume the movie companies weren’t involved at all after this , it does seem to have made a significant difference.

Four years later the Supreme Court struck again and in “Burstyn v Wilson” it ruled unconstitutional a NY state law banning films which were considered “sacreligious.” It clearly was extending to movies the First Amendment rights protection which had been denied them in the “Industrial Commission” ruling of more than thirty years earlier.

Now what needs to be noted here is that while neither of these decisions directly addressed the code, they both were, intentionally or not, adversarial to it. The Paramount decision, by separating the making and the exhibiting decisions of movies, meant that theatre owners could make their own choices. This happened at a time when foreign, mostly European , movies were making an entrance into the American market. Being “foreign” they did not have to worry about getting a code approval seal and therefore the code was in some cases stripped of a bit of its power.

Likewise, “Burstyn v Wilson” said nothing directly about the code. But by making it clear that the courts would take an interest in protecting films from violations based upon the First Amendment, it indicated that any attempt to support the code by government actions would be considered unconstitutional. The effect was psychological rather than immediately legal, but it increased the appetite of the movie makers and perhaps the exhibitors and the public for more complex films and less control.

And this came at a time when there seems to have been an impatience on the part of film makers to challenge the code and a number of audacious directors willing, even eager, to take it on. Perhaps the most important of these was Otto Preminger, who was Austro-Hungarian by birth but long resident in the US and US citizen.(Given the way things are, I guess I should mention that his birthplace, Vyzhnytsya. was in the Western part of Ukraine and this part of it belonged to the the Austro-Hungarian Empire–end of history lesson for now) He began as a theatre director but soon was doing movies and in fact did more than 30 of them in a long career. Noted for both his temper and his audacity as a director, he is one of the more interesting figures in movie history

In 1953 Preminger wanted to release “The Moon Is Blue.” This was a black and white sophisticated(??) comedy on the ancient theme of a virtuous young woman defending her honor against voracious men. The code censors just about flipped when they got a look at the script, not so much because of the plot as because of the language. I’ve seen only snippets of it and I’m not sure of this but I don’t think it had any serious profanity or vulgarity. It did, however, use the words, “virgin,” “seduce” and “pregnant.”

This was enough to set off a bad-tempered clash between Preminger and the representatives and defenders of the code. This time there was no successful negotiation. Each side, heroically or stubbornly or some of each stood its ground. Finally Preminger announced that he would make no changes in the film and would release it without the code’s seal of approval. He did and it was a modest critical and box office success.

Although there were others, Preminger would be a persistent annoyance or worse to the Hays people from then on. In 1955 he released “The Man With the Golden Arm,:” starring Frank Sinatra, now a distinguished academy award winning(“for ‘From Here to Eternity’) actor as well as a leading American singer(though now having to compete with rock ‘n roll). If there ever was a story bound to get the nix from the Hays Code this was it. In addition to many scenes shot in a strip club(no, there wasn’t a lot of stripping–maybe none, actually), the main character, Sinatra, was a supposedly recovering drug addict who just couldn’t stay away from the stuff. Included in the film were scenes of Sinatra shooting up and of his face as the drug got into him.

Now the code forbade showing anything about the drug culture or the drug trade. In fact in went so far as to condemn as unacceptable ANY depiction of the illegal drug business or its results, as if lack of knowledge might cure the US of an already increasing drug issue and one that was about to take off a few years later among the “youth culture”(although I don’t think hippies were big on heroin which is what the drug likely is in the movie). With some new personnel, the Hays Office actually was in a mood now to soften their attitudes a little bit and try to cooperate more with film makers rather than to encourage films which might, like “Moon,” defy them and get away with it. But they couldn’t let this through and they didn’t. With some reluctance they denied it their approval and so Preminger again released a film without a seal. It won him critical praise for its depiction of addiction and got three Academy Award nominations(Sinatra for Best Actor was one)but no awards. Sinatra lost to Marlon Brando for “On the Waterfront.” It was a year for tough movies about tough people in America’s cities. And possibly the Hays Office people noticed.

The next big challenge came from Billy Wilder, like Preminger a foreign-born American who was a great director. Wilder in 1959 was ready to present to the world “Some L:ike It Hot.” I have always thought this film a tiresome mix of tastelessness and stupidity and I find almost nothing funny in it. But maybe I’m wrong–it was praised by the critics and did well at the box office. But before that happened it had to get the seal of approval from the Hays people–or at least Wilder wanted it to.

Now as you likely already know, the plot is about 2 musicians who witness a gangland shooting and flee Chicago in drag to evade the hoods who fear them as witnesses and want to wipe them out. This goes on for nearly two hours and it impressed one idea on the code censors. They couldn’t let anything through which was based on a pair of cross-dressing men adopting feminine attitudes. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are pretty good in these roles, but I always felt they were short one thing–a script. In any event, Wilder, unable to reach what he considered a suitable agreement with the Hays people, released it without the seal. It was a critical and commercial success and was therefore another step down in the prestige of the Hays Office which had refused it its favor.

To be honest I need to mention again that a lot of people like this movie, so if you’ve never seen it give it a try. As far as I’m concerned it ranks just about equal with “Sabrina”(1953), which I remember as being the most boring big time comedy I ever saw, a great waste of time, talent and effort.

But Preminger wasn’t finished and neither was Wilder. In 1959 the former released “Anatomy of a Murder,” one of the best court-legal drama movies ever made.(it also had an outstanding score by Duke Ellington–just listen to that piano during the opening credits). The film dealt with, among other things, the crime of rape and some of the language used in the court was very frank. Words such as “climax,” “rape” and “contraception” had never been heard before in a Hays Code approved movie. But they did let it through. Maybe they were tired of losing and had figured out that denying approval to movies that turned out to be critically-praised box office hits was fighting a losing battle.

The following year Billy Wilder had another challenge for the Code. “The Apartment” is his best film in my opinion(I have not seen a lot of his films, I should add)and it won a slew of Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. For those few of you who haven’t seen it on TV, a brief description of the plot–Lemmon is a new, young, low grade accountant working for a huge insurance company in New York. He needs a promotion and more money and is loaning out his apartment to older, more powerful guys at work who take their girl friends there for trysts. He hopes for promotional and monetary reciprocation. This gets complicated when the big boss, a real creep played to excellence by the usually amiable and loveable Fred MacMurray, wants to become a partaker of the apt arrangement which he wishes to use for trysts with his girl. This is the heart breaking Shirley Maclaine who runs an elevator in the office building and longs for true love.

This all goes, to some extent, where you might expect, but with some real twists and turns. Now this would seem to violate several things in the code–a sympathetic character or two enjoying sex outside of marriage, a lot of creeps doing the same and getting away with it, the hero(??) using his apt so that he can hope to profit by helping middle aged guys have a place to cheat on their wives All this was accepted as normal behavior by most of the characters and one critic said it made every woman in America under 80 doubt her husband. Better make that 90, now, given that …well, never mind.

Anyway, the Hays guys let it through without, as nearly as I am able to determine, a lot of hassle. I suspect that this was due to mainly 3 things–1) Although the film is extremely explicit about what is going on(which would have gotten it booted in the early Hays days), all the sex is off camera. Therefore it seems more “decent” than if it had frank sex scenes. Maybe Wilder was familiar with ancient Greek drama which kept the violence mostly offstage! 2) Although the Hays office was supposed to influence the public rather than the other way around, there is no doubt there had been some change in attitudes and more film-goers were willing to accept more realistic depictions of their times–and I’ll bet this story was a pretty accurate depiction of big time American business in the early ’60’s, although I wasn’t there myself. Anyhow, it may have occurred to them that they might make asses of themselves if they were willing to run against the wind to the point of denying what many urban Americans would recognize(it they got the chance)was the truth, or close to it. 3) Like many of Wilder’s films, this had a warm heart behind the cynical behavior. The lost waif-Maclaine and the wise-cracking but ultimately lonely bachelor Lemmon are irresistible to anyone with a speck of the romantic in them.

Anyway, “The Apartment” made it through and to some extent this was another chink in the armor of the code. It was slowly losing its grip.

As the “revolutionary” decade of the ’60’s went along , more and more movies that would never have made it in the Code’s earlier days were approved, sometimes after deletions demanded by the censors, but still out of bounds if you took the original code seriously. In fact as early as the ’50’s a few changes had been made to, well let’s say “liberalize” the code a bit. But in the ’60’s it was doomed.

I have already mentioned foreign films and their appeal. There are too many important ones to go into in detail, but a few comments are needed. This era saw the emergence of two of the great directors in movie history and, I think, the first two European directors to be extremely influential in the US, with both critics and the movie going public. If you’re a fan you know I mean Ingmar Bergman of Sweden and Frederico Fellini of Italy. Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” is a great film and was one of the earlier films I saw at the now long gone Akron Art Theatre on E Cuyahoga Falls Ave.(The Art Theatre, with the attraction of free coffee and a lot of well-thumbed New Yorker magazines in the lobby, lasted about 25 years or so, but in its last few years had fallen to “art works” of dubious quality–I think it played “The Stewardesses” for over a year before it closed. Maybe I can address this in a later blog)

Bergman and Fellini both challenged Christianity, but in different ways. I thought Bergman’s challenge was more interesting because his characters usually wanted to believe but, for various reasons, couldn’t(this is clear in “Seventh Seal”.) Bergman may have been an example of what the famous theologian Paul Tillich meant when he claimed that one definition of faith is “ultimate concern” even if the one concerned does not believe.

Both Bergman and Fellini displayed a tolerance for a less rigid sexual code that was popular, at least publicly, in the US. Sometimes, this attitude, particularly in Fellini films, approached what might be described as contempt with compassion if that’s possible. If you don’t know these guys’ work, I commend them to your attention. In addition to them there was the French “New Wave” which consisted of directors like Jean-Luc Godard who challenged both old morality and traditional ways of making movies. All of this added to the volatile and sometimes nearly toxic mix of political, religious, philosophical, sexual and social questioning which both marred the times and also created what was, for those of us young then, an exciting time to be among the youth.

The Hays Code simply wasn’t up to it. It had stood its ground(“The Man With the Golden Arm”) and given a bit(“The Apartment”)and neither one seemed to help. More and more film makers were demanding and getting concessions. “Suddenly Last Summer,” “Psycho,” and “The Innocents” all made it through. The atmosphere created by the influx of foreign films created a milieu in which the code seemed more than ever out of date. It was time to go.

I must confess that I typed the final sentence of the above paragraph with a strong feeling of nostalgia and regret. I can’t explain this easily but it seems dishonest not to mention it. I guess it has something to do with remembering my youth and my earlier connection to movies when the code was a given. It was easy to make jokes about it and in fact it often invited them by its behavior and attitudes. I have already remarked on this. But its leaving was the end of an era in American culture and marked a passage from one time to another that would haunt the feelings of the boomer generation( and some others) forever. It was the end of American certainty(often incorrectly applied) and the beginning of doubt, the end of old assumptions and the beginning of new, somewhat unfamiliar ones. Now we were in uncharted territory some of us would never understand.

The man who was largely responsible for the “going” of the Code was Jack Valenti, one of the more accomplished and remarkable men of middle and late 20th century America. A WWII bomber pilot he eventually wound up working in the White House as a close advisor to LBJ. As the Vietnam War drove President Johnson and American liberals further and further apart, Valenti made a memorable speech in which he said he slept better knowing Johnson was his President. He got little if any praise from liberals for this, but he did get a great deal of attention. Perhaps that attention was responsible for his career move.

In 1966 he resigned from the most important job he ever had(Presidential Advisor) and took the second most important one, President of the MPPA. He immediately became a strong advocate for American films and remained so for a career which lasted an incredible 38 years. One of the first things he had to deal with was the rapidly declining Code and he figured out what to do quickly. First, he used his political skills to negotiate an intractable looking quarrel between the code censors and Director Mike Nichols who wanted to bring Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” to the screen in a nearly unabridged version of the play. Valenti got each side to give a little, an idea I suspect had already been tried–but he made it work. “Woolf” became a rallying point for followers of the newer American films(it IS a good movie) and Nichols went on to a career of about 40 years as one of the leading directors of his time.(Personal note–Nichols was for several years partnered–professionally, not personally– with Elaine May, one of America’s funniest women, and they once did a Broadway play called “An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May.” On one of our Kent State trips to NY as undergraduates, my friend Ted and I deserted the tour bus early and went to a matinee performance. It was great, even though in the afternoon.)

In any event, Valenti was largely responsible for “”Woolf” being as good as it was. But he realized the MPPA was trying to steer a sinking ship in the Code and in 1968, at Valenti’s bidding, the Code went, maybe a couple of years later than it should have. It was replaced by the movie rating system we have now. This has now been in place more than twenty years longer than the Code was, something that is nearly unbelievable to my generation.

The code may still serve us in some ways, as a guide of sorts, at least to the past, and perhaps as a cautionary tale. Adding this consideration to my intention to do a brief(?)”compare and contrast” on code movies and movies since, I have concluded that we will need a Part III. I hope to be back soon to do that and to include a brief bibliography for anyone who wants to pursue this further.