User:Bleff/sandboxprecode

Pre-Code Hollywood
From top, left to right: Dorothy Mackaill in Safe in Hell (1931) Paul Muni in Scarface (1932) Harry Earles and Olga Baclanova in Freaks (1932) Mae Clarke and James Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931) Boris Karloff and Marilyn Harris in Frankenstein (1931) Toby Wing in 42nd Street (1933)
Years active	c. 1929 – July 1934
Location	Hollywood film industry, United States
Major figures	Mae West Barbara Stanwyck James Cagney Jean Harlow Edward G. Robinson Marlene Dietrich Clark Gable Warren William Ernst Lubitsch Josef von Sternberg Busby Berkeley Norma Shearer Jack Warner
Influences	Hardboiled and pulp fiction Modernism Broadway theatre vaudeville burlesque cabaret realist and naturalist literature tabloid journalism true crime
Influenced	Film noir New Hollywood French New Wave underground cinema exploitation queer cinema

Pre-Code Hollywood was a brief era in the history of the cinema of the United States that occurred between the widespread adoption of sound films (known as "talkies") around 1929 and the definitive enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code's censorship guidelines in 1934. It was a highly particular period in the industry during which lax censorship enabled the widespread depiction of controversial themes and content—many of which would not reappear in U.S. cinema for decades—including unabashed sexuality, graphic violence, unpunished immorality and vice, prostitution, drug use, homosexuality, and interracial relationships (at a time when miscegenation was still illegal) and the desacralization of marriage, among others. The period is more specifically defined by most film scholars and programmers as the four years between March 31, 1930—when the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) formally adopted the Production Code—and July 2, 1934, when it began to be actually enforced. Therefore, the term "pre-Code" is something of a misnomer, as the period unfolded after the Code had already been adopted—though not yet enforced—and similar risqué content and efforts at studio self-regulation had already emerged during the 1920s.

The Production Code, which came to define the sanitized content of Hollywood's Golden Age until the 1960s, is commonly known as the "Hays Code", named after Will H. Hays. Hays, a Presbyterian elder and former postmaster general, was appointed director of the MPPDA, a trade organization created by the major film studios in 1922 to self-regulate content and thus prevent government intervention. This initiative emerged in response to a wave of media scandals, increasingly provocative material on screen and the growing influence of Catholic activism targeting the film industry.

Background

Hollywood during the silent era

Bibliography

• Black, Gregory D. (1994). Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45299-6. Retrieved June 1, 2025 – via Internet Archive.
• Doherty, Thomas (1999). Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema; 1930-1934. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11094-4.
• LaSalle, Mick (2014) [2000]. Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood (eBook). Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 978-146-687-697-2.
• Vieira, Mark A. (1999). Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-4475-8. Retrieved June 1, 2025 – via Internet Archive.

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  Human Wreckage (1923)
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  Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)
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  The Merry Widow (1925)
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  Bright Lights (1925)
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  The Masked Bride (1925)
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  Richard Arlen and Charles Rogers in the famous kiss scene in Wings (1927).