Hollywood's Censor

Customer Reviews

• The Inescapable Code  Jan 10, 2008 (8 of 8 found this helpful)

  According to _Liberty_ magazine in 1936, Joseph Ignatius Breen probably had "more influence in standardizing world thinking than Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin." Joseph who? Breen's name is lost to history. People who know something about Hollywood's history might know about the Hays Code, the now ridiculed moral standards Hollywood imposed on itself to keep the screen free of actors uttering words like "hell" or married couples using one bed. Will Hays had become president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, but Breen became his second-in-command, the one to tighten the code and make the studios do things according to his strictly upright, strongly Catholic, moral view. In the surprisingly lively and entertaining _Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen & the Production Code Administration_ (Columbia University Press), Thomas Doherty, a professor of American Studies who has written extensively on movies and television, presents not just a biography of Breen, but a history of American movie censorship. Anyone who loves old films will be amused and exasperated by how much Breen succeeded in imposing his personal version of morality on the movies.
  
  Breen, born in Philadelphia in 1888 and raised in parochial schools by the Jesuits, had been a journalist and diplomat. He gave the Hays Code teeth, and his Production Code was in force from 1930 to 1968, and at least in its early decades it was in force with few violations. It is fun to read how directors got around the Code, both by bargaining and by winking at the censorship in a way audiences could enjoy. The films of Ernst Lubitsch were good examples, like _Angel_ (1937), a comedy set in Paris which squeaked by since the women in it offered "an amusing time" in a "delightful salon" rather than sex for hire in a brothel. It did follow the letter of the Code, but viewers with any intelligence could catch a plot that _Variety_ called "tartly flavored with the risqué". Those intelligent viewers were the ones that eventually spelt an end to the Code, and Doherty's description of its long decline and fall is fascinating. There was Rhett Butler's "I don't give a damn" speech that the studio managed to get approved with much publicity, but the millions who had already read _Gone with the Wind_ snickered about all the movie fuss. People also giggled about the Breen office's fixation about sweaters, garments which the Code insisted must not outline an actress's breasts. There was Howard Hughes's famous campaign to get uncensored shots of the zaftig Jane Russell in _The Outlaw_ (1941). It caused a battle with Breen that lasted for years, and resulted in the movie being shown to appreciative audiences without a Code seal but in independent movie houses. Protestants grumbled about the Catholic power over movies: "The minority control of the most vital amusement source of the nation is one of the most astounding things in the history of the United States," stormed the _Protestant Digest_. Film noir helped do in the code, as did World War II, as Breen fought to keep battle realism from the screen. Foreign films were a real menace to Hollywood's business-as-usual in many ways, but since Breen had no control in other countries, they kept sending films their own citizens found laudable and Breen thought execrable. The attempted censoring of the classic Italian film _The Bicycle Thief_ (1948) was because in one scene the kid in it stood at a wall and urinated, although no genitalia or urine was seen. People resented Breen's effort to keep this and other serious films from American eyes.
  
  Breen does not come off as a prig, but simply as a pugnacious fighter for his own brand of morality and a conscientious Catholic with what he saw as a God-given duty, a duty he took so seriously that overwork probably shortened his life. There was never a hint of scandal in his public or private life, and he loved movies and was able to get along with

• The Man Who Held Holllywood for Ransom  Jun 26, 2008 (2 of 2 found this helpful)

  This book clearly explains the intricacies of movie censorship. Even without knowing too much, any reader may jump in and discover why Hollywood movies were as dull as ditch water from 1934-1968. The whole book centers around Joseph Breen, his censorship office and his furious efforts to thwart movies. It would be fascinating just to focus on him, but the book deftly links him to the rest of efforts by politicians and a stodgy Catholic clergy to impose morality on the nation. Throughout the text readers are treated to a man who wanted any taint of subversion or sensuality bleached out. Yet the efforts failed.
  We see that the writers trumped censorship by doubling the dialog and oblique innuendos. Hence in "The Maltese Falcon", Spade faces off against a homosexual gang of thieves (Peter Lorre & Sydney Greenstreet), and Mary Astor reveals that she was the murdered Thursby's lover--through obscure observations. For example Ninotchka is an oblique commentary on Communism disguised as a love story. It didn't matter what the movie or cartoon, writers had either to go over their audiences' head or dumb down a storyline to get any profound or salacious detail in.
  All this continued throughout Breen's woozy tenure as censor. But in the post WWII environment, the censorship of movies combined with the popularity of television, worked against it. Directors rebelled, starting with Otto Preminger's "The Moon is Blue" and ending with Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". Those films included more and more blatantly offensive materials to try the waters. Ultimately, the Censorship Board became a ratings board in 1968, conceding the battle to Hollywood.
  The author reaches an unexpected conclusion. The 1930's to the 1950's aren't really Hollywood's Golden Age. In fact they were a period of Film Infantilization and finger-wagging moralism. Many films that were outright raunchy (Convention City), politically daring (Duck Soup), or bawdy (Belle of the Nineties), were airbrushed, suppressed or destroyed. He argues that the films were decent but could have been much better. All this because reactionaries got together and repeated conservatism's mantra:Decadence. This book serves as a starting point for alternative studies of the Studio System. Next, one should proceed onto "Dangerous Men" and "Complicated Women".