Pre-Code musicals took advantage of their backstage stories to show women in states of dress – in skimpy rehearsal clothes, changing in dressing rooms, or onstage in tight or revealing costumes – which were beyond those considered decent for women in ordinary life. This shot is from the trailer for ', in which auditioning women show their legs for the director. Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the brief era in the between the introduction of sound pictures in 1929 and the enforcement of the censorship guidelines, popularly known as the 'Hays Code', in mid-1934.

Although the Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934, with the establishment of the (PCA). Before that date, movie content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and the major studios, and popular opinion, than strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers. As a result, films in the late 1920s and early 1930s included depictions of,,,,,,,, intense, and. Strong female characters were ubiquitous in such pre-Code films as,, and. Gangsters in films like,, and were seen by many as heroic rather than evil. Along with featuring stronger female characters, films examined female subject matters that would not be revisited until decades later in US films.

Nefarious characters were seen to profit from their deeds, in some cases without significant repercussions, and drug use was a topic of several films. Many of Hollywood's biggest stars such as,, and got their start in the era. Other stars who excelled during this period, however, like (who decamped to England) and (the so-called 'king of Pre-Code', who died in 1948), would wind up essentially forgotten by the general public within a generation. Beginning in late 1933 and escalating throughout the first half of 1934, American launched a campaign against what they deemed the immorality of American cinema. This, plus a potential government takeover of film censorship and social research seeming to indicate that movies which were seen to be immoral could promote bad behavior, was enough pressure to force the studios to capitulate to greater oversight. A popular silent-film star who made the transition to sound, lifts her skirt on the poster for the 1929 film. Skirt-lifting was one of many suggestive activities detested by Hays.

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Additionally, the of the 1930s motivated studios to produce films with racy and violent content, which boosted ticket sales. Soon, the flouting of the code became an open secret. In 1931, mocked the code, and Variety followed suit in 1933.

In the same year as the Variety article, a noted screenwriter stated that 'the Hays moral code is not even a joke any more; it's just a memory.' Early sound film era [ ] Although the liberalization of sexuality in American film had increased during the 1920s, the pre-Code era is either dated to the start of the sound film era, or more generally to March 1930, when the Hays Code was first written. Over the protests of NAMPI, New York became the first state to take advantage of the Supreme Court's decision in Mutual Film vs.

Ohio by instituting a censorship board in 1921. Virginia followed suit the next year, and eight individual states had a board by the advent of sound film. Many of these boards were ineffectual.

By the 1920s, the New York stage, a frequent source of subsequent screen material, had topless shows; performances were filled with curse words, mature subject matter, and sexually suggestive dialogue. Early during the sound system conversion process, it became apparent that what might be acceptable in New York would not be so in Kansas. In 1927, Hays suggested studio executives form a committee to discuss film censorship. Of (MGM), of, and E. Allen of responded by collaborating on a list they called the 'Don'ts and Be Carefuls', based on items that were challenged by local censor boards, and which consisted of eleven subjects best avoided, and twenty-six to be handled very carefully. The (FTC) approved the list, and Hays created the SRC to oversee its implementation. However, there was still no way to enforce these tenets.

The controversy surrounding film standards came to a head in 1929. Director was responsible for the increasing discussion of sex in cinema in the 1920s. Starting with (1919), he made a series of films that examined sex and were highly successful.

Films featuring Hollywood's original ' such as (released four days before the October 29, 1929, market crash) highlighted Bow's sexual attractiveness. 1920s stars such as Bow,, and freely displayed their sexuality in a straightforward fashion.

Hollywood during the Great Depression [ ] The Great Depression presented a unique time for film-making in the United States. The economic disaster brought on by the stock market crash of 1929 changed American values and beliefs in various ways. Themes of and traditional concepts of personal achievement, self-reliance, and the overcoming of odds lost great currency. Due to the constant empty economic reassurances from politicians in the early years of the Depression, the American public developed an increasingly jaded attitude.

Unemployed men in 1931. The Depression profoundly influenced pre-Code Hollywood both financially and artistically.

The cynicism, challenging of traditional beliefs, and political controversy of Hollywood films during this period mirrored the attitudes of many of their patrons. Also gone was the carefree and adventurous lifestyle of the 1920s. 'After two years the seems as far away as the days before the war', commented in 1931. In the sense noted by Fitzgerald, understanding the moral climate of the early 1930s is complex.

Although films experienced an unprecedented level of freedom and dared to portray things that would be kept hidden for several decades, many in America looked upon the stock market crash as a product of the excesses of the previous decade. In looking back upon the 1920s, events were increasingly seen as occurring in prelude to the market crash.

In (1931), lurid party scenes featuring 1920s flappers are played to excess. Ultimately reforms her ways and is saved; less fortunate is, who continues on the careless path that leads to his ultimate self-destruction.

For (1930), and composed '. The song was repeated sarcastically by characters in several films such as (1931) and (1933). Less comical was the picture of the United States' future presented in that same year (1933), in which a hobo looks into a depressing night and proclaims, 'It's the end of America'. Heroes for Sale was directed by prolific pre-Code director and featured silent film star as a World War I veteran cast onto the streets with a morphine addiction from his hospital stay. In (1933), the young man played by leads a group of dispossessed juvenile drifters who frequently brawl with the police. Such gangs were common; around 250,000 youths traveled the country by hopping trains or hitchhiking in search of better economic circumstances in the early 1930s. A crowd gathers around American Union Bank in New York City during a early in the Great Depression.

The displayed in bank runs was portrayed in films like (1932), where depicted 'the thin line between investor confidence and panic in Hoover's America.' Complicating matters for the studios, the advent of in 1927 required an immense expenditure in sound stages, recording booths, cameras, and movie-theater sound systems, not to mention the new-found artistic complications of producing in a radically altered medium. The studios were in a difficult financial position even before the market crash as the sound conversion process and some risky purchases of theater chains had pushed their finances near the breaking point. These economic circumstances led to a loss of nearly half of the weekly attendance numbers and closure of almost a third of the country's theaters in the first few years of the depression. Even so, 60 million Americans went to the cinema weekly. Apart from the economic realities of the conversion to sound, were the artistic considerations. Early sound films were often noted for being too verbose.

In 1930, criticized the wall-to-wall banter of sound pictures, and director wondered what the camera was intended for if characters were going to narrate all the onscreen action. The film industry also withstood competition from the home radio, and often characters in films went to great lengths to belittle the medium.

The film industry was not above using the new medium to broadcast commercials for its projects however, and occasionally turned radio stars into short feature performers to take advantage of their built-in following. Seething beneath the surface of American life in the Depression was the fear of the angry mob, portrayed in panicked hysteria in films such as (1933), (1933), and (1932). Massive wide shots of angry hordes, comprising sometimes hundreds of men, rush into action in terrifyingly efficient uniformity. Groups of agitated men either standing in breadlines, loitering in hobo camps, or marching the streets in protest became a prevalent sight during the Great Depression. The protests of World War I veterans on the capital in Washington, D.C., on which Hoover unleashed a brutal crackdown, prompted many of the Hollywood depictions. Although social issues were examined more directly in the pre-Code era, Hollywood still largely ignored the Great Depression, as many films sought to ameliorate patrons' anxieties rather than incite them.

Hays remarked in 1932: The function of motion pictures is to ENTERTAIN. This we must keep before us at all times and we must realize constantly the fatality of ever permitting our concern with social values to lead us into the realm of propaganda the American motion picture owes no civic obligation greater than the honest presentment of clean entertainment and maintains that in supplying effective entertainment, free of propaganda, we serve a high and self-sufficing purpose. Social problem films [ ] Hays and others, such as, obviously felt that motion pictures presented a form of escapism that served a palliative effect on American moviegoers. Goldwyn had coined the famous dictum, 'If you want to send a message, call ' in the pre-Code era. However, the MPPDA took the opposite stance when questioned about certain so-called 'message' films before Congress in 1932, claiming the audiences' desire for realism led to certain unsavory social, legal, and political issues being portrayed in film. Described by as 'one of the singular joys of the Pre-Code era,' played industrialist villains in several pre-Code films, and his gangster-freeing, lowlife character in (1932) reflected much of America's views of lawyers at the time.

The length of pre-Code films was usually comparatively short, but that running time often required tighter material and did not affect the impact of message films. (1933) received the following review from: 'As an attack on ruthless capitalism, it goes a lot further than more recent efforts such as, and it's amazing how much plot and character are gracefully shoehorned into 75 minutes.' The film featured pre-Code megastar (later dubbed 'the king of Pre-Code' ), 'at his magnetic worst', playing a particularly vile and heartless department store manager who, for example, terminates the jobs of two long-standing male employees, one of whom commits suicide as a result. He also threatens to fire 's character, who pretends to be single to stay employed, unless she sleeps with him, then attempts to ruin her husband after learning she is married. Films that stated a position about a social issue were usually labeled either 'propaganda films' or 'preachment yarns'.

In contrast to Goldwyn and MGM's definitively Republican stance on social issue films, Warner Brothers, led by New Deal advocate, was the most prominent maker of these types of pictures and preferred they be called 'Americanism stories'. Pre-Code historian Thomas Doherty has written that two recurring elements marked the so-called preachment yarns. 'The first is the exculpatory preface; the second is the prelude.' The preface was essentially a softened version of a disclaimer that intended to calm any in the audience who disagreed with the film's message. The Jazz Age prelude was almost singularly used to cast shame on the boisterous behavior of the 1920s.

(1932) is a Warner Bros. Message film about the evils of capitalism. The film takes place in an unspecified southern state where workers are given barely enough to survive and taken advantage of by being charged exorbitant interest rates and high prices by unscrupulous landowners.

The film is decidedly anti-capitalist; however, its preface claims otherwise: In many parts of the South today, there exists an endless dispute between rich land-owners, known as planters, and the poor cotton pickers, known as 'peckerwoods'. The planters supply the tenants with the simple requirements of everyday life and; in return, the tenants work the land year in and year out.

A hundred volumes could be written on the rights and wrongs of both parties, but it is not the object of the producers of Cabin in the Cotton to take sides. We are only concerned with the effort to picture these conditions. In the end, however, the planters admit their wrongdoing and agree to a more equitable distribution of capital. A famous scene from, in which hitchhikes using an unorthodox method to attract a ride, after 's failure to get one with his thumb. The avaricious businessman remained a recurring character in pre-Code cinema. In (1932), played an industrialist based on real-life Swedish entrepreneur, himself nicknamed the 'Match King', who attempts to corner the global market on matches. William's vile character, Paul Kroll, commits robbery, fraud, and murder on his way from a janitor to a captain of industry.

When the market collapses in the 1929 crash, Kroll is ruined and commits suicide to avoid imprisonment. William played another unscrupulous businessman in (1932): David Dwight, a wealthy banker who owns a building named after himself that is larger than the. He tricks everyone he knows into poverty to appropriate others' wealth. He is ultimately shot by his secretary (), who then ends the film and her own life by walking off the roof of the skyscraper. Americans' mistrust and dislike of lawyers was a frequent topic of dissection in social problem films such (1933),, and (1932). In films such as (1930), the legal system turns innocent characters into criminals.

The life of 's character is ruined and her romantic interest is executed so that she may live free, although she is innocent of the crime for which the district attorney wants to convict her. Religious hypocrisy was addressed in such films as (1931), starring and directed. Stanwyck also portrayed a nurse and initially reluctant heroine who manages to save, via unorthodox means, two young children in danger from nefarious characters (including as a malevolent chauffeur) in (1931).

Many pre-Code films dealt with the economic realities of a country struggling to find its next meal. In (1932), 's character resorts to prostitution to feed her child, and 's character in (1934) gets her comeuppance for throwing a tray of food onto the floor by later finding herself without food or financial resources. 's character in (1932) reflects that as a she regularly received diamonds and pearls as gifts, but now must content herself with a corned beef sandwich.

In (1932), puts a luscious meal as the first order of business on his itinerary after coming into money. Political releases [ ]. In the pre-Code film (1933), a U.S. President makes himself dictator – part of what the 1930s trade papers dubbed the 'dictator craze'. Early in the Depression many Americans desired politicians who could give them something beyond empty reassurances and hollow promises. Given the social circumstances, politically oriented social problem films ridiculed politicians and portrayed them as incompetent bumblers, scoundrels, and liars. In (1932), is again enlisted, this time to get an imbecile, who is accidentally in the running for Governor, elected.

The candidate wins the election despite his incessant, embarrassing mishaps. Portrayed the state of a political system stuck in neutral. Nearly released the film with a scene of the public execution of a politician as the climax before deciding to cut it. Released in 1933, and it stands in stark contrast to his other films of the period. Filmed shortly after DeMille had completed a five-month tour of the, This Day and Age takes place in America and features several children torturing a gangster who got away with the murder of a popular local shopkeeper. The youngsters are seen lowering the gangster into a vat of rats when the police arrive, and their response is to encourage the youths to continue this. The film ends with the youngsters taking the gangster to a local judge and forcing the magistrate to conduct a trial in which the outcome is never in doubt.

The need for strong leaders who could take charge and steer America out of its crisis is seen in (1933), about a benevolent dictator who takes control of the United States. Stars as a weak-willed, ineffectual president (likely modeled after Hoover) who is inhabited by the archangel upon being knocked unconscious.

The spirit's behavior is similar to that of. The president solves the nation's unemployment crisis and executes an -type criminal who has continually flouted the law. Dictators were not just glorified in fiction. Columbia's (1933) was a 76-minute paean to the leader, narrated by NBC radio commentator. After showing some of the progress Italy has made during 's 10-year reign, Thomas opines, 'This is a time when a dictator comes in handy!'

The film was viewed by over 175,000 jubilant people during its first two weeks at the cavernous in. The election of (FDR) in 1932 quelled the public affection for dictators. As the country became increasingly enthralled with FDR, who was featured in countless, it exhibited less desire for alternative forms of government. Many Hollywood films reflected this new optimism.

Heroes for Sale, despite being a tremendously bleak and at times anti-American film, ends on a positive note as the New Deal appears as a sign of optimism. When (1933), directed by, reaches its conclusion, a dispossessed juvenile delinquent is in court expecting a jail sentence. However the judge lets the boy go free, revealing to him the symbol of the New Deal behind his desk, and tells him '[t]hings are going to be better here now, not only here in New York, but all over the country.'

A box-office casualty of this hopefulness was Gabriel Over the White House, which entered production during the Hoover era malaise and sought to capitalize on it. By the time the film was released on March 31, 1933, FDR's election had produced a level of hopefulness in America that rendered the film's message obsolete. 's rise to power in Germany and his regime's anti-Semitic policies significantly affected American pre-Code filmmaking. Although Hitler had become unpopular in many parts of the United States, Germany was still a voluminous importer of American films and the studios wanted to appease the German government. The ban on Jews and negative portrayals of Germany in the Fatherland even led to a significant reduction in work for Jews in Hollywood until after the end of World War II. As a result, only two social problem films released by independent film companies addressed the mania in Germany during the pre-Code era ( and ).

In 1933, and producer announced they were working on a picture, to be titled Mad Dog of Europe, which was intended to be a full-scale attack on Hitler. Jaffe had quit his job at to make the film.

Hays summoned the pair to his office and told them to cease production as they were causing needless headaches for the studios. Germany had threatened to seize all the properties of the Hollywood producers in Germany and ban the import of any future American films. Main article: In the early 1900s, the United States was still primarily a rural country, especially in self-identity. 's (1912) is one of the earliest American films to feature urban organized crime. Prohibition's arrival in 1920 created an environment where anyone who wanted to drink had to consort with criminals, especially in urban areas. Nonetheless, the urban-crime genre was mostly ignored until 1927 when, which is recognized as the first gangster movie, became a surprise hit.

According to the Encyclopedia of Hollywood entry on Underworld, 'The film established the fundamental elements of the gangster movie: a hoodlum hero; ominous, night-shrouded city streets; floozies; and a blazing finale in which the cops cut down the protagonist'. Gangster films such as (1929), and (1930) were released to capitalize on Underworld 's popularity, with Thunderbolt being described as 'a virtual remake' of the film. Other late 1920s crime films investigated the connection between mobsters and productions in movies such as (1928), (1928) and (1929). The Hays Office had never officially recommended banning violence in any form in the 1920s—unlike profanity, the drug trade or prostitution—but advised that it be handled carefully. New York's censor board was more thorough than that of any other state, missing only around 50 of the country's 1,000 to 1,300 annual releases.

From 1927 to 1928, violent scenes removed were those in which a gun was pointed at the camera or 'at or into the body of another character'. Many shots where machine guns were featured, scenes where criminals shot at law enforcement officers, some scenes involving stabbing or knife brandishing (audiences considered stabbings more disturbing than shootings), most whippings, several involving choking, torture, or electrocution, and any scenes which could be considered educational in their depiction of crime methods. Sadistic violence and reaction shots showing the faces of individuals on the receiving end of violence were considered especially sensitive areas. The Code later recommended against scenes showing robbery, theft, safe-cracking, arson, 'the use of firearms', 'dynamiting of trains, machines, and buildings', and 'brutal killings', on the basis that they would be rejected by local censors.

— Pre-Code historian Thomas P. Doherty In the early 1930s, several real-life criminals became celebrities. Two in particular captured the American imagination: and. Gangsters like Capone had transformed the perception of entire cities.

Capone gave Chicago its 'reputation as the locus classicus of American gangsterdom, a cityscape where bullet-proof roadsters with tommygun-toting hoodlums on running boards careened around State Street spraying fusillades of slugs into flower shop windows and mowing down the competition in blood-spattered garages'. Capone appeared on the cover of magazine in 1930. He was even offered 7-figure sums by two major Hollywood studios to appear in a film but declined. Dillinger became a national celebrity as a bank robber who eluded arrest and escaped confinement several times.

He had become the most celebrated public outlaw since. His father appeared in a popular series of newsreels giving police homespun advice on how to catch his son. Dillinger's popularity rose so quickly that Variety joked that 'if Dillinger remains at large much longer and more such interviews are obtained, there may be some petitions circulated to make him our president.' Hays wrote a cablegram to all the studios in March 1934 mandating that Dillinger not be portrayed in any motion picture.

The genre entered a new level following the release of (1931), which featured as gangster Rico Bandello. Caesar, along with starring as Tom Powers and (1932), featuring as Tony Comante, were, by standards of the time, incredibly violent films that created a new type of anti-hero. Nine gangster films were released in 1930, 26 in 1931, 28 in 1932, and 15 in 1933, when the genre's popularity began to subside after the end of Prohibition.

The backlash against gangster films was swift. In 1931, Jack Warner announced that his studio would stop making them and that he himself had never allowed his 15-year-old son to see them. In (1931), Rico () confronts Joe () for wanting to leave the gang. Generally considered the grandfather of gangster films, in Little Caesar, Robinson as Rico and his close friend Joe Massara () move to Chicago. Joe wants to go straight and meets a woman. Rico, however, seeks a life of crime and joins the gang of Sam Vettori.

He rises to the rank of boss of the crime family. After becoming concerned his friend will betray him he threatens him, at which point Joe's girlfriend goes to the police. Unable to bring himself to kill Joe and eliminate the witness against him, Rico goes into hiding. He is coaxed out by the police, who publish that he is a coward to the press. Rico is killed in a blaze of gunfire; his last words are 'Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?' Robinson was initially cast in a small role but persuaded the film's producer to let him play the lead.

Wingate, who then headed New York's censorship board, told Hays that he was flooded with complaints from people who saw kids in theaters nationwide 'applaud the gang leader as a hero.' The success of inspired Fox's (1931) and (1931), and Paramount's (1931), but the next big Hollywood gangster would come from Warners. 's The Public Enemy (1931), released by Warner Brothers, features another career-defining performance, this time as Tom Powers. The film is similar to the template set in Little Caesar in that it follows Powers from his rise to his eventual fall in the world of crime.

The film was partially based on the real life of Chicago gangster. Cagney's character is contrasted with his puritanical brother who wants him to go straight; their mother is at the center of the conflict. Tom Powers is egotistical, amoral, heartless, ruthless, and extremely violent. The best-remembered scene in the picture is referred to as the 'grapefruit scene': when Cagney's girlfriend () angers him during breakfast, he shoves half a grapefruit in her face.

Instead of scenes from the film, its trailer contained a voiceover warning of the picture's intensity and showed a gun being fired directly at the camera. The infamous 'grapefruit scene' in (1931), with and Cagney was even more violent towards women in the gangster film (1933): in one scene, he knocks out an amorous woman whose feelings he does not reciprocate and violently throws her into the backseat of his car. In April 1931, the same month as the release of The Public Enemy, Hays recruited former police chief August Vollmer to conduct a study on the effect gangster pictures had on children. After he had finished his work, Vollmer stated that gangster films were innocuous and even overly favorable in depicting the police. Although Hays used the results to defend the film industry, the New York State censorship board was not impressed, and from 1930 through 1932, removed 2,200 crime scenes from pictures. Some critics have named Scarface (1932) as the most incendiary pre-Code gangster film.

Directed by and starring as Tony Camonte, the film is partially based on the life of and incorporates details of Capone's biography into the storyline. The film begins with Camonte working for Johnny Lovo (), but he's dissatisfied with being a subordinate and he's also attracted to Lovo's girlfriend Poppy (). He has an unhealthily controlling relationship with his sister Francesca () – whom he expects to remain chaste—that many critics have described as incestuous. Lovo warns Camonte to leave the North Side alone as it is controlled by a rival mob, but he ignores this warning and launches a series of executions and extortions that result in a war with the North Side gang. Camonte then forcefully takes the gang over from Lovo, who tries unsuccessfully to kill him for this. Camonte's attempt to kill Lovo is more successful, and Poppy happily becomes his girl. When Camonte finds Francesca in a hotel room with his closest friend, coin-flipping gangster Guino Rinaldo (), he kills Rinaldo in a rage.

Afterward, he becomes despondent when he learns that the couple had wanted to surprise him with the news that they had gotten married. Both and light a match for 's cigarette in the trailer for (1932). Morley chooses Muni's light, symbolically spurning her boyfriend for the fast-rising gangster. The production of Scarface was troubled from the start. The Hays office warned producer not to make the film; when it was completed in late 1931, the Hays office demanded numerous changes including a conclusion where Comante was captured, tried, convicted, and hanged and that the film carry the subtitle Shame of a Nation. Hughes sent the film to numerous state censorship boards, saying he hoped to show that the film was made to combat the 'gangster menace'.

After he was unable to get the film past the New York State censor board (then headed by Wingate) even after the changes, Hughes sued the New York board and won, allowing him to release the film in a version close to its intended form. When other local censors refused to release the edited version, the Hays Office sent Jason Joy around to them to assure them that the cycle of gangster films of this nature was ending. Scarface provoked outrage mainly because of its unprecedented violence, but also for its shifts of tone from serious to comedic., writing in the, stated that the film blends 'comedy and horror in a manner that suggests Chico Marx let loose with a live machine gun.' In one scene, Camonte is inside a cafe while a torrent of machine-gun fire from the car of a rival gang is headed his way; when the barrage is over, Camonte picks up one of the newly released the gangsters dropped and exhibits childlike wonder and unrestrained excitement over the new toy. Civic leaders became furious that gangsters like Capone (who was also the inspiration for Little Caesar) were being applauded in movie houses all across America. The screenplay, adapted by Ben Hecht who was a journalist in Chicago, contained biographical details for Muni's character in Scarface that were so obviously taken from Capone, and the detail so close, that it was impossible not to draw the parallels.

One of the factors that made gangster pictures so subversive was that, in the difficult economic times of the Depression, there already existed the viewpoint that the only way to get financial success was through crime. The argued that although adults may not be particularly affected, these films were 'misleading, contaminating, and often demoralizing to children and youth.' Exacerbating the problem, some cinema theater owners advertised gangster pictures with a singular irresponsibility. Real-life murders were tied into promotions and 'theater lobbies displayed tommy guns and '.

The situation reached such a nexus that the studios had to ask exhibitors to tone down the gimmickry in their promotions. Prison films [ ] Prison films of the pre-Code era often involved men and women who were unjustly incarcerated, and films set in prisons of the north tended to portray them as a bastion of solidarity against the crumbling social system of the. Sparked by the real-life Ohio penitentiary fire on April 21, 1930, in which guards refused to release prisoners from their cells, causing 300 deaths, the films depicted the inhumane conditions inside prisons in the early 1930s.

The genre was composed of two archetypes: the prison film and the film. In the prison film, large hordes of men move about in identical uniforms, resigned to their fate, they live by a well defined code. In the chain gang film, Southern prisoners were subjected to a draconian system of discipline in the blazing outdoor heat, where they were treated terribly by their ruthless captors.

I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (starring Paul Muni, 1932) was based on of, who was himself a fugitive when the picture was released. The film was a powerful agent for social change.

The prototype of the prison genre was The Big House (1930). In The Big House, plays a squirmy inmate who is sentenced to six years after committing vehicular manslaughter while under the influence. His cell mates are a murderer played by and a forger played. The picture features future staples of the prison genre such as solitary confinement, informers, riots, visitations, an escape, and the codes of prison life. The protagonist, Montgomery, ends up being a loathsome character, a coward who will sell anyone in the prison out to get an early release. The film was banned in Ohio, the site of the deadly prison riots that inspired it.,,,, and others, from no less than seven studios, followed.

However, prison films mainly appealed to men, and had weak box office performances as a result. Studios also produced children's prison films that addressed the juvenile delinquency problems of America in the Depression. The Mayor of Hell, for instance, featured kids killing a murderously abusive reform school overseer without retribution. Chain gang films [ ] The most searing criticism of the American prison system was reserved for the depiction of Southern chain gangs, with being by far the most influential. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, which is based on of, is by far the most famous of the early 1930s chain gang films. In the first half of 1931, magazine had published Burns' work over six issues, and it was released as a book in January 1932. Decorated veteran James Allen () returns from World War I a changed man, and seeks an alternative to the tedious job that he left behind.

He travels the country looking for construction work. His ultimate goal is to become involved in construction planning. Allen follows a hobo he met at a homeless shelter into a cafe, taking him up on his offer of a free meal. When the hobo attempts to rob the eatery, Allen is charged as an accessory, convicted of stealing a few dollars, and sentenced to ten years in a chain gang. The men are chained together and transported to a quarry to break rocks every day.

Even when unchained from each other, shackles remain around their ankles at all times. Allen convinces a large black prisoner who has particularly good aim to hit the shackles on his ankles with a sledgehammer to bend them.

He removes his feet from the bent shackles, and in a famous sequence, escapes through the woods while being chased by bloodhounds. On the outside he develops a new identity and becomes a respected developer in Chicago. He is blackmailed into marriage by a woman he does not love who finds out his secret. When he threatens to leave her for a young woman he has fallen in love with, she turns him in.

His case becomes a, and he agrees to turn himself in under the agreement that he will serve 90 days and then be released. He is tricked however, and not freed at the agreed upon time. This forces him to escape again, and he seeks out the young woman, telling her that they cannot be together because he will always be hunted. The film ends with her asking him how he survives, and his ominous reply from the darkness: 'I steal.' Although based on reality, Chain Gang changes the facts slightly to appeal to Depression-era audiences by making Allen's return home one to a country that is struggling economically, even though Burns returned to the roaring twenties. The film's bleak, anti-establishment ending shocked audiences. Laughter in Hell, a 1933 film directed by and starring, was inspired in part by I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

O'Brien plays a railroad engineer who kills his wife and her lover in a jealous rage, and is sent to prison. The dead man's brother ends up being the warden of the prison and torments O'Brien's character. O'Brien and several others revolt, killing the warden and escaping with his new lover (). The film, rediscovered in 2012, drew controversy for its scene in which several black men were hanged. Reports vary if the blacks were hanged alongside other white men, or by themselves. The New Age (an African American weekly newspaper) film critic praised the filmmakers for being courageous enough to depict the atrocities that were occurring in some Southern states. Main article: Promotion [ ] As films featuring prurient elements performed well at the box office, after the crackdown on crime films, Hollywood increased its production of pictures featuring the.

In 1932, Warner Bros formed an official policy decreeing that 'two out of five stories should be hot', and that nearly all films could benefit by 'adding something having to do with ginger.' Filmmakers (including the shrewd ) began putting in overly suggestive material they knew would never reach theaters in hopes that lesser offenses would survive the cutting-room floor. MGM screenwriter said '[Joy and Wingate] wouldn't want to take out too much, so you would give them five things to take out to satisfy the Hays Office—and you would get away with murder with what they left in.' Films such as,,,,, and were provocative in their mere titles. Studios marketed their films, sometimes dishonestly, by inventing suggestive tag lines and lurid titles, even going so far as to hold in-house contests for thinking up provocative titles for screenplays. Commonly labeled 'sex films' by the censors, these pictures offended taste in more categories than just sexuality. According to a Variety analysis of 440 pictures produced in 1932–33, 352 had 'some sex slant', with 145 possessing 'questionable sequences', and 44 being 'critically sexual'.

Variety summarized that 'over 80% of the world's chief picture output was flavored with bedroom essence.' Attempts to create films for adults only (dubbed 'pinking') wound up bringing large audiences of all ages to cinemas. Some objected to publicity photos such as this 1932 shot of posing suggestively on a bed.

Posters and publicity photos were often tantalizing. Women appeared in poses and garb not even glimpsed in the films themselves.

In some cases actresses with small parts in films (or in the case of Dolores Murray in her publicity still for, no part at all) appeared scantily clad. Hays became outraged at the steamy pictures circulating in newspapers around the country. The original Hays Code contained an often-ignored note about advertising imagery, but he wrote an entirely new advertising screed in the style of the that contained a set of twelve prohibitions. The first seven addressed imagery. They prohibited women in undergarments, women raising their skirts, suggestive poses, kissing, necking, and other suggestive material. The last five concerned advertising copy and prohibited misrepresentation of the film's contents, 'salacious copy', and the word '.

Studios found their way around the restrictions and published increasingly racy imagery. Ultimately this backfired in 1934 when a billboard in Philadelphia was placed outside the home of. Severely offended, Dougherty took his revenge by helping to launch the motion-picture boycott which would later facilitate enforcement of the Code. A commonly repeated theme by those supporting censorship, and one mentioned in the Code itself was the notion that the common people needed to be saved from themselves by the more refined cultural elite. Despite the obvious attempts to appeal to red-blooded American males, most of the patrons of sex pictures were female.

Variety squarely blamed women for the increase in vice pictures: Women are responsible for the ever-increasing public taste in sensationalism and sexy stuff. Women who make up the bulk of the picture audiences are also the majority reader of the tabloids, scandal sheets, flashy magazines, and erotic books the mind of the average man seems wholesome in comparison. Women love dirt, nothing shocks 'em.

(seen here on a 1935 cover) was propelled to stardom in pre-Code films such as,, and. Pre-Code female audiences liked to indulge in the carnal lifestyles of mistresses and adulteresses while at the same time taking joy in their usually inevitable downfall in the closing scenes of the picture. While gangster films were claimed to corrupt the morals of young boys, vice films were blamed for threatening the purity of adolescent women. Content [ ] In pre-Code Hollywood, the sex film became synonymous with women's pictures — once told Wingate that he was ordered by Warner Brothers' New York corporate office to reserve 20% of the studio's output for 'women's pictures, which inevitably means sex pictures.'

Vice films typically tacked on endings where the most sin-filled characters were either punished or redeemed. Films explored Code-defying subjects in an unapologetic manner with the premise that an end-reel moment could redeem all that had gone before.

The concept of marriage was often tested in films such as (1931), in which a woman is having an affair with a seedy character, and later falls in love with her brother-in-law. When her mother-in-law steps in at the end of the film, it is to encourage one son to grant his wife a divorce so she can marry his brother, with whom she is obviously in love.

The older woman proclaims the message of the film in a line near the end: 'This the twentieth century. Go out into the world and get what happiness you can.' In (1930), adultery is explicitly condoned and used as a sign for a wife that she needs to act in a more enticing way to maintain her husband's interest.

In (1933), a husband admits to serial adultery, only this time he repents and the marriage is saved. The films took aim at what was already a damaged institution. During the Great Depression, relations between spouses often deteriorated due to financial strain, marriages lessened, and husbands abandoned their families in increased numbers. Marriage rates continually declined in the early 1930s, finally rising in 1934, the final year of the pre-Code era, and although divorce rates lowered, this is likely because desertion became a more common method of separation. Consequently, female characters, such as 's in, live promiscuous bachelorette lifestyles, and control their own financial destiny (Chatterton supervises an auto factory) without regret.

In (1930), starring, a wife discovers that her husband (played by Chester Morris), has been cheating on her. In reaction, she decides to have an affair with his best friend (played by ). When the husband finds out, he decides to leave her.

After pleading with him to stay, the wife unleashes her frustrations upon him, and in a moment of inspiration reveals her desire to live a fearless, sexually liberated life without him. According to at least one film historian, [ ] this was the motion picture that inspired other films centering upon sophisticated female protagonists, who stayed out late, had affairs, wore revealing gowns, and who basically destroyed the sexual double standard by asserting themselves both within society and in the bedroom. From onward, there developed 'a trend toward a sophistication in women's pictures that would continue unabated until the end of the Pre-Code era in mid-1934. One of the most prominent examples of punishment for immoral transgressions in vice film can be seen in, based on the novel.

In Drake, the title character (), a cold, vapid 'party girl', the daughter of a judge, is raped and forced into prostitution by a backwoods character, and according to pre-Code scholar Thomas Doherty, the film implies that the deeds done to her are in recompense for her immorality. Later, in court, she confesses that she killed the man who raped and kept her. She faints after this confession, upon which her lawyer carries her out, leading to a 'happy ending'.

In the RKO film, plays an aviator who becomes pregnant from an affair with a married man. She commits suicide by flying her plane directly upwards until she breaks the world altitude record, at which point she takes off her oxygen mask and plummets to earth. Strong female characters often ended films as 'reformed' women, after experiencing situations in which their progressive outlook proved faulty.

's open bi­sex­u­al­ity caused an uproar. In 1933 her studio, Paramount, signed a largely ineffectual agreement not to depict women in men's clothes in their films. Female protagonists in aggressively sexual vice films were usually of two general kinds: the bad girl or the fallen woman. In so-called 'bad girl' pictures, female characters profited from promiscuity and immoral behavior., an actress who was by all reports a lighthearted, kind person offscreen, frequently played bad girl characters and dubbed them 'sex vultures'.

Two of the most prominent examples of bad girl films, and, featured Harlow and Stanwyck. In Red-Headed Woman Harlow plays a secretary determined to sleep her way into a more luxurious lifestyle, and in Baby Face Stanwyck is an abused runaway determined to use sex to advance herself financially. In Baby Face Stanwyck moves to New York and sleeps her way to the top of Gotham Trust. Her progress is illustrated in a recurring visual metaphor of the movie camera panning ever upward along the front of Gotham Trust's skyscraper.

Men are driven mad with lust over her and they commit murder, attempt suicide, and are ruined financially for associating with her before she mends her ways in the final reel. In another departure from post Code films, Stanwyck's sole companion for the duration of the picture is a black woman named Chico (), whom she took with her when she ran away from home at age 14. Red-Headed Woman begins with Harlow seducing her boss Bill LeGendre and intentionally breaking up his marriage. During her seductions, he tries to resist and slaps her, at which point she looks at him deliriously and says 'Do it again, I like it! Do it again!'

They eventually marry but Harlow seduces a wealthy aged industrialist who is in business with her husband so that she can move to New York. Although this plan succeeds, she is cast aside when she is discovered having an affair with her chauffeur, in essence cheating on her paramour. Harlow shoots LeGendre, nearly killing him.

When she is last seen in the film, she is in France in the back seat of a limousine with an elderly wealthy gentleman being driven along by the same chauffeur. The film was a boon to Harlow's career and has been described as a 'trash masterpiece'. Cinema classified as 'fallen woman' films was often inspired by real-life hardships women endured in the early Depression era workplace. The men in power in these pictures frequently sexually harassed the women working for them. Remaining employed often became a question of a woman's virtue.

In (1933), starring, a struggling department store offers dates with its female stenographers as an incentive to customers. Employees' Entrance was marketed with the tag line 'See what out of work girls are up against these days.' Joy complained in 1932 of another genre, the 'kept woman' film, which presented adultery as an alternative to the tedium of an unhappy marriage. Until 1934, nudity involving 'civilized' women, which was understood to mean white women, was generally banned, but permitted with 'uncivilized' women, which was understood to mean non-white women.

Filmmaker Deane Dickason took advantage of this loophole to release a quasi-pornographic documentary Virgins of Bali in September 1932, which concerns a day in the life of two Balinese teenagers, who are presumably 'uncivilized'. The film's introduction notes that Balinese women were normally topless and only covered their breasts for ceremonial duties; Doherty commented dryly that, 'fortunately' for Dickason, his film's two 'stars' rarely performed ceremonial duties. Typical of the film is the first scene where the two girls take a bath in the river while Dickason narrators, talking breathlessly about how the two girls 'bathe their shamelessly nude bronze bodies'.

Virgins of Bali, which consisted almost entirely of scenes of Balinese women in various states of undress under the guise of showing what daily life in was like was an immensely popular film with men at the time, and almost single handedly made Bali into a popular tourist destination. Homosexuals were portrayed in such pre-Code films as (1933), (1933), (1933), (1933), and (1933).

Although the topic was dealt with much more openly than in the decades that followed, the characterizations of gay and lesbian characters were usually derogatory. Gay male characters were portrayed as flighty with high voices, existing merely as buffoonish supporting characters. A rare example of a homosexual character not being portrayed in the standard effeminate way, albeit still negatively, was the villain 'Murder Legendre', played by in (1932), the Frenchman who mastered the magical powers of a Bokor (voodoo sorcerer). Legendre is hired by a wealthy plantation owner Charles Beaumont () to turn the woman he desires into a zombie, only to be informed later that Legendre desires him and is going to transform him into a zombie. In films like, lesbians were portrayed as rough, burly characters, but in DeMille's, a female Christian slave is brought to a Roman prefect and seduced in dance by a statuesque lesbian dancer.

Fox nearly became the first American studio to use the word 'gay' to refer to homosexuality, but the SRC made the studio muffle the word in the soundtrack of all footage that reached theaters. Is some­times er­ro­ne­ous­ly called the reason for the Production Code. Even under the Code she managed to wear an almost trans­par­ent dress in (1936).

Bisexual actress cultivated a cross-gender fan base and started a trend when she began wearing men's suits. She caused a commotion when she appeared at the premiere of in 1932 in a tuxedo, complete with top hat and cane. The appearance of homosexual characters was at its height in 1933; in that year, Hays declared that all gay male characters would be removed from pictures.

Paramount took advantage of the negative publicity Dietrich generated by signing a largely meaningless agreement stating that they would not portray women in male attire. Comedy [ ] In the harsh economic times of the early Depression, films and performers often featured an alienated, cynical, and socially dangerous comic style. As with political films, comedy softened with the election of FDR and the optimism of the New Deal.

Characters in the pre-Code era frequently engaged in comedic duels of escalating sexual innuendo. In Employee's Entrance, a woman enters the office of a scoundrel boss who remarks, 'Oh, it's you — I didn't recognize you with all your clothes on.'

Racial stereotypes were usually employed when ethnic characters appeared. Blacks in particular were usually the butt of the wisecrack, never the author.

The most acknowledged black comedian was, whose slow-witted comedic character was only meant to be successful in an unintentional manner, with himself as the punchline. The New York stage was filled with ribald humor and sexually offensive comedy; when movie producers started to put wisecracks in their sound pictures, they sought New York performers. Popular comics such as the got their start on Broadway in front of live audiences.

Censors complained when they had to keep up with the deluge of jokes in pictures in the early 1930s, some of which were designed to go over their heads. The comic banter of some early sound films was rapid-fire, non-stop, and frequently exhausting for the audience by the final reel. The Marx Brothers in the early 1930s: Chico (top), Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo. (1933) is generally considered their finest picture.

Had already established herself as a comedic performer when her 1926 Broadway show Sex made national headlines. Tried and convicted of indecency by the New York City District Attorney, she served eight days in prison. West carefully constructed a stage persona and carried it over into her interviews and personal appearances. Despite her voluptuous physique, most of her appeal lay in her suggestive manner. She became a wordsmith in the art of the come-on and the seductive line, and despite her obvious appeal to male audiences, was popular with women as well. Over the cries of the censors, West got her start in the film (1932), which starred and, as a -esque supporting character. She agreed to appear in the film only after producers agreed to let her write her own lines.

In West's first line on film, after a hat check girl remarks 'Goodness, what beautiful diamonds', West replies, 'Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.' Raft, who had wanted herself for the role that went to West, later wrote, 'In this picture, Mae West stole everything but the cameras.' She went on to make She Done Him Wrong in 1933, which became a huge box office hit, grossing $3 million against a $200,000 budget, and then nine months later wrote and starred in. She became such a success that her career saved Paramount from financial ruin.

The arrival of sound film created a new job market for writers of screen dialogue. Many newspaper journalists moved to California and became studio-employed screenwriters. This resulted in a series of fast-talking comedy pictures featuring newsmen., later re-made as the much less cynical and more sentimental post-Code (1940), was adapted from the Broadway play by newsmen, and Hollywood screenwriters, and. It was based on Hecht's experiences working as a reporter for the.

The Marx Brothers had been stage performers since the early 1900s. By the 1930s, their act consisted of wisecracking leader, the chronically silent, the overly ethnic, and the strangely normal. The plot of the seminal comedy (1933) is quite convoluted. Groucho's plebeian character is named king of the fictional Freedonia, and he is pursued by two bumbling spies played by Chico and Harpo.

Zeppo plays a typically normal secretary. Groucho's con artist character leads Freedonia into war with neighboring Sylvania. The plot essentially exists to provide a framework for several comedic bits and long sketches. The film was unsuccessful at the box office and the anarchic zaniness and subversive nature of the comedy in the film would be unmatched in the brothers' post-Code work, which was more standardly burlesque. • (1927) • (1929) • (1929, lost) • • (1930) • (1930) • (1933) • (1933) • (1933) • (1933) • • (1934) • (1934) • (1934) • (1934) • (1934) Horror and science fiction [ ] Unlike silent-era sex and crime pictures, silent horror movies, despite being produced in the hundreds, were never a major concern for censors or civic leaders. When sound horror films were released however, they quickly caused controversy. Sound provided 'atmospheric music and sound effects, creepy-voiced macabre dialogue and a liberal dose of blood-curdling screams' which intensified its effects on audiences, and consequently on moral crusaders.

The Hays Code did not mention gruesomeness, and filmmakers took advantage of this oversight. However, state boards usually had no set guidelines and could object to any material they found indecent. Although films such as and caused controversy when they were released, they had already been re-cut to comply with censors. In (1932), the shadow of the ape's hand appears over head of Camille () as it enters her room. What follows has been dubbed 'interspecies miscegenation' by film historian Thomas Doherty. In Freaks, director of Dracula fame helms a picture that depicts a traveling circus populated by a group of deformed carnival freaks.

Browning populated the movie with actual carnival sideshow performers including 'midgets, dwarfs, hermaphrodites, Siamese twins, and, most awful, the armless and legless man billed as the 'living torso'. There is also a group of Pinheads, who are depicted as fortunate in that they are not mentally capable enough to understand that they disgust people. But the truly unsavory characters here are the villains, the circus strongman Hercules and the beautiful high-wire artist Cleopatra, who intends to marry and poison Hans, the midget heir who is enamored of her. At a dinner celebrating their union, one of the freaks dances on the table as they chant 'gooble-gobble, gobble, gobble, one of us, one of us, we accept her, we accept her.' Disgusted, Cleopatra insults Hans and makes out with Hercules in front of him. When the freaks discover her plot, they exact revenge by mutilating Cleopatra into a freak. Although circus freaks were common in the early 1930s, the film was their first depiction on screen.

Browning took care to linger over shots of the deformed, disabled performers with long takes of them including one of the 'living torso' lighting a match and then a cigarette with his mouth. The film was accompanied by a sensational marketing campaign that asked sexual questions such as 'Do the Siamese Twins make love?' , 'What sex is the half-man half-woman?' , and 'Can a full grown woman truly love a midget?' Surprisingly, given its reaction to Frankenstein, the state of objected to nothing in Freaks. However, other states, such as Georgia, were repulsed by the film and it was not shown in many locales.

The film later became a cult classic spurred by showings, but it was a box-office bomb in its original release. In (1932), an adaptation of ' science-fiction novel,, plays yet another mad scientist with a God complex. As Moreau, Laughton creates a mad scientist's island paradise, an unmonitored haven where he is free to create a race of man-beasts and Lota, a beast-woman he wants to mate with a normal human male.

A castaway lands on his island, providing him an opportunity to see how far his science experiment, the barely clothed, attractive Lota, has come. The castaway discovers Moreau one of the beast-men and attempts to leave the island. He runs into the camp of the man-beasts and Moreau beats them back with a whip. The film ends with Lota dead, the castaway rescued, and the man-beasts chanting, 'Are we not men?'

As they attack and then vivisect Moreau. The film has been described as 'a rich man's Freaks' due to its esteemed source material. Wells, however, despised the movie for its lurid excesses. It was rejected by 14 local censor boards in the United States, and considered 'against nature' in Great Britain, where it was banned until 1958. Exotic adventure films [ ]. (1934) Ethnic characters were portrayed against stereotype in (1934). The protagonist () is a Native American who performs in a in full Indian garb, but then slips into a suit and speaks in American slang once the show is over.

He has a black butler who is atypically intelligent; his character merely plays dumb by slipping into a stereotypical slow-witted 'negro' character when it suits him, rather than being genuinely unintelligent. Films such as (1932), (1932) and (1933), explored the exoticism of the Far East — by using white actors, not Asians, in the lead roles. The white actors frequently looked absurd in next to genuine Asians, so the studios would cast all the Asian parts white. Generally, ' stereotypes dominated the portrayal of Asian characters, who were almost always villains. The American scholar Huang Yunte wrote that the character of Charlie Chan, a Chinese-American detective aided by his bumbling, Americanized 'Number One Son' were virtually the only positive examples of Asian characters in Hollywood in this period. The actress complained in a 1933 interview about the prevalence of 'Yellow Peril' stereotypes in Hollywood saying: 'Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain?

And so crude a villain – murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass! We are not like that. How could we be, with a civilization that is so many times older than the West?' In Fu Manchu, Karloff plays the evil Chinese mad scientist and gangster Dr.

Fu Manchu, who wants to find the sword and mask of, which will give him the power to control the 'countless hordes' of Asians, and lead them into battle against the West. Fu is a sexual deviant who engages in ritual torture and has occult powers. Several times, the film seems to suggest Fu is engaged in an incestuous relationship with his equally evil daughter Fah Lo See (), which plays up a central theme of the 'Yellow Peril' fears, the alleged abnormal sexuality of Asians. In a scene cut from the film due to its depiction of miscegenation, the film shows Fu's depraved daughter violating one of the chaste good characters. Fu is eventually conquered, but not before he temporarily lays his hand on the sword and proclaims to a vast Pan-Asian army made up of Asians and Muslims: 'Would you have maidens like this [referring to ] for your wives? Then conquer and breed! Kill the white man and take his women!'

In (1932) The Chinese warlord General Henry Chang () in the 1932 film, who is presented as being not only as, but as having a menacing asexuality that places him outside of the conventionally defined world of Western sexuality and racial order, making him as dangerous to the Western characters who he has taken hostage as much as the fact that he is a vicious warlord. Though Chang is Eurasian, he takes pride in his Chinese heritage while rejecting his American heritage, which confirms his Eastern identity.

War-torn China, circa 1931 is presented as a 'hell', which a diverse group of Westerners must travel through on a nightmarish train trip from Beijing to, which takes a turn for the worse when the train is hijacked by Chang and his men. The film strongly hints that Chang is bisexual, who not only wants to rape the heroine Shanghai Lily (), but also the hero Captain Donald 'Doc' Harvey (). When the German opium smuggler Erich Baum () insults Chang, the result is a scene where the warlord commits a symbolic rape, as the sadistic Chang clearly takes sexual pleasure in branding Baum with a red-hot poker. After he is branded (the symbol of slavery), the once proud Baum becomes notably cowed and submissive towards Chang who in a certain sense now 'owes' him, which reflected the ultimate Yellow Peril fear of Westerners becoming the slaves of the East and its perverted sexuality. Later on, Chang does actually rape Hui Fei (). Gina Marchetti suggests that Chang's desire to blind Harvey is not only meant literally, but is also a metaphor for castration, which even under the more permissive Production code in effect in 1932 would have been a taboo subject.

In a marked contrast to Chang's twisted sexuality and his 'almost effeminate polish', the British Army Captain Harvey is a resolutely heterosexual, ruggedly tough soldier with a deep romantic streak who more than amply proved his manliness in the trenches of World War I, presenting a model of Western masculinity and strength. At several times, the film hints that Shanghai Lily and Hui Fei are more than best friends, and are in fact engaged in a lesbian relationship, so when the film ends with Lily choosing Harvey as her lover, this serves as a testament to his manly Western sex appeal, which 'redeems' her from her life as a prostitute. At the same time that Shanghai Express embraces Yellow Peril stereotypes through the character of Chang, it also to some extent undermines them through the character of Hui, who is shown crying inconsolably after being raped by Chang, which gives her a certain humanity and allows the audience to sympathize with her. Hui is a courtesan who is looked down upon by all Western characters except for her best friend Lily on the account of her race and profession, but she is shown as possessing dignity and a willingness to stand up for herself. Several scenes seemed to suggest that Shanghai Lily and Hui are more attracted to one another then either are to Captain Harvey as the two women exchange longing glances more than once, through this may be suggesting Hui's sexuality is not quite normal (most people in 1932 would considered bi-sexuality to be unnatural). At one point, Hui wears a tight cheongsam dress, which clearly reveal her erect nipples, which definitely captures Lily's interest. The same criticism might be applied to Lily, but the film ends with Lily embracing heterosexual love by kissing Harvey while Hui walks off into the distance alone, sadder as a result of losing her best friend to Harvey and because she was raped, but otherwise unchanged.

Finally, it is Hui who saves Harvey in the climax from being blinded/raped/castrated at the hands of Chang by killing Chang; Hui explains the killing as her way of regaining the self-respect that Chang had taken away from her. 's The Bitter Tea of General Yen was not quite the same type of film: Stanwyck plays a missionary who goes to civil-war-torn China and meets the titular general (played by ) after his car kills the driver of her. When she is knocked unconscious in a riot, he takes her out of the rabble and onto a train car. She has lurid, horror-themed, symbolic dreams about the General, in which she is both titillated and repulsed by him.

The film breaks precedent by developing into an interracial love story, but his army ends in ruins. Yen kills himself at the film's conclusion—by drinking poisoned tea—rather than be captured and killed. Capra adored the script and disregarded the risk of making a film that broke California's (and 29 other states') laws concerning the portrayal of miscegenation. Cinematographer tested a new technique he created, which he dubbed 'Variable Diffusion', in filming the picture. This rendered the entire picture in very.

Newsreels and documentaries [ ]. Main article: From 1904 until 1967, when television finally killed them off, newsreels preceded films. In the early sound-film era, they lasted around eight minutes and featured highlights and clips of the world's biggest stories.

Updated twice a week by the five major studios, they became a highly profitable enterprise: in 1933, newsreels had a total box office take of almost $19.5 million against an outlay of under $10 million. The sound-film era created the narrator; among the first was, who provided voiceover during the clips, often delivering hackneyed jokes while delineating the on-screen action. Sound newsreel interviews and monologues featured famous subjects unaccustomed to the new medium. These clips changed public perception of important historical figures depending on their elocution, the sound of their previously unheard voices, and their composure in front of the camera. Around 12 'newsreel theaters' were soon created around the United States, the most successful being the Embassy Newsreel Theater on.

The Embassy was a 578-seat facility that presented fourteen 45–50 minute programs a day, running from 10 in the morning until midnight. It was noted for its discerning, intellectual audience, many of whom did not attend motion-picture theaters.

One of the first American films to portray the horrors of, received great praise from the public for its humanitarian, anti-war message. The most gripping news story of the pre-Code era was the on the evening of 1 March 1932. As the child was already enormously famous before the kidnapping, the event created a media circus, with news coverage more intense than anything since World War I. Newsreels featuring family photos of the child (the first time private pictures had been 'conscripted for public service' ) asked spectators to report any sight of him.

On May 12, 1932, the child's body was found less than five miles from the Lindbergh home. Although newsreels covered the most important topics of the day, they also presented (such as the immensely popular coverage of the ) and entertainment news, at times in greater detail than more pressing political and social matters. Some of the images' impact belies their historical accuracy; nearly all ceremonies and public events that were filmed for newsreels in the early sound era were staged, and in some cases even reenacted. For instance: when FDR signed an important bill, a member of his cabinet was called away before the staged reenactment began, so the film shows him absent at the time of the signing, although he had been present. The newsreels of FDR were staged to hide his hobbled gait caused by polio.

Caught between the desire to present accurate hard-hitting news stories and the need to keep an audience in the mood for the upcoming entertainment, newsreels often soft-pedaled the difficulties Americans faced during the early years of the Great Depression. FDR in particular received favorable treatment from Hollywood, with all five of the major studios producing pro-FDR shorts by late 1933. These shorts featured some of the studios' lesser contract talent extolling the virtues of FDR created government and social programs. Roosevelt himself was a natural before the camera. The newsreels were instrumental to the success of his initial campaign, and his enduring popularity while in office.

He was described by Variety as the 'Barrymore of the Capital'. Taking advantage of the existence of 30 years of newsreels archives were filmmakers who made early sound era documentaries.

World War I was a popular topic of these pictures and spawned the following documentaries; (1933), World in Revolt (1933), This is America (1933), and Hell's Holiday (1933). The most prescient [ ] pre-Code World War I documentary was aptly called The First World War (1934) and was the most critically and commercially successful documentary of the era. Filmmakers also made feature-length documentaries that covered the dark recesses of the globe, including the,, the, and everywhere in between. Taking advantage of audiences' voyeuristic impulses, aided by the allowance of nudity in tribal documentaries, the filming of lands untouched by modernity, and the presentation of locales never before filmed, these movies placated Depression era American audiences by showing them lifestyles more difficult than their own.

Also captured were Arctic expeditions in films such 90° South and, and in the films of, among others. Some exploitation style documentaries purported to show actual events but were instead staged, elaborate ruses. The most prominent of which was (1931), a film which claimed to show a ritual where African women were given over to gorillas as sex slaves, but instead was mostly filmed in Los Angeles using local blacks in place of natives. Mocked the phoniness of many pre-Code documentaries in his parody, in one scene of which he filmed himself wrestling a stuffed tiger doll, then a tiger-skin rug.

Opposing these films was the which was shown before features and served as a short saccharine form of cinematic tourism. Beginning of Code era (July 1, 1934) [ ] Pre-code: 'Don'ts' and 'Be Carefuls', as proposed in 1927 [ ] The Code enumerated a number of key points known as the 'Don'ts' and 'Be Carefuls': Resolved, That those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated. • The use of the flag; • International relations (avoiding picturizing in an unfavorable light another country's religion, history, institutions, prominent people, and citizenry); • Arson; • The use of firearms; • Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc. The PCA seal of approval in the 1930s.

The Seal appeared before every picture approved by the MPPDA. The was created in 1927 by to support a study of the influence of fiction on children.

The, a series of eight books published from 1933 to 1935 which detailed five (5) years of research aimed specifically at the cinema's effects on children, were also gaining publicity at this time, and became a great concern to Hays. Hays had said certain pictures might alter '. That sacred thing, the mind of a child that clean, virgin thing, that unmarked state' and have 'the same responsibility, the same care about the thing put on it that the best clergyman or the most inspired teacher would have.'

Despite its initial reception, the main findings of the study were largely innocuous. It found that cinema's effect on individuals varied with age and social position, and that pictures reinforced audiences' existing beliefs. The Motion Picture Research Council (MPRC, led by honorary vice president (mother of President Franklin D. Roosevelt), and executive director the Rev. Short ) which funded the study, was not pleased. An 'alarmist summary' of the study's results written by appeared in, a leading women's magazine of the time, and Forman's book,, which became a best-seller, publicized the Payne Fund's results, emphasizing its more negative aspects. The social environment created by the publicity of the Payne Fund Studies and religious protests reached such a fever pitch that a member of the Hays Office described it as a 'state of war'.

However, newspapers including (),,,,, the Philadelphia and, the and New York's,, and all lambasted the studies. When discussing the Supreme Court's 1915 decision, film historian Gregory Black argues that the efforts of reformers might have been lessened had 'filmmakers been willing to produce films for specialized audiences (adults only, family, no children) but the movers and shakers of the industry wanted or needed the largest possible market.' The most provocative pictures were the most profitable, with the 25% of the motion picture industry's output that was the most sensational supporting the cleaner 75%. By 1932, there was an increasing movement for government control. By mid-1934 when Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia called for a Catholic boycott of all films, and was privately preparing a congressional bill supported by both Democrats and Republicans which would introduce Government oversight, the studios decided they had had enough. They re-organized the enforcement procedures giving Hays and the recently appointed, a devout Roman Catholic, head of the new (PCA), greater control over censorship. The studios agreed to disband their appeals committee and to impose a $25,000 fine for producing, distributing, or exhibiting any film without PCA approval.

Hays had originally hired Breen, who had worked in public relations, in 1930 to handle Production Code publicity, and the latter was popular among Catholics. Joy began working solely for, and Wingate had been bypassed in favor of Breen in December 1933. Hays became a functionary, while Breen handled the business of censoring films. Breen was an extreme, who was quoted as stating that Jews 'are, probably, the scum of the earth.' When Breen died in 1965, the trade magazine Variety stated, 'More than any single individual, he shaped the moral stature of the American motion picture.' Although the Legion's impact on the more effective enforcement of the Code is unquestionable, its influence on the general populace is harder to gauge. A study done by Hays after the Code was finally fully implemented found that audiences were doing the exact opposite of what the Legion had recommended.

Each time the Legion protested a film it meant increased ticket sales; unsurprisingly, Hays kept these results to himself and they were not revealed until many years later. In contrast to big cities, boycotts in smaller towns were more effective and theater owners complained of the harassment they received when they exhibited salacious films. Many actors and actresses, such as Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck, and Clark Gable, continued their careers apace after the Code was enforced. However, others, such as (who decamped to England around 1936) and (who died relatively young in the 1940s), who excelled during this period, are mostly forgotten today. After the Code era – Motion Picture Association of America film rating system (MPAA) [ ].

Scenes such as this, in which a man is about to kiss a woman in bed in her nightgown, ( and in 1932's ) were proscribed by the Production Code. After 1934, a scene such as this would not appear in a Hollywood film for decades. Censors like Martin Quigley and Joseph Breen understood that: a private industry code, strictly enforced, is more effective than government censorship as a means of imposing religious dogma. It is secret, for one thing, operating at the pre-production stage. The audience never knows what has been trimmed, cut, revised, or never written. For another, it is uniform—not subject to hundreds of different licensing standards. Finally and most important, private censorship can be more sweeping in its demands, because it is not bound by constitutional due process or free-expression rules—in general, these apply to only the government—or by the command of church-state separation there is no question that American cinema today is far freer than in the heyday of the Code, when Joe Breen's blue pencil and the Legion of Decency's ever-present boycott threat combined to assure that films adhered to Catholic Church doctrine.

Termed by Breen as 'Compensating moral value', the maxim was that 'any theme must contain at least sufficient good in the story to compensate for, and to counteract, any evil which relates.' Hollywood could present evil behavior, but only if it were eradicated by the end of the film, 'with the guilty punished, and the sinner redeemed'.

Pre-Code scholar Thomas Doherty summarized the practical effects: Even for moral guardians of Breen's dedication, however, film censorship can be a tricky business. Images must be cut, dialogue overdubbed or deleted, and explicit messages and subtle implications excised from what the argot of film criticism calls the '. Put simply, the diegesis is the world of the film, the universe inhabited by the characters existing in the landscape of cinema. 'Diegetic' elements are experienced by the characters in the film and (vicariously) by the spectator; 'nondiegetic' elements are apprehended by the spectator alone. The job of the motion picture censor is to patrol the diegesis, keeping an eye and ear out for images, languages, and meanings that should be banished from the world of film. The easiest part of the assignment is to connect the dots and connect what is visually and verbally forbidden by name.

More challenging is the work of the textual analysis and narrative rehabilitation that discerns and redirects hidden lessons and moral meanings. A rising star in 1934, was advertised as 'an attraction that will serve as an answer to many of the attacks that are being hurled at pictures.' The censors thus expanded their jurisdiction from what was seen to what was implied in the spectator's mind. In (1930), several of 's disrobing maneuvers were strictly forbidden and the implied image of the actress being naked just off-screen was deemed too suggestive even though it relied upon the audience using their imaginations, so post-Code releases of the film had scenes which were blurred or rendered indistinct, if allowed at all.

Following the July 1, 1934 decision by the studios put the power over film censorship in Breen's hands, he appeared in a series of newsreel clips promoting the new order of business, assuring Americans that the motion-picture industry would be cleansed of 'the vulgar, the cheap, and the tawdry' and that pictures would be made 'vital and wholesome entertainment'. All scripts now went through PCA, and several films playing in theaters were ordered withdrawn. The first film Breen censored in the production stage was the Joan Crawford film. Although Independent film producers vowed they would give 'no thought to Mr. Joe Breen or anything he represents', they caved on their stance within one month of making it. The major studios still owned most of the successful theaters in the country, and studio heads such as of had already agreed to stop making indecent films.

In several large cities audiences booed when the Production seal appeared before films. But the Catholic Church was pleased, and in 1936 stated that the U.S. Film industry 'has recognized and accepts its responsibility before society.' The Legion condemned zero films produced by the MPPDA between 1936 and 1943.

A coincidental upswing in the fortunes of several studios was publicly explained by Code proponents such as the Motion Picture Herald as proof positive that the code was working. Another fortunate coincidence for Code supporters was the torrent of famous criminals such as,, and that were killed by police shortly after the PCA took power. Corpses of the outlaws were shown in newsreels around the country, alongside clips of and in. Among the unarguably positive aspects of the Code being enforced was the money it saved studios in having to edit, cut, and alter films to get approval from the various state boards and censors. The money saved was in the millions annually. A spate of more wholesome family films featuring performers such as took off.

And in (1937) Stars such as James Cagney redefined their images. Cagney played a series of patriots, and his gangster in (1937) purposefully acts like a coward when he is executed so children who had looked up to him would cease any such admiration.

Breen in essence neutered Groucho Marx, removing most of his jokes which directly referenced sex, although some sexual references slipped through unnoticed in the Marx Brothers post-Code pictures. In the political realm, films such (1939) in which tries to change the American system from within while reaffirming its core values, stand in stark contrast to Gabriel Over the White House where a dictator is needed to cure America's woes.

Some pre-Code movies suffered irreparable damage from censorship after 1934. When studios attempted to re-issue films from the 1920s and early 1930s, they were forced to make extensive cuts. Films such as (1931), (1931), and (1932) exist only in their censored versions. Many other films survived intact because they were too controversial to be re-released, such as (1931), which was remade a decade later with the same name, and thus never had their master negatives edited.

In the case of (1933), which Breen would not allow to be re-released in any form, the entire film remains missing. Although it has been rumored that all prints and negatives were ordered destroyed by Jack Warner in the late thirties, further research shows the negative was in the vaults as late as 1948 when it was junked due to nitrate decomposition. Contemporary screenings [ ] In the 1980s, New York City programmer held the first film festivals featuring pre-Code films. Goldstein is also credited by San Francisco film critic as the person to bring the term 'pre-Code' into general use. Ran several series of pre-Code films during the 2000s, showcasing films which had not been seen for decades, and not available on any home media.

In 2014 the ran a 21-film season titled Hollywood Babylon: Early Talkies Before the Censors, at the. Home video [ ] In the 1990s, MGM released several pre-Code films on laserdisc and VHS. 'The Forbidden Hollywood Collection' included:;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; and. • ^ LaSalle (2002), pg. • ^ Turan, pg. • ^ Siegel & Siegel, pg.

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This art appeals at once to every class, mature, immature, developed, underdeveloped, law abiding, criminal. Music has its grades for different classes; so has literature and drama. This art of the motion picture, combining as its does the two fundamental appeals of looking at a picture and listening to a story, at once reached [sic] every class of society.

[Thus] it is difficult to produce films intended for only certain classes of people. Films, unlike books and music, can with difficulty be confined to certain selected groups' • Doherty, pp.

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