Editing Hays Code (section)

===Post-Breen era===
Hollywood continued to work within the confines of the Production Code throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, but during this time, the [[film industry]] was faced with very serious competitive threats. The first threat came from [[television]], a new technology that did not require Americans to leave their houses to see motion pictures. Hollywood needed to offer the public something it could not get on television, which itself was under an even more restrictive censorship code.

In addition to the threat of television, the industry was enduring a period of economic difficulties that were compounded by the result of ''[[United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.]]'' (1948), in which the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] outlawed [[vertical integration]] as it had been found to violate [[anti-trust]] laws, and studios were not only forced to give up ownership of theaters, but they were also unable to control what exhibitors offered.<ref>{{cite web |title=United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 U.S. 131 (1948) |url=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/334/131/ |website=Justia Law |access-date=23 June 2024 |language=en}}</ref>

This led to increasing competition from foreign films which were not bound by the Code, such as [[Vittorio De Sica]]'s ''[[Bicycle Thieves]]'' (1948), released in the United States in 1949. In 1950, film distributor [[Joseph Burstyn]] released ''[[The Ways of Love]]'', which included ''The Miracle'', a [[short film]] originally part of ''[[L'Amore (film)|L'Amore]]'' (1948), an [[anthology film]] directed by [[Roberto Rossellini]]. This segment was considered to mock the Nativity, so the [[New York State Board of Regents]] (in charge of film censorship in the state) revoked the film's license. The ensuing lawsuit, ''[[Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson]]'' (dubbed the "Miracle Decision"), was resolved by the Supreme Court in 1952, which unanimously overruled its 1915 decision (''[[Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio]]''), and held that motion pictures were entitled to [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] protection, and thus the short could not be banned. This reduced the threat of government regulation, which had formerly been cited as justification for the Production Code, and the PCA's powers over the Hollywood industry were greatly reduced.<ref name="H:325" />

[[File:Colony Theatre Ad - 2 September 1955, NW, Washington, D.C.png|thumb|right|U.S. theatrical advertisement from 1955 for [[Ingmar Bergman]]'s ''[[Summer with Monika]]'' (1953)]]
Two Swedish films, ''[[One Summer of Happiness]]'' (1951), and [[Ingmar Bergman]]'s ''[[Summer with Monika]]'' (1953) were released in 1955 as exploitation movies, their success leading to a wave of sexually-provocative European product reaching American theaters. Some British films, such as ''[[Victim (1961 film)|Victim]]'' (1961), ''[[A Taste of Honey (film)|A Taste of Honey]]'' (1961), and ''[[The Leather Boys]]'' (1964), challenged traditional [[gender roles]], and openly confronted the prejudices against [[homosexuals]], all in clear violation of the Hollywood Production Code.

Furthermore, the postwar years saw a gradual, if moderate, liberalization of American culture. A boycott by the [[National Legion of Decency]] no longer guaranteed a film's commercial failure (to the point several films were no longer condemned by the Legion by the 1950s), and several aspects of the Code had slowly lost their taboo. In 1956, areas of the Code were rewritten to accept subjects such as miscegenation, adultery, and prostitution. For example, a proposed remake of ''[[Anna Christie (1930 film)|Anna Christie]]'', a pre-Code film dealing with prostitution, was canceled by MGM twice, in 1940 and in 1946, as the character Anna was not allowed to be portrayed as a prostitute. By 1962, such subject matter was acceptable, and the original film was given a seal of approval.<ref>Schumach (1964), pp. 163–164.</ref>

Two 1956 films, ''[[The Bad Seed (1956 film)|The Bad Seed]]'' and ''[[Baby Doll]]'', generated great controversy involving the PCA. The first dealt with the deaths of children, including that of the "wicked child" protagonist Rhoda at the end, which had been the result of changing the ending from the original novel to abide with the Code's "crime must pay" rule. On the other hand, the second film was vociferously attacked by religious and moral leaders, partly because of its provocative publicity, while the MPAA attracted great criticism for approving a film that ridiculed law enforcement and often used racial epithets. However, the Legion's condemnation of the film did not attract a unified response from religious authorities, some of which considered that other films, including ''[[The Ten Commandments (1956 film)|The Ten Commandments]]'' (released that same year), had a similar amount and intensity of sensuous content.<ref>{{cite book|last=Haberski|first=Raymond J.|year=2007|title=Freedom to Offend: How New York Remade Movie Culture|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|location=Lexington, Kentucky|pages=84–86|isbn=978-0-813-13841-1}}</ref><ref>[https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/67860/baby-doll "Notes"] on [[TCM.com]]</ref>

[[File:Peachtree Art Theatre ads - 10 June 1955 - 28 March 1958.png|thumb|left|300px|U.S. [[art-house]] advertisements from the 1950s. Many Americans at the time turned towards racier and more provocative foreign films, which remained largely free from code restrictions.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Canby|first1=Vincent|title=FILM VIEW; The Flashbacks of a Festivalgoer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/20/movies/film-view-the-flashbacks-of-a-festivalgoer.html|year=1992|page=1|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref>]]
During the 1950s, studios found ways of both complying with the code, while at the same time circumventing it.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vq5JpkX4rE8C |last1=Baumann|first1=Baumann |title=Hollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art|year=2002|page=103|publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=0691125279 }}</ref> In 1956, [[Columbia Pictures|Columbia]] acquired an [[art-house]] distributor, [[Kingsley-International Pictures| Kingsley Productions]], that specialized in importing foreign art films, in order to distribute and capitalize on the notoriety of the film ''[[And God Created Woman (1956 film)|And God Created Woman]]'' (1956). Columbia's agreement with the MPAA forbade it from distributing a film without a seal of approval, but the agreement did not specify what a subsidiary could do. Thus, exempt from the rules imposed by the code, subsidiary distributors were utilized, and even created by major studios such as Columbia, in order to defy and weaken the code.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z7QhzlWkFowC |last1=Simmons|first1=Jerold|title=The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code |year=2001|page=227|publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=0813190118 }}</ref> [[United Artists]] followed suit and bought art film distributor [[Lopert Films]] in 1958, and within a decade all the major studios were distributing foreign art films.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6iQGEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT40|last1=Cook|first1=Pam|title=The Cinema Book |isbn=978-1-8445-7193-2|year=2007|page=52|publisher=[[Bloomsbury Publishing]]}}</ref> 

Author Peter Lev writes:
<blockquote>Explicit sexuality became expected in foreign films, to such an extent that "foreign film", "art film", "adult film" and "sex film" were for several years almost synonyms.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Lev|first1=Peter|title=The Euro-American Cinema |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TG9ZAAAAMAAJ|year=1993|isbn=978-0-292-76378-4|page=13|publisher=[[University of Texas Press]]}}</ref><br></blockquote>

Beginning in the late 1950s, increasingly explicit films began to appear, such as ''[[Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958 film)|Cat on a Hot Tin Roof]]'' (1958), ''[[Suddenly, Last Summer (film)|Suddenly, Last Summer]]'' (1959), ''[[Psycho (1960 film)|Psycho]]'' (1960), and ''[[The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (film)|The Dark at the Top of the Stairs]]'' (1960), often dealing with adult subjects and sexual matters that had not been seen in Hollywood films since enforcement of the Production Code began in 1934. The MPAA reluctantly granted the seal of approval for these films, although not until certain changes were made.<ref>Leff & Simmons (2001), p. 231.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Nickens |first1=Christopher |last2=Leigh |first2=Janet |author2-link=Janet Leigh |year=1996 |title=Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller |publisher=Harmony | page=112 |isbn=0-517-70112-X |url=https://archive.org/details/psychobehindscen00leig}}</ref> Owing to its themes, [[Billy Wilder]]'s ''[[Some Like It Hot]]'' (1959) was not granted a certificate of approval, but still became a box office smash, and as a result, it further weakened the authority of the Code.<ref name="Hirsch">Hirsch (2007) {{page needed|date=November 2015}}</ref>

At the forefront of contesting the Code was director [[Otto Preminger]], whose films violated the Code repeatedly in the 1950s. His 1953 film ''[[The Moon Is Blue (film)|The Moon Is Blue]]'', about a young woman who tries to play two suitors off against each other by claiming that she plans to keep her virginity until marriage, was released without a certificate of approval by [[United Artists]], the first production distributed by a member of the MPAA to do so. Preminger later made ''[[The Man with the Golden Arm]]'' (1955), which portrayed the prohibited subject of drug abuse, and ''[[Anatomy of a Murder]]'' (1959), which dealt with murder and rape. Like ''Some Like It Hot'', Preminger's films were direct assaults on the authority of the Production Code, and their success hastened its abandonment.<ref name="Hirsch" /> 

In 1964, the [[Holocaust]] film ''[[The Pawnbroker (film)|The Pawnbroker]]'', directed by [[Sidney Lumet]] and starring [[Rod Steiger]], was initially rejected because of two scenes in which actresses [[Linda Geiser]] and [[Thelma Oliver]] fully expose their breasts, and also because of a sex scene between Oliver and [[Jaime Sánchez (actor)|Jaime Sánchez]] that was described as "unacceptably sex suggestive and lustful". Despite the rejection, the film's producers arranged for [[Monogram Pictures|Allied Artists]] to release the film without the Production Code seal, with the New York censors licensing the film without the cuts demanded by Code administrators. The producers appealed the rejection to the MPAA. On a 6–3 vote, the MPAA granted the film an exception, conditional on "reduction in the length of the scenes which the Production Code Administration found unapprovable". The requested reductions of nudity were minimal, and the outcome was viewed in the media as a victory for the film's producers.<ref name="Leff1996">Leff (1996), pp. 353–76.</ref>

''The Pawnbroker'' was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. The exception to the code was granted as a "special and unique case" and was described by ''The New York Times'' at the time as "an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent". In ''Pictures at a Revolution'', a 2008 study of films during that era, [[Mark Harris (journalist)|Mark Harris]] wrote that the MPAA approval was "the first of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years".<ref>Harris (2008), pp. 173–76.</ref>