Editing Hays Code (section)

===Breen era===
On June 13, 1934, an amendment to the Code was adopted, which established the [[Production Code Administration]] (PCA) and required all films released on or after July 1, 1934, to obtain a certificate of approval before being released. The PCA had two offices: one in Hollywood and the other in New York City. The first film to receive an MPPDA seal of approval was ''[[The World Moves On]]'' (1934). For over 30 years, virtually all motion pictures produced in the United States adhered to the code.<ref name="Doherty">Doherty (2006), [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901530.html "The Code Before&nbsp;..."].</ref> The Production Code was not created or enforced by federal, state, or city government; the [[Classical Hollywood cinema|Hollywood]] studios adopted the code in large part in the hopes of avoiding government censorship, preferring self-regulation to government regulation.

Father [[Daniel A. Lord]], a Jesuit, wrote: "Silent smut had been bad. Vocal smut cried to the censors for vengeance." Thomas Doherty, Professor of American studies at [[Brandeis University]], has defined the code as "no mere list of Thou-Shalt-Nots, but a homily that sought to yoke Catholic doctrine to Hollywood formula. The guilty are punished, the virtuous rewarded, the authority of church and state is legitimate, and the bonds of matrimony are sacred."<ref name="Doherty" /> What resulted has been described as "a Jewish-owned business selling Catholic theology to Protestant America".<ref>Scott (2004, 2010){{page needed|date=November 2015}}</ref>

[[Joseph Breen|Joseph I. Breen]], a prominent Catholic layman who had worked in public relations, was appointed head of the PCA. Under Breen's leadership, which lasted until his retirement in 1954, enforcement of the Production Code became notoriously rigid. Even cartoon sex symbol [[Betty Boop]] had to change her characteristic [[flapper]] personality and dress, adopting an old-fashioned, near-matronly appearance. However, by 1934, the prohibition against miscegenation was defined only as sexual relationships between black and white races.<ref>The Production Code of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., 1930–1934, "miscegenation (sex relationship between the white and black races) is forbidden" (Part II, Item 6). No mention was made of miscegenation between whites and any race other than Black people.</ref>

The first major instance of censorship under the Production Code involved the 1934 film ''[[Tarzan and His Mate]]'', in which brief nude scenes involving a [[body double]] for actress [[Maureen O'Sullivan]] were edited out of the master negative of the film.<ref>Vieira (1999), p. 188.</ref> By the time the Code became fully functional by January 1935, several films from the pre-Code era and the transition period beginning in July 1934 were pulled from release exchanges (with some of them never seeing public release again), which led studios to remake some of its early 1930s-era films in later years: 1941 saw the release of remakes of ''[[The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)|The Maltese Falcon]]'' and ''[[Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941 film)|Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]]'', both having had very different pre-Code versions released ten years prior.

The Hays Code also required changes regarding adaptations of other media. For instance, [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[Rebecca (1940 film)|Rebecca]]'' could not retain a major element from [[Daphne du Maurier]]'s [[Rebecca (novel)|1938 novel]] where the narrator discovers that her husband (the aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter) killed his first wife (the titular Rebecca) and she makes light of it, since it followed Rebecca having strongly provoked and taunted him. As having a major character get away with murder and living happily ever after would have been a flagrant violation of the Code, Hitchcock's version had Rebecca die in an accident with Maxim de Winter being only guilty for hiding the facts of her death.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Varnam |first1=Laura |title=Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca |url=https://www.dumaurier.org/menu_page.php?id=143 |website=dumaurier.org |access-date=November 18, 2021 |date=August 2018}}</ref> The [[Rebecca (2020 film)|2020 remake]], not bound by the Code, restored du Maurier's original plot element.

The PCA also engaged in political censorship. When Warner Bros. wanted to make a film about [[Nazi concentration camps]], the production office forbade it, citing the prohibition on depicting "in an unfavorable light" another country's "institutions [and] prominent people", with threats to take the matter to the federal government if the studio went ahead.<ref>{{cite AV media | title=The Brothers Warner | date=2007 | people=Warner, Cass (director) | type=TV documentary movie | url=https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Warner-Jack/dp/B002Y58G7S}}</ref> This policy prevented a number of anti-Nazi films being produced. In 1938, the [[FBI]] unearthed and prosecuted a Nazi spy ring, subsequently allowing Warner to produce ''[[Confessions of a Nazi Spy]]'' (1939),<ref>Holden (2008), [https://books.google.com/books?id=APjtGBMiSG8C&pg=PA238 p. 238].</ref> with [[The Three Stooges]]' short subject ''[[You Nazty Spy!]]'' (1940) being the first Hollywood film of any sort to openly spoof the Third Reich's leadership,<ref>Mushnik (2013), [https://nypost.com/2013/07/14/three-stooges-first-to-blast-hitler/ "Three Stooges&nbsp;..."], nypost.com; accessed December 18, 2016.</ref> followed soon after by ''[[The Great Dictator]]''.

Breen's power to change scripts and scenes angered many writers, directors and Hollywood [[media proprietor|moguls]]. Breen influenced the production of ''[[Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]'' (1942), objecting to any explicit reference to Rick and Ilsa having slept together in Paris, and to the film mentioning that Captain Renault extorted sexual favors from his supplicants; ultimately, both remained strongly implied in the finished version.<ref>Univ. of Virginia (2000–01), [https://explore.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/show/censored/walkthrough/film1 "Censored"]</ref> Adherence to the Code also ruled out any possibility of the film ending with Rick and Ilsa consummating their adulterous love, making inevitable the ending with Rick's noble renunciation, one of ''Casablanca''{{'}}s most famous scenes.<ref>{{cite book|last =Harmetz|pages = 162–166 |first = Aljean|title = The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II|publisher = Hyperion Books|date = 2002|isbn = 9780786888146}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last =Behlmer|pages = 207–208, 212–13 |first = Rudy|title = Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951) |publisher = Viking|date = 1985|isbn = 9780670804788}}</ref>

[[File:Notorious1946.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Some directors found ways to get around the Code guidelines; an example of this was in [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s 1946 film ''[[Notorious (1946 film)|Notorious]]'', where he worked around the rule of three-second-kissing by having the two actors break off every three seconds. The whole sequence lasts two and a half minutes.<ref name="mcgmain" />]]
Some of Hollywood's creative class managed to find positives in the Code's limitations however. Director Edward Dmytryk later said that the Code "had a very good effect because it made us think. If we wanted to get something across that was censorable... we had to do it deviously. We had to be clever. And it usually turned out to be much better than if we had done it straight."<ref>{{cite web|title=PBS American Cinema Film Noir|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8uCuKxe4yk| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131001213029/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8uCuKxe4yk&gl=US&hl=en| archive-date=October 1, 2013 | url-status=dead|website=YouTube|access-date=January 6, 2019}}</ref>

Outside the mainstream studio system, the code was sometimes flouted by [[Poverty Row]] studios, while [[exploitation film]] presenters operating on the territorial (state-rights) distribution system openly violated it through the use of loopholes, masquerading the films as morality tales or [[muckraking]] [[Exposé (journalism)|exposé]]s. One example of this is ''[[Child Bride]]'' (1938), which featured a nude scene involving a twelve-year-old child actress ([[Shirley Mills]]). 

Newsreels were mostly exempt from the Code, although their content was mostly toned down by the end of 1934 as the result of public outrage over the coverage of the killings of [[John Dillinger]] in July, and of [[Baby Face Nelson|"Baby Face" Nelson]] and three girls in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the latter two occurring during the same week in November,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Doherty |first=Thomas |title=Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in Hollywood, 1930–1934 |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=1999 |pages=217–218}}</ref> not deviating much from the Code until World War II.  

However, the most famous defiance of the code was the case of ''[[The Outlaw]]'', a [[Western movie|western]] produced by [[Howard Hughes]], which was denied a certificate of approval after it was completed in 1941 since the film's advertising focused particular attention on [[Jane Russell]]'s breasts. When the film's initial 1943 release was shuttered by the MPPDA after a week, Hughes eventually persuaded Breen that this did not violate the code and the film could be shown, although without a seal of approval. The film eventually got a general release in 1946.<ref>Mondello (2008), [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93301189 "Remembering&nbsp;..."], npr.org; accessed December 18, 2016.</ref> The [[David O. Selznick]] production ''[[Duel in the Sun (film)|Duel in the Sun]]'' was also released in 1946 without the approval of the Hays Office, featuring several on-screen deaths, adultery and displays of lust.

The financial success of both films became deciding factors in the weakening of the Code in the late 1940s, when the formerly taboo subjects of rape and miscegenation were allowed in ''[[Johnny Belinda (1948 film)|Johnny Belinda]]'' (1948) and ''[[Pinky (1949 film)|Pinky]]'' (1949), respectively. In 1951, the MPAA revised the code to make it more rigid, spelling out more words and subjects that were prohibited. That same year however, MGM head [[Louis B. Mayer]], one of Breen's foremost allies, was ousted after a series of disputes with the studio's production head, [[Dore Schary]], whose preference for gritty "social realism" films was often at odds with the Hays Office. In 1954, Breen retired, largely because of ill health, and [[Geoffrey Shurlock]] was appointed as his successor.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_vlXAAAAIBAJ&dq=joseph-breen%20censor&pg=710%2C95570|title=Censors try tempering growing movie violence|author=Bob Thomas|publisher=Spokane Daily Chronicle|date=June 1, 1955}}</ref>