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Oct. 5th, 2011 03:37 pmYou know what's wacky? HOLLYWOOD HISTORY is wacky. I think in retrospect that I possibly picked up The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship and the Production Code partly out of a feeling of general sulkiness that I was not getting to do any proper film studies/film history courses this semester. I mean, everything I'm learning is valuable and useful, but film studies is SO MUCH FUN, and I have to get my LOLHISTORY from somewhere, people!
Anyway, so this is a book about the Hays Production Code - the production code that set the rules for what needed to be censored to get the major distributors to run movies from the 1930s through to the 1960s, before it was replaced by the ratings system - mostly told through case studies of a bunch of films that sent the Code people into fits. An incomplete list of things that have sent people into Hays Code-related fits:
- Mae West's everything (everyone production code related hated Mae West SO BAD)
- poor kids swimming in dirty water in Dead End ("I will fight for the right to have a girl catch venereal disease in this movie, but there had BETTER BE NO TRASH IN THE WATER. Also no cussing!")
- Melanie giving birth in Gone With the Wind (we might give ladies the distressing idea that giving birth is PAINFUL!)
- while we're on the topic, the epic battle over "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" is pretty hilarious
- Jane Russel's chest
- really, everybody's chest; the studios really got antsy when, after banning bathing suits and low-cut gowns and everything else, the code people started complaining about ladies wearing sweaters
- the entire plot of A Streetcar Named Desire
- Jane Russel's chest AGAIN
. . . and the list goes on. I think my favorite anecdote was about award-winning Italian movie The Bicycle Thief, a tragic look at social issues and the futility of life which might well have been destined for a short life on the arthouse circuit except that then this happened:
JOE BREEN, PERSON IN CHARGE OF HAYS CODE STUFF: Hey, are all those middle-aged ladies wearing all their clothes in that one scene prostitutes?
FELLINI: Yep! Totally unsexy prostitutes sitting around drinking tea and doing household chores because this is a film about LIFE.
JOE BREEN: Well, better take it out for the US release!
FELLINI: I refuse to bow to censorship! This is a film about LIFE.
JOE BREEN: Well fine, you don't get a Production Code seal then and major cinema houses won't accept you!
MARKETING TEAM: Oh hey awesome. HEY EVERYBODY COME SEE THE FILM THAT WAS TOO SCANDALOUS FOR THE HAYS CODE!
AUDIENCES, LATER: Well, I guess that was a cinema classic, all right, but we would just like to point out that, contrary to what we were led to believe, this film about a guy losing a bicycle was not very sexy.
Throughout the book the author sort of tries to draw Breen as this tragic hero who used the Code to save Hollywood from outside censors and was thereafter constantly caught in the double-bind between Art and Outside Pressure. I am not sure I buy Joe Breen as tragic hero, and I certainly don't buy the Hays Code as the Savior of Hollywood. But that in no way stopped me from enjoying the book!
Anyway, so this is a book about the Hays Production Code - the production code that set the rules for what needed to be censored to get the major distributors to run movies from the 1930s through to the 1960s, before it was replaced by the ratings system - mostly told through case studies of a bunch of films that sent the Code people into fits. An incomplete list of things that have sent people into Hays Code-related fits:
- Mae West's everything (everyone production code related hated Mae West SO BAD)
- poor kids swimming in dirty water in Dead End ("I will fight for the right to have a girl catch venereal disease in this movie, but there had BETTER BE NO TRASH IN THE WATER. Also no cussing!")
- Melanie giving birth in Gone With the Wind (we might give ladies the distressing idea that giving birth is PAINFUL!)
- while we're on the topic, the epic battle over "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" is pretty hilarious
- Jane Russel's chest
- really, everybody's chest; the studios really got antsy when, after banning bathing suits and low-cut gowns and everything else, the code people started complaining about ladies wearing sweaters
- the entire plot of A Streetcar Named Desire
- Jane Russel's chest AGAIN
. . . and the list goes on. I think my favorite anecdote was about award-winning Italian movie The Bicycle Thief, a tragic look at social issues and the futility of life which might well have been destined for a short life on the arthouse circuit except that then this happened:
JOE BREEN, PERSON IN CHARGE OF HAYS CODE STUFF: Hey, are all those middle-aged ladies wearing all their clothes in that one scene prostitutes?
FELLINI: Yep! Totally unsexy prostitutes sitting around drinking tea and doing household chores because this is a film about LIFE.
JOE BREEN: Well, better take it out for the US release!
FELLINI: I refuse to bow to censorship! This is a film about LIFE.
JOE BREEN: Well fine, you don't get a Production Code seal then and major cinema houses won't accept you!
MARKETING TEAM: Oh hey awesome. HEY EVERYBODY COME SEE THE FILM THAT WAS TOO SCANDALOUS FOR THE HAYS CODE!
AUDIENCES, LATER: Well, I guess that was a cinema classic, all right, but we would just like to point out that, contrary to what we were led to believe, this film about a guy losing a bicycle was not very sexy.
Throughout the book the author sort of tries to draw Breen as this tragic hero who used the Code to save Hollywood from outside censors and was thereafter constantly caught in the double-bind between Art and Outside Pressure. I am not sure I buy Joe Breen as tragic hero, and I certainly don't buy the Hays Code as the Savior of Hollywood. But that in no way stopped me from enjoying the book!
