Sin alert! Sin alert! Hit the DVR!

[onager]

Just a heads-up: starting at 6 AM EST on Fri. Sept. 5 (tomorrow), Turner Classic Movies is running a non-stop marathon of "pre-Code" movies.

"Pre-code" means movies made before 1934, when the movie Production Code went into effect.

It's hard to believe, for those of us who watch those old movies with grown-ass adult married couples sleeping in twin beds. But before the Code, Hollywood tackled such subjects as abortion, infidelity, dope, labor unrest, the fallout of the Great Depression...and LOADS of sex.

Does this have anything to do with religion/atheism? Why sure! That damn production code was run (and partly written) by a moralizing uber-Catholic peckerhead named Joseph Breen. The Bill Donahue of his day, Breen was ably assisted by the Catholic Legion of Decency, an organization made up originally of Catholic bishops. Later changed to "National" Legion of Decency, to be more ecumenical and shit.

Breen's original Code organization later morphed into that far-sighted, benevolent organization we all know and love today - the MPAA.

TCM is also running a documentary "Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood." Here's a link to the TCM article, it sounds interesting:

http://games.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?isPreview=&id=968558%7C955227&name=Thou-Shalt-Not-Sex-Sin-and-Censorship-in-Pre-Code-Hollywood

Happy Watching!

Totally off-topic, make up your own jokes: I spent the evening attending a lecture about the history of Burbank, CA. "Lecture" makes it sound too grim. It was actually fun and interesting.

[Warpy]

1. Yeah, including a tough as nails Stanwyck in "Night Nurse."

It's unrealistic as hell but she's so great in it that it really launched her career.

The Hays Office was a laughing stock pretty quickly and I'm delighted we finally moved beyond it. One of the reasons so many movies in the 60s and 70s were so bad is that people were still trying to obey the restrictions put upon all films. Strike up the bland.

Finally they caught a clue and accepted the letter ratings as a more viable alternative to making films safe for toddlers (and unwatchable by adults), including putting actors playing married couples into twin beds with a hunk of furniture between them.

Read about how ridiculous the rules were here: http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html

Even though many of the films in the 30s and early 40s were great, it was because studios hired real writers to do witty screenplays that overcame a lot of the silly restrictions, by the late 40s the chill of the McCarthy era was starting to be felt and eventually the Black List threw the best writers out of work to make room for safely Republican hacks.

So I'll also give a ten thumbs up for the "pre code" gala tomorrow, especially the Stanwyck film. It's a hoot and so is she.

[theHandpuppet]

6. Joan Blondell is my pre-code favorite

Still hoping to find a copy of "Convention City" one day. She and Stanwyck were great together in "Night Nurse".

[Lordquinton]

8. That's a practice that still happens

Every decade or so they fire all the good writers, and suddenly the hit shows tank, and "Well, it was just their time" The excuses change, McCarthy era was because communism, now it's because the writers want to be paid (which is enforced by unions, so still because communism...)

[Cartoonist]

2. The Watchmen

The religious affiliation of the Hayes office reminds me of my Catholic youth. As a student, each year we were given a list of TV shows deemed unsuitable for decent viewing. I never could understand why My Three Sons was on that list. Was it because he was a single father raising kids?

[progressoid]

3. Will definitely watch that documentary.

Also enjoyed (and angered by) "This Film Is Not Yet Rated"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated

[onager]

5. "TFINYR" is great! Thanks for the mention.

It really exposed the inconsistency of the MPAA ratings and the corruption of that whole rotten system.

How do you get to be an MPAA rating expert? Just be friends with a high-ranking MPAA employee!

Now that you've reminded me, I'm going to watch it again. In fact, it will make a good bookend for the TCM documentary. And of course, I'll be watching a copy "found" on the Internetz.

Let's not forget that the MPAA enforcer for many years was Jack Valenti. Who started out trying to sell us the Vietnam War in the LBJ administration, and later became a mouthpiece/hack for the MPAA.

If Valenti had his way, we'd all be paying royalties every single time we watched any movie in any medium.

[onager]

4. Ray Comfort wants the Hays Code back!

What a maroon...as a certain irreverent, cross-dressing bunny might say.

Interview with the Christer website "Crosswalk" in 2007. He's mostly flogging one of his books:

So from the year 1934 to the early ’50s, we got some good movies. I mean, real good, wholesome family movies. You got Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, It’s a Wonderful Life—all those great movies that are heartwarming and family oriented.

In the 1950s, Hollywood began to push the envelope through First Amendment freedom of speech laws. They said, “It’s our right to say what we want.” So, there were some innuendos and profanity in the ’50s that got kind of bad. In 1968 they threw out the Hays code—they outlawed it. They just said, “You’re outta here,” and they gave parental control.

Is that when the ratings system came in?

Yeah. That unlatched the door to profanity, adultery, unspeakable violence, and especially blasphemy. That’s when it really started, and they could say those words they’d been forbidden to say.

Now for some reason—no one seems to know why—but in the late ’60s crime rates in the U.S. tripled. Not only that, but for some reason during the late ’50s and the ’60s, a whole generation became rebellious, and turned against the Judeo-Christian ethic of their parents. No one knows why. But I think I know why, because I can see the power of the media.

http://www.crosswalk.com/culture/books/hollywood-a-reminder-not-to-take-blasphemy-idolatry-lightly-11548097.html

[AtheistCrusader]

7. Making space on my DVR