[Commlist] CFP Hollywood Before the Code (1921-1934)

CFP International Conference
Hollywood Before the Code (1921-1934)
Université Paris Nanterre & Sorbonne University, June 27-29th, 2024

The implementation of the Production Code in 1934 established a pre- and 
post-classic Hollywood era. From 1934 onward, the studios submitted 
their productions to some internal control to ensure the conformity of 
contents and guarantee their commercial viability at a time when 
ideological and religious elites were actively trying to enforce the 
respect of moral principles. After focusing on the studio “system” in 
the 1980s, Hollywood studies rediscovered the power and freedom of early 
talkies in the 1990s. This movement was initiated by cinephiles at a 
retrospective that Bruce Goldstein entitled “Pre-Code Hollywood” at the 
New York Film Forum in 1988. American scholars in this movement 
circumscribed the periodization of the Code's implementation to the 
talking years alone and focused on the idea of “Forbidden Hollywood” 
(Vieira, 1999, 2019; Black, 1994) taken up by the Majors on the occasion 
of the re-release of the catalogues of the Warner Archive Collection, 
Sony, Universal and Fox. The Warner retrospective and the Lumière 
Festival in 2019 at the Paris cinema Le Louxor entitled “Forbidden 
Hollywood”, or the release of the DVD box set Universal Pre-Code 
Hollywood Collection (2009) with the evocative subtitle “6 Shocking 
Films From the Era Before Rules!”, and a second one in 2020, have 
contributed to fixing in the collective imagination the existence of an 
era during which everything would have been allowed in Hollywood between 
the advent of talking pictures in 1927 and the rigorous enforcement of 
the Production Code (the “Hays Code”) in July 1934. In the Spring of 
2022, the Criterion channel proposed a cycle dedicated to the “Pre-Code 
Paramount” by applying the same definition. A collective representation 
started emerging according to which the implementation of the Code took 
place in two periods: one transgressive and provocative from 1929 to 
1934 (“Pre-Code Hollywood”), the other conservative and strictly 
regulated from this pivotal year on.
This international conference aims at re-examining the notion of 
“Pre-Code Hollywood” and its periodization as they are now commonly 
adopted by scholars, critics, and film enthusiasts. Indeed, the 
establishment of the Code did not occur abruptly with the publication of 
a first text in 1930, followed by the application of a reworked version 
in 1934, but developed over the years from the adoption of the Thirteen 
Points in 1921. Recent historiography (L. Leff and Simmons; F. Bordat) 
has thus demonstrated that, far from wishing for censorship, Will Hays 
sought above all to avoid federal censorship and to protect the vertical 
integration of the studios. Hollywood met with several attempts to 
prevent federal censorship as well as untimely cuts by local censorship 
boards (Studio Relations Committee in 1922, “The Formula” in 1924, the 
“Don'ts and Be Carefuls” of 1927, the first version of the Code in 1930 
and the “final” version of the Code in 1934). These steps confirm that 
Will Hays' action was part of a logic of permanent negotiation between 
producers, religious lobbies, the federal government, local censorship 
boards and women's clubs (General Federation of Women's Clubs, Woman's 
Christian Temperance Union...).
We propose to bring together scholars interested in the first decades of 
Hollywood’s production to examine the socio-political, ideological, and 
aesthetic negotiations conducted by the studios before July 1934, to go 
beyond the approach that consists in reducing “Pre-Code cinema” to the 
early days of the talkies, generally approached through the prism of 
scandal, provocation, and the expression of the forbidden. The aim is to 
take a fresh look at the impact of this rise in censorship from 1921 
onwards, on the evolution of genres (and even the emergence of new 
ones), and on the intensification of the public conversation on the need 
for censorship. This conference will therefore focus on how films were 
made prior to 1934, despite or because of these tough negotiations, and 
on how the studios and the Hays administration were able, at the same 
time, to use the power of public opinion and respond to its pressures to 
protect the Hollywood industry.
Papers may address the following topics: - The influence of early 
ideological and political pressures on Hollywood contents from the early 
1920s
- The influence and impact of censorship and local committees
- The emergence, consolidation, and evolution of film genres as a 
function of or despite
censorship awareness
- The evolution of Hollywood’s aesthetics when faced with increasing 
censorship and the demand for censorship during this period
- The turn of the talking pictures and their provocative contents: 
saving the studios and the radicalization of censorship
- The promotion of films: the different strategies between silent films 
and talkies’ advertising tactics and press kits - What does the press 
(general and specialized) say? What role did it play in the public 
debate about censorship and in the reception of films?

Please send your proposals and a short bio-bibliography before October 
1st, 2023, conjointly to: (apaquet-deyris /at/ parisnanterre.fr), 
(claire.dutriaux /at/ sorbonne-universite.fr), (g.menegaldo /at/ gmail.com) & 
(f.e.pheasant-kelly /at/ wlv.ac.uk)

Keynote speakers Thomas Doherty, Brandeis University
Charles Wolfe, University of California, Santa Barbara
Marguerite Chabrol, Université Paris 8

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Black, Gregory D. Hollywood Censored- Morality Codes, Catholics, and the 
Movies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1994) 1996 

Chabrol, Marguerite. De Broadway à Hollywood. Stratégies d’importation 
du théâtre new yorkais dans le cinéma classique américain. Paris, CNRS, 
2016.
Doherty, Thomas. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in 
American Cinema 1930-1934, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 
Facey, Paul W. Legion of Decency: A Sociological Analysis of the 
Emergence and Development of a Social Pressure Group (Dissertations on 
Film). New York: Arno Press, 1976.
Gledhill, Christine. Home is Where the Heart Is, BFI: London, 1987, 
2003. Halbout, Grégoire. Hollywood Screwball Comedy 1934-1945. Sex, 
Love, and Democratic Ideals. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.
Jacobs, Lea. The Wages of Sin, Berkeley: University of California Press, 
1997. Leff, Leonard J. & Jerold L. Simmons. The Dame In the Kimono: 
Hollywood Censorship and the Production Code from the 1920s to the 
1960s. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990. McGregor, Alexander. The 
Catholic Church and Hollywood: Censorship and Morality in 1930s Cinema. 
New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2013. Morris, L. Ernst & Lorentz Pare. 
Censored: The Private Life of a Movie. London, Jonathan Cape & H. Smith, 
1930; London: Fb&c Limited, 2018
Mosley, Leonard. Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Last Tycoon. 
New York: McGraw Hill, 1985.
Quigley, Martin. Decency in Motion Pictures. Bristol: Read Books, 2007.
Vieira, Mark A. Forbidden Hollywood, Philadelphia: Running Press, 2019. 
Vieira, Mark A. Sin in Soft Focus. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.

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