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Pre-Code Delights Part I

© K Cruver

Simply put, the code was a set of moral rules that Hollywood studios used to censor movies so that they could avoid the intervention of the government. It was first instigated to appease groups such as the Legion of Decency who strenously protested what they deemed to be morally damaging content in the movies.

Though Hollywood studios had created the code, they tended to ignore it in its first years of existance. After all, low morals were just the thing to attract a large audience. When it became obvious that the code was not being followed, there was another outcry by those same morally outraged groups and it was finally strictly enforced.

That period while the code existed, but before it was enforced lasted from the popular acceptance of talkies in 1929 through the first half of 1934. It was a remarkable time in Hollywood movies. Female characters in particular enjoyed a freedom that would be almost entirely obliterated in the rise of the code. There were many movies in which the female lead didn't necessarily want to settle down to home and family. She was often career-oriented and sexually adventurous; she wanted to go out and see what life had to offer.

It makes one wonder, was the code was really meant to raise morals, or was it a way of keeping these strong-minded women from getting "out of hand"? It is impossible to ignore this possibility when you look at the pre-code pictures these three women did and then compare them with the tame works they appeared in immediately after the code was enforced. Try a double feature some night--a pre-code with Harlow, Shearer or Stanwyck and one after 1934. The difference in spirit is dramatic; their freedom is overshadowed by the will of the men in their lives and the society around them.

A Free Soul (1931)
If your strongest memory of Norma Shearer is as the saintly wronged wife in The Women (1939), you have built your image on a role that Shearer herself felt was too "goody-goody". The true core of Shearer's fame is her early talkies, a series of movies in which she lived the wild life in sheer silk gowns and a short cropped hairdo.

She first played the adventurous young woman role in The Divorcee (1930), a part she had to fight her own husband, production head Irving Thalberg, to get. He was afraid the racy role would ruin her career. Instead, she won an Academy Award for best actress and she became even more beloved.