Pre-code Hollywood : sex, immorality, and insurrection in American cinema, 1930-1934 / Thomas Doherty.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Doherty, Thomas Patrick

Series:

Film and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Censorship--United States--History.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Censorship.

United States.

History.

Sex in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

xiii, 430 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [1999]

Summary:

Pre-Code Hollywood explores the fascinating period in American motion picture history from 1930 to 1934 when the commandments of the Production Code Administration were violated with impunity in a series of wildly unconventional films--a time when censorship was lax and Hollywood made the most of it. Though more unbridled, salacious, subversive, and just plain bizarre than what came afterwards, the films of the period do indeed have the look of Hollywood cinema--but the moral terrain is so off-kilter that they seem imported from a parallel universe.

In a sense, Doherty avers, the films of pre-Code Hollywood are from another universe. They lay bare what Hollywood under the Production Code attempted to cover up and push offscreen: sexual liaisons unsanctified by the laws of God or man, marriage ridiculed and redefined, ethnic lines crossed and racial barriers ignored, economic injustice exposed and political corruption assumed, vice unpunished and virtue unrewarded--in sum, pretty much the raw stuff of American culture, unvarnished and unveiled.

No other book has yet sought to interpret the films and film-related meanings of the pre-Code era--what defined the period, why it ended, and what its relationship was to the country as a whole during the darkest years of the Great Depression ... and afterward.

Contents:

1. On the Cusp of Classical Hollywood Cinema 1

Patrolling the Diegesis 3

Pre-Code Contexts 15

2. Breadlines and Box Office Lines: Hollywood in the Nadir of the Great Depression 21

The Lost Millions 27

A Synchronized Industry 31

"Mike Fright" 34

3. Preachment Yarns: The Politics of Mere Entertainment 39

Telegraphing Ideology 45

Class Distinctions 53

Professional Malfeasance 58

4. Dictators and Democrats: The Rage for Order 69

Hankering for Supermen 70

"The Barrymore of the Capital": The Newsreel Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt 77

A New Deal in the Last Reel 85

The Mad Dog of Europe 93

5. Vice Rewarded: The Wages of Cinematic Sin 103

Packaging Vice 107

Models of Immorality 113

Figurative Literalness 118

Queer Flashes 120

"Women Love Dirt" 125

Working Girls 131

6. Criminal Codes: Gangsters Unbound, Felons in Custody 137

Rushing Toward Death: The Gangster Film 140

Men Behind Bars: The Prison Film 157

7. Comic Timing: Cracking Wise and Wising Up 171

Commentators on the Action 174

Story, Screenplay, and All Dialogue by Mae West 182

Newspaper Patter 187

The Blue Eagle and Duck Soup (1933) 192

8. News on Screen: The Vividness of Mechanical Immortality 197

Library Stock 204

The Newsreel Ethos 208

Covering Up the Great Depression 213

9. Remote Kinships: The Geography of the Expeditionary Film 221

Points on the Compass 225

Faking It: Phoney Expeditions and Real Deaths 235

The Dark Continent 245

10. Primitive Mating Rituals: The Color Wheel of the Racial Adventure Film 253

"He's White": Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) and Tarzan and His Mate (1934) 256

Red Skin, Red Lips: Massacre (1934) 262

East Mates West 267

"The Ethiopian Trade" 274

Nerve and Brains: Paul Robeson and The Emperor Jones (1933) 284

Beauty and the Beast: King Kong (1933) 289

11. Nightmare Pictures: The Quality of Gruesomeness 295

Rugged Individualism: Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and Their Progeny 299

The Lower Orders Rise Up: Island of Lost Souls (1933) and Freaks (1932) 308

12. Classical Hollywood Cinema: The World According to Joseph I. Breen 319

"The Storm of '34" 320

Hollywood Under the Code 336

Post-Code Hollywood Cinema 342

Appendix 1 The Text of the Production Code 347

Appendix 4 The Critical and Commercial Hits of 1930-1934 369.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [373]-410) and indexes.

ISBN:

0231110944

0231110952

OCLC:

40660169