Hollywood Promises
HOLLYWOOD PROMISES WHATEVER the new code of movie morals amounts to, it is not a document which should materially affect the present character of the feature films. It is rather a definition, and a...
...If any movie being exhibited in a public theatre today were to be tested according to the Hays code it would receive its certificate of innocence...
...Particularly it is his answer to the Churchman, which has been mean enough to say, in substance, that the purpose of the Hays organization is to promote a nominal alliance with the church to camouflage an actual alliance with the devil...
...And so when he dictates a code of good behavior for the movies, it is certain that he has had at least one eye upon the less proverbial rewards of virtue...
...Be sure of that...
...he is doing his best to promote its interests, and that promotion can be measured only in profits...
...5. Pointed profanity is forbidden...
...It is rather a definition, and a simple one, of what the movies, excluding educational and news reels, have stood for in the past and what they continue to stand for...
...It is evidence to substantiate the general conception of Mr...
...Hays's code pretends to restrict them would ruin the industry...
...It is a denial of nothing which the movies require for success, and it forbids nothing which the industry has not long ago learned to do without...
...And it is Hollywood's standard of good taste that is to govern the industry, hereafter as heretofore...
...The supposition is that he must be a good man for the job...
...It is their contention that any code which restricted the movies as Mr...
...From one point of view, a very special one it must be admitted, a good word ought to be said for Mr...
...He is the representative of an important industry...
...How rigorously does this bear out Mr...
...Hays's job to lessen that influence but to strengthen it...
...Who will decide what is sympathetic, essential, and unpleasant...
...If there is anything in it which indicates that the movies are about to undergo a change we fail to see it...
...Hays...
...2. Scenes of passion shall not be introduced when not essential to the plot...
...4. Obscenity in word, gesture, reference, song, joke or by suggestion is forbidden...
...His ability is reflected in the development of the movie business, or else the producers are bigger fools than we think them for continuing to pay him a salary which, believe it or not, is larger than the sum Mr...
...Hays's statement that the code is "an act of self-government and voluntary self-discipline within the industry...
...It is as though we should say "The Commonweal will not publish an article defending the narcotic trade next week," or as though the White House should announce "President Hoover will not rob a bank at five o'clock tomorrow afternoon...
...Babe Ruth will receive for hitting sixty home runs this year...
...But since the moral reform is not designed to injure the movies financially, what happens to the widely accepted idea that vulgarity and box receipts go hand in hand...
...3. Good taste must regulate the treatment of unpleasant subjects...
...The use of the flag shall be consistently respectful...
...If the Hays program has not had an enthusiastic welcome it is because those who see and fear the enormous ability of the movies to fix the public estimates of what makes for happiness and what constitutes "success" know very well that it is not Mr...
...It is his answer to the adverse criticism which, if unanswered, might eventually affect the movie pocket-book...
...No other code could prevent them from being what they are, the opiate of the occidental world, offering grotesque dreams in which all standards of conduct and of thinking go by the board...
...Hollywood, of course...
...There is not a limiting word in the code which does not admit of more than one interpretation, and the interpretation accepted by the industry will hardly be that one which allows the least latitude...
...And in some cases it is a prohibition of things which the movies have never attempted...
...For some time the Hays organization has been under pressure, and this code may be taken as the result...
...Hays as the grand policeman of the films...
...For nothing could be more refined than the Hays program, the various items of which may be grouped under a few main provisions: 1. That crimes against law shall never be presented in such a way as to throw sympathy with the crimes as against law and justice...
Vol. 11 • April 1930 • No. 24
