Pre-Code Hollywood - Origins of The Code

Origins of The Code

In 1922, after some risqué films and a series of off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars, the studios enlisted beacon of rectitude and Presbyterian elder William H. "Will" Hays to rehabilitate Hollywood's image. Hays, who was later nicknamed the motion picture "Czar", quickly tarnished his sterling image by lying before the U.S. Senate, although the American people seemed unconcerned that Hays was less noble than imagined. Hollywood in the 1920s was expected to be somewhat corrupt, and many felt the movie industry had always been morally questionable. Hays was paid the then-lavish sum of $100,000 a year (equivalent to more than $1.3 million in 2012 dollars). Hays, Postmaster General under Warren G. Harding and former head of the Republican National Committee, served for 25 years as president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), where he "defended the industry from attacks, recited soothing nostrums, and negotiated treaties to cease hostilities." The move mimicked the decision Major League Baseball had made in hiring judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as League Commissioner the previous year to quell questions about the integrity of baseball in wake of the 1919 World Series gambling scandal; The New York Times even called Hays the "screen Landis". Hays introduced a set of recommendations dubbed "The Formula" in 1924, which the studios were advised to heed, and asked filmmakers to describe to his office the plots of pictures they were planning to make. The Supreme Court had already decided unanimously in 1915 in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio that free speech did not extend to motion pictures, and while there had been token attempts to clean up the movies before, such as when the studios formed the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI) in 1916, little had come of the efforts.