Pre-Code Hollywood - Social Problem Films

Social Problem Films

Hays and others, such as Samuel Goldwyn, obviously felt that motion pictures presented a form of escapism that served a palliative effect on American moviegoers. Goldwyn had coined the famous dictum, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union" in the Pre-Code era. However, the MPPDA took the opposite stance when questioned about certain so-called "message" films before Congress in 1932, claiming the audiences' desire for realism led to certain unsavory social, legal, and political issues being portrayed in film.

The length of Pre-Code films was usually little over an hour. But short running time often required tighter material and did not affect the impact of message films. Employees' Entrance (1933) received the following review from Jonathan Rosenbaum: "As an attack on ruthless capitalism, it goes a lot further than more recent efforts such as Wall Street, and it's amazing how much plot and character are gracefully shoehorned into 75 minutes." The film featured Pre-Code megastar Warren William (later dubbed "the king of Pre-Code"), "at his magnetic worst", playing a vile department store manager who terminates the jobs of two long-standing male employees, one of whom commits suicide as a result. He also threatens to fire Loretta Young's character, who pretends to be single, unless she sleeps with him and then attempts to ruin her husband after learning she is married.

Films that in any way stated a position about a social issue were usually labeled either "propaganda films" or "preachment yarns". In contrast to Goldwyn and MGM's definitively Republican stance on social issue films, Warner Brothers, led by New Deal cheerleader Jack L. Warner, was the most prominent maker of these types of pictures and preferred they be called "Americanism stories". Pre-Code historian Thomas Doherty felt that two recurring elements marked the so-called preachment yarns. "The first is the exculpatory preface; the second is the Jazz Age prelude." The preface was essentially a softened version of a disclaimer that intended to calm any in the audience who disagreed with the film's message. The Jazz Age prelude was almost singularly used to cast shame on the boisterous behavior of the 1920s.

Cabin in the Cotton (1932) is a Warner Bros. message film about the evils of capitalism. The film takes place in an unspecified southern state where workers are given barely enough to survive and are taken advantage of by being charged exorbitant interest rates and high prices by unconscionable landowners. The film is decidedly anti-capitalist; however, its preface claims otherwise:

In many parts of the South today, there exists an endless dispute between rich land-owners, known as planters, and the poor cotton pickers, known as "peckerwoods". The planters supply the tenants with the simple requirements of every day life and, in return, the tenants work the land year in and year out. A hundred volumes could be written on the rights and wrongs of both parties, but it is not the object of the producers of Cabin in the Cotton to take sides. We are only concerned with the effort to picture these conditions.

In the end, however, the planters admit their wrongdoing and agree to a more equitable distribution of Capital. The avaricious businessman remained a recurring character in Pre-Code cinema. In The Match King (1932), Warren William played an industrialist based on real-life Swedish entrepreneur Ivar Kreuger, himself nicknamed the "Match King", who attempts to corner the global market on matches. William's vile character, Paul Kroll, commits robbery, fraud, and murder on his way from a janitor to a captain of industry. When the market collapses in the 1929 crash, Kroll is ruined and commits suicide to avoid imprisonment. William played another unscrupulous businessman, this time in Skyscraper Souls (1932), as David Dwight, a wealthy banker, who owns a building named after himself that is larger than the Empire State Building.He tricks everyone he knows into poverty to appropriate others' wealth. He is shot by his secretary, whom he has also betrayed, at the end of the film. The secretary (Verree Teasdale) ends the film and her own life by walking off the roof of the skyscraper.

Americans' distrust of lawyers was also a frequent topic of dissection in social problem films such Lawyer Man (1933), State's Attorney, and The Mouthpiece (1932). In films such as Paid (1930), innocent characters are turned into criminals by the legal system. The life of Joan Crawford's character is ruined and her romantic interest is executed so that she may live free—even though she is innocent of the crime of which the district attorney wants to convict her. Religious hypocrisy was addressed in such films as The Miracle Woman (1931), starring Barbara Stanwyck and directed by Frank Capra. Stanwyck also portrayed a nurse and initially reluctant heroine who saves, via unorthodox means, two children surrounded by nefarious characters (including Clark Gable as a malevolent chauffeur) in Night Nurse (1931).

Countless films dealt with the economic realities of a country struggling to find its next meal. In Blonde Venus (1932), Marlene Dietrich's character resorts to prostitution to feed her child, and Claudette Colbert's character in It Happened One Night (1934) gets her comeuppance for throwing a tray of food onto the floor by later finding herself without food or financial resources. Joan Blondell's character in Big City Blues (1932) complains that as a chorus girl, diamonds and pearls used to be common gifts, but now is content with a corned beef sandwich. In Union Depot (1932), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. puts a luscious meal as the first order of business on his itinerary after coming into money.