Convention City - Later Status

Later Status

The film was later banned by the Hollywood Production Code. No copies of the film are known to exist, making it the last missing feature from First National or Warner Bros.

Because of the lewdness of the film and lack of influence of the Studio Relations Committee, which was supposed to control objectionable content, Convention City and films like it led to the enforcement of the Production Code, overseen by Joseph Breen. The Code had been created in 1930 at the beginning of the Depression but financially strapped studios often overlooked its authority in the want to make more risque pictures that were good box office. In 1936, Jack Warner attempted to re-release Convention City in a censored form, but Breen deemed it beyond redemption.

In the summer/fall 2006 issue of The Vitaphone Project Newsletter, Patrick Picking questioned the version of events leading to the film's destruction. The project's newsletter reproduces a theatre advertisement showing the film on the bottom half of a double bill with Charlie Chan on Broadway. Since the latter film was released in 1937, it would appear that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Warner Bros. still circulated the film after its initial release.

It has been surmised from surviving promotional materials that the film's Spanish language title was ¡Que Semana! The Spanish newspaper ABC advertised screenings of the film as late as August 1942 in Spain.

Studio records of the film's negative have a notation, "Junked 12/27/48" (i.e., December 27, 1948). Warner Bros. destroyed many of its negatives in the late 1940s and 1950s due to nitrate film decomposition.

The original screenplay still survives in the Warner Script Archives. In March 1994, a pre-code film festival was held in South Village, New York. Among the films viewed, was a dramatic reading of the screenplay for Convention City.