Synopsis
This text showcases the boldly creative pre-code period in Hollywood in the early 1930s, when defiant producers flouted the restrictions of the censors. Illustrated with film stills, it portrays Joan Crawford, Clara Bow and James Cagney in some of the era's most controversial films., In the spring of 1934, Hollywood faced what the Los Angeles Times called "the most serious crisis of its history." The film capital was under siege by censorship advocates who launched a boycott, demanding that the film industry enforce the Production Code it had adopted in 1930. For nearly five years, defiant producers had cited artistic freedom and flouted the Code, which forbade vulgarity, profanity, nudity, excessive, illegal drugs, adultery, "sex perversion," "white slavery," racial mingling, "lustful kissing," and suggestive dancing. In July 1934, the controversial films were outlawed. Today they are called "pre-Code."
