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Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration

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According to _Liberty_ magazine in 1936, Joseph Ignatius Breen probably had "more influence in standardizing world thinking than Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin." Joseph who? Breen's name is lost to history. People who know something about Hollywood's history might know about the Hays Code, the now ridiculed moral standards Hollywood imposed on itself to keep the screen free of actors uttering words like "hell" or married couples using one bed. Will Hays had become president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, but Breen became his second-in-command, the one to tighten the code and make the studios do things according to his strictly upright, strongly Catholic, moral view. In the surprisingly lively and entertaining _Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen & the Production Code Administration_ (Columbia University Press), Thomas Doherty, a professor of American Studies who has written extensively on movies and television, presents not just a biography of Breen, but a history of American movie censorship. Anyone who loves old films will be amused and exasperated by how much Breen succeeded in imposing his personal version of morality on the movies.

Breen, born in Philadelphia in 1888 and raised in parochial schools by the Jesuits, had been a journalist and diplomat. He gave the Hays Code teeth, and his Production Code was in force from 1930 to 1968, and at least in its early decades it was in force with few violations. It is fun to read how directors got around the Code, both by bargaining and by winking at the censorship in a way audiences could enjoy. The films of Ernst Lubitsch were good examples, like _Angel_ (1937), a comedy set in Paris which squeaked by since the women in it offered "an amusing time" in a "delightful salon" rather than sex for hire in a brothel. It did follow the letter of the Code, but viewers with any intelligence could catch a plot that _Variety_ called "tartly flavored with the risqué". Those intelligent viewers were the ones that eventually spelt an end to the Code, and Doherty's description of its long decline and fall is fascinating. There was Rhett Butler's "I don't give a damn" speech that the studio managed to get approved with much publicity, but the millions who had already read _Gone with the Wind_ snickered about all the movie fuss. People also giggled about the Breen office's fixation about sweaters, garments which the Code insisted must not outline an actress's breasts. There was Howard Hughes's famous campaign to get uncensored shots of the zaftig Jane Russell in _The Outlaw_ (1941). It caused a battle with Breen that lasted for years, and resulted in the movie being shown to appreciative audiences without a Code seal but in independent movie houses. Protestants grumbled about the Catholic power over movies: "The minority control of the most vital amusement source of the nation is one of the most astounding things in the history of the United States," stormed the _Protestant Digest_. Film noir helped do in the code, as did World War II, as Breen fought to keep battle realism from the screen. Foreign films were a real menace to Hollywood's business-as-usual in many ways, but since Breen had no control in other countries, they kept sending films their own citizens found laudable and Breen thought execrable. The attempted censoring of the classic Italian film _The Bicycle Thief_ (1948) was because in one scene the kid in it stood at a wall and urinated, although no genitalia or urine was seen. People resented Breen's effort to keep this and other serious films from American eyes.

Breen does not come off as a prig, but simply as a pugnacious fighter for his own brand of morality and a conscientious Catholic with what he saw as a God-given duty, a duty he took so seriously that overwork probably shortened his life. There was never a hint of scandal in his public or private life, and he loved movies and was able to get along with most studios via amicable discussions rather than any strong-arm tactics. He was unable to tolerate any change in the Code, attempting to hold to it up to his retirement in 1954. He did have astonishing power; while it is possible to appreciate the way films subtly and cleverly got around his restrictions, they could have blossomed in other ways if there were no restrictions to begin with. Also, he had the power to snuff ideas; the film version of Sinclair Lewis's dystopian novel _It Can't Happen Here_ was never made because Breen thought the script submitted for his approval was "filled with dangerous material." There are many serious pages here to make a reader worry about how power got wielded in such a way, but there is also a good deal of fun because censorship, while inherently a nasty concept, seems extremely silly when viewed in retrospect. Doherty's witty prose is up to it; this is an academic work that shows resourceful digging through many archives, but it is a pleasure to read his humorous descriptions of serious censorial changes. For instance, he writes about an imported British film: "_Fanny by Gaslight_ (1944), a costume drama featuring a scene in a brothel and whose title was changed to _Man of Evil_ to preclude dorsal connotation stateside."

Doherty is a great writer and this book is a must-read book if you are interested in the Pre-Code era of Hollywood films.

This book clearly explains the intricacies of movie censorship. Even without knowing too much, any reader may jump in and discover why Hollywood movies were as dull as ditch water from 1934-1968. The whole book centers around Joseph Breen, his censorship office and his furious efforts to thwart movies. It would be fascinating just to focus on him, but the book deftly links him to the rest of efforts by politicians and a stodgy Catholic clergy to impose morality on the nation. Throughout the text readers are treated to a man who wanted any taint of subversion or sensuality bleached out. Yet the efforts failed.
We see that the writers trumped censorship by doubling the dialog and oblique innuendos. Hence in "The Maltese Falcon", Spade faces off against a homosexual gang of thieves (Peter Lorre & Sydney Greenstreet), and Mary Astor reveals that she was the murdered Thursby's lover--through obscure observations. For example Ninotchka is an oblique commentary on Communism disguised as a love story. It didn't matter what the movie or cartoon, writers had either to go over their audiences' head or dumb down a storyline to get any profound or salacious detail in.
All this continued throughout Breen's woozy tenure as censor. But in the post WWII environment, the censorship of movies combined with the popularity of television, worked against it. Directors rebelled, starting with Otto Preminger's "The Moon is Blue" and ending with Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". Those films included more and more blatantly offensive materials to try the waters. Ultimately, the Censorship Board became a ratings board in 1968, conceding the battle to Hollywood.
The author reaches an unexpected conclusion. The 1930's to the 1950's aren't really Hollywood's Golden Age. In fact they were a period of Film Infantilization and finger-wagging moralism. Many films that were outright raunchy (Convention City), politically daring (Duck Soup), or bawdy (Belle of the Nineties), were airbrushed, suppressed or destroyed. He argues that the films were decent but could have been much better. All this because reactionaries got together and repeated conservatism's mantra:Decadence. This book serves as a starting point for alternative studies of the Studio System. Next, one should proceed onto "Dangerous Men" and "Complicated Women".

Any student of Hollywood and 20th century history will come across the name of Joseph Breen and the Breen Office regularly enough to know, in very general terms, who he was and what his office did (he was the head of the Production Code Admin office whose job it was to vet and censor all Hollywood product during its golden era-1930s to 1960s). But rarely do we get much more than a paragraph or two about the guy and the office which completely controlled the most powerful form of media in the most powerful country during its most powerful time. This book, long overdue in my opinion, takes you through what happened and when and why. I found that in reading this book, my understanding of developed in Hollywood over those years made much more sense.

A totally biased view of Hollywood morality from an academic author who tries to make his case that the head of the movie production code office was a "censor" who "probably has more influence in standardizing world thinking that Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin." Not only does the book fail to prove its premise, the fact that the writer starts with such a distorted view of the subject makes the reader skeptical about how every "fact" is twisted.

You only go a page or two into the book before encountering the bias. The writer calls the winner of the Academny Awards 1954 best song is "treacly," while claiming the ceremony was a "grim wake" due to the honorary award given to the book's subject, Joseph Breen. There is no outside evidence to support such opinions--the author is letting the reader know up front that this is a subjective analysis of the facts instead of just a straight reporting of information.

And that trend continues throughout the book. The writer, a college professor, tries to make his case for Breen being a "censor" even though everyone else acknowledges that he wasn't according to the true definition of the word. He was the head of a self-regulation office. So the book's title is misleading--he didn't censor; instead he was employed by Hollywood as a type of "quality control" person to oversee the products before they went public. There is no government censorship involved.

The book is filled with stories where often the "censor" didn't get what he wanted and Hollywood released an edgy film despite what the code office requested. Breen often failed with 1930s and 40s films that dealt with adultery and divorce. And films were allowed to have sexual situations that were racy for their time.The author downplays some of those cases and likes to focus on what today seem like silly requests for cuts, failing to get behind the thinking at the time as to what was offensive.

Another undeveloped point is that after Breen took over in 1934, the quality of films dramatically increased. The two decades he was in charge are filled with many of the greatest movies ever made--and he had a hand in guiding them. So there is no proof that self-regulation watered down the quality of movies and the author fails to investigate the positive aspects of the Code. Would Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, Casablanca and others been as great had Breen's office not provided a perspective that thought about the public good? Some of the greatest scenes of Bogart, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and other stars are the subtle entendres that were allowed--the Code forced creative screenwriting and an intelligent viewing public. Any old screwball comedy that had to walk lightly around sexuality (like The Awful Truth) is more clever and long-lasting than any "uncensored" Will Ferrell or Sandra Bullock movie today.

There are other examples of movies that got cut, some interesting and some dull. But there are fewer examples than expected because the author seems so interested in the religious aspects of Breen. The one movie that does get a section devoted to it, Howard Hughes' The Outlaw, actually proves that putting trash in a bad film doesn't make it good, even though the author seems to miss that point and instead uses it as a condemnation of the movies holding "to antique standards of decency."

The book could have really been entitled "How Catholicism Changed the Movies." (There are other books that already covered that subject.) The writer focuses so much on the Church that he comes across as an anti-Catholic bigot, trying to tie Breen's decisions to this faith (calling him "a soldier of the Church militant"). Doherty turns his description of the creation of the Hays Code into an opportunity for repeated Catholic-bashing. He also stereotypes Breen's size, ethnic background and origin (Philadelphia) to the point that it is offensive. So what if Breen had worked as a PR guy for the Catholic Church--would there be as much concern if the man was Jewish or Muslim or even mainline Protestant? If the same things would be written about a non-white non-Christian, critics would claim the author is an insensitive bigot.

The book is filled with second-hand details that are skewed to fill the writer's pre-conceived conclusions. There's also an annoying writing style where the author keeps jumping back in time instead of explaining Breen's life in a linear fashion. It is also way too long, at 350 pages with very small print. While the book may be good to use for a college research paper (though students need to be skeptical of swallowing the "facts"), it's pretty laborious for the casual reader.

In the end it is unsatisfying because of the lack of thoroughness and the biased view taken by the author from the start. The irony is that while the author tries to show that Breen was a bigoted censor, Doherty himself is guilty of it by assembling select details, cutting out others, and not giving a fair overview of the system's impact.