Two years into his tenure as President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Will H. Hays was in front of Congress. Not for movie-related business, but for accepting and then obfuscating a small fortune from the founder of Sinclair Oil during the Teapot Dome bribery scandal. The former campaign manager for Warren G. Harding—a man who was, until recently, a shoo-in for running our most corrupt presidential administration—Hays was “the moral supervisor of the movies” by the time he accepted $185,000 in cash and bonds, which he laundered and applied to the debts of the Republican National Committee. Just a few years later, Hays was synonymous with artistic censorship masquerading as dubious morality. The Catholic-pushed Motion Picture Production Code (AKA the Hays Code) came to define American cinema through both its limits and its loopholes for decades. Money still lurked beneath it all. Now, freed from the Code but under similar moral scrutiny, movies are often judged for their ethics by audiences weaned on revenue-driven discourse. And it all started with Hays’ appointment to the newly formed MPPDA 100 years ago.
Hays, a “nervous little” ex-traffic cop whom Time called a “human flivver” (I’ll save you the Google: It means he was a busted-up jalopy of a dude) with a “twisted grin” in their 1926 cover story, left his appointment as Postmaster General on January 14, 1922 to become “the dictator of the fourth largest industry” of the time. It was a post Hays would hold for 24 years before passing it off to Eric Johnson, who would shift the position’s ostensible focus from film’s morals to film’s international economic/diplomatic potential. But, really, capitalism always was—and continues to be—the driving force of censorship efforts.
State censorship boards reigned before the MPPDA, and making movies for a slew of arbitrary committees with no formal standard was expensive for everyone and made the final product sloppy—even incoherent—for audiences, as offending movies had to be chopped to bits (in different mangled formations) in order to screen in local theaters. Lawmakers across 37 states tried to pass over 100 censorship bills in 1921 alone. Overarching federal censorship and the anti-trust attention that may well follow seemed even worse for an industry that was just now finally becoming, well, an industry. Enter self-preservational self-censorship, here to sweep the real-life sex and drugs of Hollywood under the rug of sanitized films to put Wall Street at ease. But enforcement of these moral clauses always reflected what studio heads thought would be best for the bottom line.
In a speech to the National Education Association in July of 1922, Hays said that the influence of the movie industry—an industry that had “settled down commercially into a sanity and conservatism like that of the banking world”—was “limitless,” not just on “our taste” but on “our conduct,” “our aspirations,” “our youth” and “our future.” Movies, you know, the things that, before violent videogames, were blamed for America’s gun problems and general moral failures.
“And so its integrity must, and shall, be protected just as we protect the integrity of our churches,” Hays declared. The speech goes on to half-heartedly condemn political censorship, before reiterating a commitment to ethical censorship where “real evil can and must be kept out”—a hypocrisy as American as comparing art to banks and churches.
Yet, during the ‘20s, Hays’ early passes at a Code—known first as The Formula and, later, a long list of Don’ts and Be Carefuls—were often ignored. But, like that speech, they were good PR. Placated by the coverage these rulesets got in the press (and publicity moves like banning any movie featuring Fatty Arbuckle, whose high-profile manslaughter accusation was an instigating factor to Hays’ recruitment), those same financial powers that got Hays appointed in the first place didn’t see a rush for strict enforcement. Money was being made.
Initially, the Hays Code was also disobeyed. It was the Depression, and studios needed butts in seats any way they could get them. Movies actually got more lascivious for a while. But when the Catholic Legion of Decency put its supervillain supergroup name to good use in the early ‘30s, designating what its large and pious audience should or shouldn’t see, the script flipped. Profits were now on the line, as the faithful realized they were far more organized than the degenerates that enjoyed any kind of realism in their cinema. Millions of Catholics pledged to stay away from unapproved and thus immoral films, and the Legion of Decency became influential enough to warrant a response from an industry that would love millions of Catholics to buy tickets, please.
The power of these religious tastemakers and their odd relationship to the movies is perhaps best and most hilariously displayed in this scene from Hail, Caesar!, which riffs on the counsel of denominational consultants advising Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (one of whom was future Hays Code co-author Reverend Daniel A. Lord):
No matter your beliefs, Hollywood really, really wants your money. To keep this specific religious faction coming to theaters, Hays created the Production Code Administration and appointed a tough Catholic as its head. Joseph Breen’s PCA could fine producers releasing films without a stamp of approval, and the Hays Code (expanded from Hays’ Be Carefuls list by Lord and Catholic publisher Martin Quigley) finally had some teeth. Profits were once again protected. It’s not like people didn’t know what Hays and his ilk were up to at the time. Here’re humorists Will Rogers and Irvin S. Cobb on a 1935 radio program:
Rogers: “Do you find that this censorship that Will Hays has got in on us now, does it kind of interfere with you, kind of cramp your emotions in any way?