Aubrey Malone
I recently wrote about the film industry’s problems with the Catholic Church in the early years of the last century. Falling audiences were an associated problem. The Depression almost killed off the industry. After it ended, a bacchanalian atmosphere reigned, leading to material unsuitable for family audiences appearing in a profusion of the works being turned out.
Many of them starred Mae West. West became a major thorn in the side of the Church and censors alike. Clara Bow, the so-called ‘It’ Girl, was another worry. So was Jean Harlow, especially for her film Red Dust, made in 1932 with Clark Gable.
Church authorities grew increasingly more frustrated by films which flouted the “commandments” of Will Hays’ code of guidelines issued almost a decade before.
A nadir was reached with the Hedy Lamarr vehicle, Ecstacy. This was denounced by Pope Pius XI in the Vatican newspaper. It launched the career of Lamarr but her husband, Friedrich Mandl, subsequently tried to buy up all available prints of the film at a cost of $280,000. That’s over $6.5 million in today’s money. It was banned in Pennsylvania and New York after the Pope’s comments.
If Hollywood didn’t know it was in trouble before this, it did now. For a decade it had been aware of Hays breathing down its neck. He threatened various measures to curtail its tendency towards moral licentiousness, buffeted by the Legion of Decency.
This wasn’t an official organ of the Church, but it became very much associated with it as time went on. Shortly after its formation a report by American bishops declared that more than five million people had become members of it.
Hollywood’s Production Code was supposed to prevent immoral material appearing in films. This was a kind of reformation from within instigated from fear of religious bodies banning films outright. By the mid-thirties, however, the Church felt the Code wasn’t being applied strongly enough. Hollywood wasn’t getting the message.
On May 6, 1934, a Jesuit priest called Fr Donnelly wrote an article called ‘The Bishops’ Rise against Hollywood.’ In the course of it he said, “The pest that infects the country with its obscene and lascivious moving pictures must be cleaned.” In the same month the Detroit branch of the Legion issued a list of 63 condemned films. By now it had over 11 million members.
A coding system from A to C, which was a kind of forerunner of the 1969 ratings system instituted by Jack Valenti, listed films in descending order of acceptability. ‘C’ stood for ‘Condemned.’ Fr Daniel Lord, a key figure I mentioned in a previous column, now started naming five condemned films per month in his magazine Queen’s Work.
The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ threatened not only to enlist its entire membership of 22 million in the Legion for a campaign against moral turpitude in films, but to lobby for federal censorship as well.