16 Facts About Hays Code

Motion Picture Production Hays Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968.

The Production Hays Code spelled out acceptable and unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States.

Hays Code was paid the lavish sum of $100,000 a year, and served for 25 years as president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, where he "defended the industry from attacks, recited soothing nostrums, and negotiated treaties to cease hostilities".

In 1924, Hays Code introduced a set of recommendations dubbed "the Formula", which the studios were advised to heed, and asked filmmakers to describe to his office the plots of films they were planning on producing.

In 1927, Hays Code suggested to studio executives that they form a committee to discuss film censorship.

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The list was approved by the Federal Trade Commission, and Hays Code created the Studio Relations Committee to oversee its implementation; however, there was still no way to enforce tenets.

Hays Code sought not only to determine what could be portrayed on screen, but to promote traditional values.

The Hays Code contained an addendum commonly referred to as the Advertising Hays Code, which regulated advertising copy and imagery.

In 1930, the Hays Code office did not have the authority to order studios to remove material from a film, and instead worked by reasoning and sometimes pleading with them.

On June 13,1934, an amendment to the Hays Code was adopted, which established the Production Hays Code Administration and required all films released on or after July 1,1934, to obtain a certificate of approval before being released.

The Production Hays Code was not created or enforced by federal, state, or city government; the Hollywood studios adopted the code in large part in the hopes of avoiding government censorship, preferring self-regulation to government regulation.

Adherence to the Hays Code ruled out any possibility of the film ending with Rick and Ilsa consummating their adulterous love, making inevitable the ending with Rick's noble renunciation, one of Casablancas most famous scenes.

Hays Code required a change in a major element of the plot of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca.

In 1956, areas of the Hays Code were rewritten to accept subjects such as miscegenation, adultery, and prostitution.

The remake of Anna Christie, a pre-Hays Code film dealing with prostitution, was cancelled by MGM twice, in 1940 and in 1946, as the character Anna was not allowed to be portrayed as a prostitute.

At the forefront of contesting the Hays Code was director Otto Preminger, whose films violated the Hays Code repeatedly in the 1950s.