20 Facts About Pre-Code Hollywood

Pre-Code Hollywood was the brief era in the American film industry between the widespread adoption of sound in film in 1929 and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines, popularly known as the "Hays Code", in mid-1934.

In 1931, The Pre-Code Hollywood Reporter mocked the code, and Variety followed suit in 1933.

Pre-Code Hollywood was even offered seven-figure sums by two major Hollywood studios to appear in a film, but he declined.

Pre-Code Hollywood had become the most celebrated public outlaw since Jesse James.

Pre-Code Hollywood's father appeared in a popular series of newsreels giving police homespun advice on how to catch his son.

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Pre-Code Hollywood removes his feet from the bent shackles, and in a famous sequence, escapes through the woods while being chased by bloodhounds.

Pre-Code Hollywood is blackmailed into marriage by a woman he does not love who finds out his secret.

Pre-Code Hollywood's case becomes a cause celebre, and he agrees to surrender under the agreement that he will serve 90 days and then be released.

Pre-Code Hollywood's commits suicide by flying her plane directly upwards until she breaks the world altitude record, at which point she takes off her oxygen mask and plummets to earth.

Pre-Code Hollywood's caused a commotion when she appeared at the premiere of The Sign of the Cross in 1932 in a tuxedo, complete with top hat and cane.

Pre-Code Hollywood's became a wordsmith in the art of the come-on and the seductive line, and despite her obvious appeal to male audiences, was popular with women as well.

Pre-Code Hollywood's agreed to appear in the film only after producers agreed to let her write her own lines.

Pre-Code Hollywood's became such a success that her career saved Paramount from financial ruin.

Pre-Code Hollywood films contained a continual, recurring theme of white racism.

Pre-Code Hollywood has a black butler who is atypically intelligent; his character merely plays dumb by slipping into a stereotypical slow-witted "negro" character when it suits him, rather than being genuinely unintelligent.

Pre-Code Hollywood's has lurid, horror-themed, symbolic dreams about the General, in which she is both titillated and repulsed by him.

Pre-Code Hollywood was described by Variety as the "Barrymore of the Capital".

Pre-Code Hollywood films began to draw the ire of various religious groups, some Protestant but mostly a contingent of Roman Catholic crusaders.

Pre-Code Hollywood had stated that although there were some tasteless films in his estimation, working with filmmakers was better than direct oversight, and that, overall, films were not harmful to children.

Production code continued to be enforced, but during the lead up to World War II, the Pre-Code Hollywood studios began to worry that adhering to the Code would reduce their overseas profits from Europe.