Pre-Code Hollywood 1930-1934
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Pre-Code Hollywood FILM AND CULTURE / JOHN BELTON, GENERAL EDITOR Film and Culture / A Columbia University Press series / Edited by John Belton What Made Pistachio Nuts? Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Henry Jenkins Style, National Identity, Japanese Film Darrell William Davis Showstoppers: Busby Berkeley and the Tradition of Spectacle Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Martin Rubin Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema Projections of War: Rhona J. Berenstein Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Thomas Doherty Masculinity in the Jazz Age Gaylyn Studlar Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: and Comedy Hollywood and Beyond William Paul Robin Wood Laughing Hysterically: American The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Screen Comedy of the 1950s Popular Film Music Ed Sikov Jeff Smith Primitive Passions: Visuality, Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Sexuality, Ethnography, and Popular Culture Contemporary Chinese Cinema Michael Anderegg Rey Chow Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and The Cinema of Max Ophuls: Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 Magisterial Vision and the Figure Thomas Doherty of Woman Susan M. White Sexual Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Black Women as Cultural Readers Modernity Jacqueline Bobo James Lastra Pre-Code Hollywood Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 Thomas Doherty COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS / NEW YORK Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 1999 by Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Doherty, Thomas Patrick. Pre-code Hollywood : sex, immorality, and insurrection in American cinema, 1930–1934 / Thomas Doherty. p. cm. — (Film and culture) Filmography: p. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–231–11094-4 (cl. : alk. paper). — ISBN 0–231–11095–2 (pa. : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures—Censorship—United States—History. 2. Sex in motion pictures. I. Title. II. Series. PN1995.62.D65 1999 99–11956 302.23'43'097309043—dc21 Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Sandra, again Contents Preface xi 1. On the Cusp of Classical Hollywood Cinema Patrolling the Diegesis Pre-Code Contexts 2. Breadlines and Box Office Lines: Hollywood in the Nadir of the Great Depression 21 The Lost Millions A Synchronized Industry 31 “Mike Fright” 3. Preachment Yarns:The Politics of Mere Entertainment 39 Telegraphing Ideology Class Distinctions Professional Malfeasance 4. Dictators and Democrats:The Rage for Order Hankering for Supermen “The Barrymore of the Capital”:The Newsreel Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt A New Deal in the Last Reel The Mad Dog of Europe 5. Vice Rewarded:The Wages of Cinematic Sin 103 Packaging Vice Models of Immorality Figurative Literalness VIII / CONTENTS Queer Flashes “Women Love Dirt” Working Girls 6. Criminal Codes: Gangsters Unbound, Felons in Custody Rushing Toward Death:The Gangster Film Men Behind Bars:The Prison Film 7. Comic Timing: Cracking Wise and Wising Up Commentators on the Action Story, Screenplay, and All Dialogue by Mae West Newspaper Patter The Blue Eagle and Duck Soup () 8. News on Screen:The Vividness of Mechanical Immortality 197 Library Stock The Newsreel Ethos Covering Up the Great Depression 9. Remote Kinships:The Geography of the Expeditionary Film 221 Points on the Compass Faking It: Phoney Expeditions and Real Deaths The Dark Continent 10. Primitive Mating Rituals:The Color Wheel of the Racial Adventure Film 253 “He’s White”: Tarzan, the Ape Man () and Tarzan and His Mate () Red Skin, Red Lips: Massacre () East Mates West “The Ethiopian Trade” Nerve and Brains: Paul Robeson and The Emperor Jones () Beauty and the Beast: King Kong () CONTENTS / IX 11. Nightmare Pictures:The Quality of Gruesomeness Rugged Individualism: Dracula (), Frankenstein (), and Their Progeny The Lower Orders Rise Up: Island of Lost Souls () and Freaks () 12. Classical Hollywood Cinema:The World According to Joseph I. Breen 319 “The Storm of ’” Hollywood Under the Code Post-Code Hollywood Cinema Appendix 1:The Text of the Production Code Appendix 2: Particular Applications of the Code and the Reasons Therefore [Addenda to 1930 Code] Appendix 3:Amendments Appendix 4:The Critical and Commercial Hits of 1930–1934 Notes Index Film Index This page intentionally left blank Preface A few years ago, MGM released a fully restored version of Tarzan and His Mate (), an uncensored print that included heretofore unseen footage: an eye- opening underwater swim scene featuring Johnny Weismuller, barely clad in a loin cloth, and a body double for Maureen O’Sullivan, an Olympic swim- mer named Josephine McKim,clad not at all.I saw the film at the Brattle The- ater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a vintage repertory house and a mecca still for film buffs who prefer their celluloid straight up, no videotape.The aquat- ic nudity generated a curious and memorable reaction from the packed house. Good-natured laughter at the rear-screen projection and embarrassed winc- ing at the offhand racism turned suddenly to shocked silence. Some people actually gasped. Obviously, the nudity per se wasn’t shocking to the sophisti- cated crowd of pallid cineastes. What shocked was the motion picture con- text: none of us had seen anything like it in classical Hollywood cinema and the glimpse of an alternate film universe was fascinating and a bit disorient- ing. Before diving into that universe, the world of pre-Code Hollywood cin- ema, I’d like to offer some explanation, thanks, and caution. XII / PREFACE Cultural-historical in cast, this study takes its critical methodology not from a French structuralist or British semiotician but from an American poet with an eye for cinema. In , felicitously enough, Hart Crane pub- lished his visionary epic The Bridge, a journey in language through the con- tours of American myth that, like the Brooklyn Bridge that was its overar- ching symbol, sought to link art and technology.An orbic bard in tune with his democratic vistas, Crane began by evoking the mystery of film and his- tory with a motion picture vision: I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene, Never disclosed but hastened to again, Foretold to other eyes on the same screen. Crane’s outlook suggests a poetics for film history that grasps the visceral power of the medium (those multitudes bending toward the “flashing scene”), that speaks to its cultural persistence (“foretold to other eyes”), and that wrestles with its resistance to interpretation (“never disclosed”). The “panoramic sleights” is a nice insight too, granting permission to gaze admiringly at the spectacle without being hoodwinked by the magic of the dreamwork. Of course, the films themselves are the primary documents to hasten to, but I’ve also relied heavily on the motion picture trade press to eaves- drop on the dialogue between Hollywood and American culture. No less than the Congressional Quarterly or the New York Times, the pages of Variety, Motion Picture Herald, the Film Daily, and the Hollywood Reporter registered the tremors of Great Depression America in the early s, and with wit- tier headlines.Another point of orientation concerns the nettlesome mat- ter of definition.Although the “pre-Code” tag is something of a misnomer (strictly speaking, any film produced before would be nominally pre- Code), I have retained the common practice of cinema scholars and film programmers and bracketed the pre-Code era between , when the Production Code was officially adopted, and , when the Production Code was rigorously enforced—a convention that I hope is justified in the following pages. A convention requiring no justification is the pleasant task of thanking many kind and generous people. Like all film scholars, I depend on the kindness of archivists: Madeline Matz, Rosemary Hanes, and Joe Belian at the Motion Picture Division of the Library of Congress; Mary Corliss and PREFACE / XIII Terry Geeskin at the Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive; Scott Curtis and Janet Lorenz at the Margaret Herrick Library; Dace Taube at Special Collections at the University of Southern California; Jill Costill at the Indiana State Historical Society; as well as the staffs of the Lincoln Cen- ter for the Performing Arts, the National Archives at College Park, Mary- land, the Film and Television Library at UCLA, and the FDR Library at Hyde Park.At Columbia University Press, Jennifer Crewe, Roy Thomas,and Mary Ellen Burd shepherded the project to completion with sensitivity,pro- fessionalism, and an understanding attitude toward deadlines. With good spirit and keen insight, many friends commented and kibbitzed: Diane Bernard, Dana Benelli, Steve Biehl, Laura Browder, Jim Deutsch, Bob Eber- wein, Doug Gomery, David Lugowski, Dan Leab, Chuck Maland, Dane Morrison, Bob Moses, Bill Paul, Jeff Ruoff, Luke Salisbury, Jim Schwoch, Laura Shea, and Kathy Whittemore. I owe special thanks to John Belton, Henry Jenkins, and John Raeburn for reading the work in manuscript; to Felicia Herman for help with the Yiddish; and to Susan Carruthers for help with the Briddish. My colleagues in the American Studies Department at Brandeis University were generous in lending their ears and encouragement and the university’s Sachar Fund provided welcome financial assistance. Above all, as ever, I owe my wife Sandra more than thanks. Finally,in the spirit of the weaselly precredit warnings posted before the classic gangster films to deny evil intent and sidestep full responsibility for the mayhem that followed, a disclaimer must preface this production. Be- sides eye strain, one of the occupational hazards of film criticism is target fixation, a cognitive misfiring wherein the topic the critic finds most con- genial—a turning point in Hollywood history, a brilliant director, a land- mark film—just happens to be absolutely vital to the evolution of the medi- um and the course of American history.