Mark A. Vieira

If you want a scholarly book on pre-Code films that is the best at explaining the historical context, read “Pre-Code Hollywood” by Thomas Patrick Doherty. If you want one that combines fanboy enthusiasm, great anecdotes, and understands how empowering the period was to women, read “Complicated Women” by Mick LaSalle. If you want one with extraordinary pictures, has great balance, and gives the best insights into the audience reactions at the time, read this one, “Forbidden show more Hollywood” by Mark Viera.

Viera’s book, building upon what he published previously (“Sin in Soft Focus”) is the newest of the three, having been published in 2019, and he takes full advantage of this to include photos that are simply fantastic. This is a very handsome book and leafing through its pages is an absolute joy. If you’re new to the pre-Code films this would be a great book to start with, because its beautiful visuals communicate the emotion and feeling of the era, as if the people involved were looking through time at you.

On top of that, Viera focuses on 20-25 films, giving the reader information about the origin of the script, comments from the cast/director/studio heads, how it ran up against conservative criticism, and how it was commented on by viewers across America in letters to movie magazines. It’s a very well researched account with plenty of new information, giving the book a great balance. His chapter on “The Sign of the Cross” is particularly impressive, and I also loved reading about “Convention City,” a film that was unfortunately lost, literally destroyed by censors. Reading comments like the one from B.P. McCormick of Canon City, Colorado, objecting to the use of the directness of saying a mother is “having a baby” in film, is eye-opening, and there are many others.

There are some odd chapter divisions in trying to break things out by major film, but then including several other films in the chapter, and the book sometimes gets a little too much into the details of the specifics of the process, but these are quibbles. I have to say, it would also have been nicer if it had dealt a little more with the issue of race in these films, though it touches on it.

My biggest criticism, however, is how it makes a point of softening the view of Joseph Breen, a political reactionary and anti-Semite who between mid-1934 and 1954 single-handedly had the most power over content produced in America. Not only did he ruin a lot of movies in that interval by dogmatically imposing his own narrow-minded views on them, but he had pre-1934 movies censored – many irrecoverably, to the master negative (which Viera himself does acknowledge). It’s mind-boggling to me that Viera feels Breen’s legacy is the subject of a misconception though, pointing out his industry friendships over his tenure as evidence of his “not being a lifelong anti-Semite,” without a shred of reflection that during this time, Breen held all the power. It’s as if he was seeking some kind of artificial happy ending, and unprotected as the industry was by the Supreme Court between 1915 (Mutual Film vs. Industrial Commission of Ohio which ruled the films were not protected under the First Amendment) to 1952 (the case involving Rossellini’s The Miracle which overturned it), there was no recourse, resulting in a dark period for the freedom of expression.

That’s what makes the pre-Code era such a delight though. While the salacious aspects of films in this period were played up in the effort to boost sagging box office numbers because of the Depression, they touched on so many other things, challenging traditional gender roles and the institution of marriage, acknowledging sexual pleasure and freedom, satirizing businessmen, the police, and the justice system, and showing that sometimes evil did win in this world. That’s what made the films so “dangerous” in the eyes of the Midwest Catholics who led the charge to put a lid on all this. Viera is successful in capturing at least some of this, and he’s certainly successful in capturing the joy of these old films, and for that I’m very happy he published this book.

Quotes:
On censorship, this extracted from the 1930 book Censored by Morris L. Ernst and Pare Lorentz, speaking of Will Hays (who was a pussycat compared to Breen, making it ironic that the Production Code is referred to as the Hays Code):
“A man used to the ways of political subterfuge, with no especial literary or scientific background, Will Hays particularly epitomizes the class-conscious, fearful yet aggressive spirit that has made the American movie an industry, and little else. Search hard and find a man more fitted to handle petty politicians, middle-aged meddling prudes, and aggressive financiers. The controllers, the movie barons are satisfied with his work. We can expect no fight for freedom, taste, or mature thought in this product so long as the Bishop of Hollywood chants his platitudes and swings his incense pot of purity.”

On “dangerous ideas”, this from Father Daniel Lord, who drafted the original Production Code:
“These authors are injecting into basic stories an underlying philosophy of life. These stories discuss morals, divorce, free love, unborn children, relationships outside of marriage, single and double standards, the relationship of sex to religion, marriage and its effects upon the freedom of women. These subjects are fundamentally dangerous.”

On sex, from Tallulah Bankhead in an interview with Gladys Hall of Motion Picture magazine:
“When I first started to make pictures, I was said to be trying to ‘do a Garbo.’ A fatal thing to say about anyone. If there’s anything the matter with me now, it’s certainly not Hollywood’s state of mind about me. The matter with me is I haven’t had an affair for six months. Six months is a long, long while. I want a man!” show less

“Nineteen thirty-nine was a watershed year. The Great Depression was barely over, but America was again feeling the chill winds of change. Politics, economics, and art braced for war. There was a lull before the storm, and Hollywood, as if expecting to be judged by posterity, produced a portfolio of classics. What year before or since has yielded as many masterpieces?” – Mark A. Vieira, Majestic Hollywood

Told in chronological order by month, this book provides a summary of 50 movies show more released in 1939. The structure is the same for each film: title, release date, a quote, a one-sentence plot summary, production highlights, critical reactions, and photos of the performers. It is amazing how many classics emerged in one year.

We also get a glimpse into the culture of the time, in such gems as: “In the 1930s there was a code of etiquette in movie theaters. Audience members did not wear hats, talk, or put gum under theater seats. It was customary to applaud when “The End” flashed on the screen. It was also customary to applaud at the end of a satisfying or well-acted scene.”

The substance of the book lies in the production notes. Some films get more attention than others, and avid film buffs may already know some of the content, but most was new to me. It is well-packaged, and the photos are wonderful. It evokes a bygone era and I thoroughly enjoyed it. show less

A very large (and heavy!) book, yet it is much more than just a coffee table book full of pictures. While the listings list Presley as the primary author, Mark Vieira appears to have written most of the text (which is actually quite substantial in this 400 page book) and like his previous books, the narrative in this book is informative and yet entertaining, with some marvelous anecdotes and stories. The photography is stunning with an excellent selection not only of stills from the movie show more sets (DeMille was a great believer in using still photography to document the movie making process) but also of personal and candid photos from DeMille's own collection and that of his granddaughter. The book focuses on his later films, but does not overlook his early career. Very highly recommended. show less

Forbidden Hollywood is a history of the American movie industry from 1930 to 1934, beautifully enhanced by photographs of stars and stills from the movies of the time.

The dominant question of the industry at the time was what was allowed and what was not allowed in the movies. The industry’s executives knew that there were boundaries. But the boundaries were inevitably moving targets — shaped by politics, the public conscience, and any number of less identifiable factors.

Some studios show more and producers would push the edge, and they could also suffer. If they didn’t police themselves, someone — government or otherwise — was going to step in and do it for them. The Hays Code (formally the Motion Picture Production Code) was adopted in 1930 as the way the movie industry would self-regulate.

The Hays Code includes a pretty long list of prohibited content, including sexual content (“licentious or suggestive nudity”, sex perversion, etc.), “ridicule of the clergy”, “illegal traffic in drugs”, and so on.

What we now call “pre-Code” movies were made in this time of the Hays Code.

It didn’t work. Vieira brings up some of the factors at work, both for and against the movie industry’s interests in the 30s and for and against the effectiveness of the code.

The 30s were the first years in which talkies became common, and talkies opened up new opportunities and new freedoms for moviemakers — dialog could be longer and more expressive, action scenes and dramatic scenes could be more continuous, without interruptions from intertitles.

Of course, the 30s were the heart of the depression, and movie houses and studios were fighting for their lives. Not to mention competition from radio — with radios and radio networks now common, people didn’t have to leave their homes and go to movie houses for regular entertainment.

Vieira doesn’t talk too much about prohibition, but he does spend a fair amount of time talking about the moral climate of the time — activist religious organizations taking on industries who, in their eyes, encouraged sinful behavior.

Certainly a big part of why self-regulation under the Hays Code didn’t work was the need for profit. Movie studios needed to make money in a hard market, and movies that included sexual content, gangsters, and questionable characters in general proved to be good draws.

It’s also true that the Hays Code lacked teeth. The committee that tried to enforce the code couldn’t prohibit movies from being made or distributed if they violated the code. At best, they could only try to influence moviemakers to tone down their content, maybe remove some violating scenes.

The best part of Vieira’s book, to me, is his commentary on the movies themselves. He takes particularly controversial movies, or just ones representative of the time, tells us what the movies were about, who their stars were, the circumstances under which they were made, and what their reception was like.

The movies include ones that you would recognize, if you’re familiar with them, as difficult to square with the Hays Code — Red Dust, Baby Face, The Sign of the Cross, Little Caesar, . . . And some others that are just movie classics we take for granted — Frankenstein, Dracula, King Kong, A Farewell to Arms, Grand Hotel, . . .

And, of course, there were great actors, producers, directors, and personalities like Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer, Mae West, Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck, the Barrymores, Greta Garbo, . . .

The pictures and stills in the book are almost worth the price of the book by themselves.

Eventually, opposition to the movies’ content won out. By 1934, opposition groups began to organize to boycott movies and put real economic pressure on the industry. The Catholic Legion of Decency is especially called out by Vieira as having a great influence and effect.

The industry had to do something, and it did. Moviemakers knew they had to up their self-regulatory game or lose their chance to control their own industry.

In 1934, the Production Code was drawn up and implemented, this time with teeth. Administrators of the Code, Joseph Breen in particular, could prohibit member theaters from showing unapproved movies, and they could halt production of unapproved movies. They examined scripts to catch violations early in the production process so that movies wouldn’t reach the point where sunk costs would argue against halting production or rewriting and re-filming problem scenes.

The Production Code stayed in effect until 1968.

Vieira’s book really filled a gap for me. I’ve seen many of the movies he talks about, and I’d always had a feel for the freedom the people who made them had in making them, compared to the movies that came shortly afterwards. They were free to explore subjects that became too sensitive for the industry until the modern era.

Mostly though I think that, now, when I go back to watch some of these movies again, inspired by Vieira’s book, I’m seeing them differently. I know so much more now of the conditions under which they were made. Sometimes it’s a shame now to see compromises made even to the Hays Code, much less cuts and edits that came later as the Production Code was applied to movies still in circulation. But now I can appreciate much more of what I’m looking at. show less