Censorship? In the Days of Hays, the Earth Didn’t Move

Sex and violence are so commonplace on prime-time TV these days that demands for a return of censorship are resurgent.

Anyone who advocates censorship should read “The Censorship Papers” (Dodd Mead), a book by screenwriter and producer Gerald Gardner. It is mostly a collection of letters written to movie producers in enforcement of the infamous Motion Picture Production Code.

From 1934 to 1968, the code imposed a Scarlet Letter morality on Hollywood, so that, in Gardner’s words, “a generation of American filmgoers grew to maturity believing that all married couples slept in twin beds--and that’s all they did in twin beds.” (That line, by the way, would have been cut from a movie of that period.)

The Hays Office, as the censoring body was called, was headed by Will Hays, an Indiana politician, and his right-hand man, Joe Breen, a Catholic journalist. By enforcing the production code, they wreaked artistic havoc on many films and caused many screenplays to be scrapped.

Most of the letters in Gardner’s book are by Breen, specifying the moral delinquencies of proposed films and withholding the office’s seal of approval, thus ensuring the picture’s economic doom.

The code virtually eliminated sex as a story subject: Adultery was taboo (unless absolutely necessary to the plot); divorce was frowned on; kisses could be no longer than 30 seconds, with no open mouths; the female breast could not be exposed, nor the female leg above the knee; intimate female garments could not be shown.

Fortunately, producers sometimes fought off absurd restrictions and found ways to circumvent others.

In “Casablanca” the corrupt Captain Renault (Claude Raines) was not allowed to grant visas to young women in exchange for sexual favors. No suggestion of adultery was allowed in the flashback romance of Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) in Paris, though they necked in an open car, boated on the Seine, danced cheek to cheek and drank champagne, pledged undying love and kissed (no longer than 30 seconds) in Rick’s apartment (no bed showing).

Breen had written: “The suggestion that Ilsa was married all the time she was having her affair with Rick seems unacceptable. . . .” But of course Ilsa thought her husband was dead.

Rick was not allowed to say, “What the hell is that you’re playing?” to Sam. He was not even allowed to say it with a pause for hell . What he said, finally, was “What’s that you’re playing?” Oh, well, no great loss.

Cleaning up “The African Queen,” Breen wrote, “the fade out on this page unmistakably indicates a sexual affair. . . . Some means will have to be found for correcting this basically unacceptable situation.”

Hallelujah! Once again the writers found a way around this ruinous restraint. The minister’s spinster sister, Rose (Katharine Hepburn), goes below in the African Queen. We do not see her join Allnutt (Bogart) in his bunk; but the next morning she emerges on deck radiant; a changed woman; we know, thanks to an inspired performance by Hepburn, that something remarkable has happened to her; that her life will never be the same.

Breen was exquisitely protective of Miss Hepburn’s body: “There must be no unacceptable exposure of Rose’s person. . . .” Also, “Allnutt must not strip to his drawers. . . .”

Always vigilant against sex, Breen nipped a scene in “The Maltese Falcon,” writing that “this fade out of Spade (Bogart) and Bridget (Mary Astor) is unacceptable because of the definite indication of an illicit sex affair.” Breen also suggested that Spade drink less.

The Hays Office was so shocked by the script for “The Postman Always Rings Twice” that over a period of 11 years four studios withdrew their plans to film it. It was the James M. Cain story in which a transient (John Garfield) easily seduces a truck-stop waitress (Lana Turner) and they kill her husband.

Finally, in 1945, MGM made it. Maybe, Gardner suggested, they were waiting for Lana Turner to grow up. Perhaps the Hays Office finally caved in because there is retribution. The lovers get away with it, but later the pregnant Turner drowns in the surf and Garfield is convicted of her murder.

Even more absurd, perhaps, was Breen’s attempt to eliminate the sexual connection between Jordan (Gary Cooper) and Maria (Ingrid Bergman) in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

“We strongly urge,” he wrote, “that you omit entirely . . . the sleeping bag. This we believe will go far to remove any possible suggestion of a sex affair.”

What? No sex affair? Eliminate the scene from Hemingway’s novel where the earth moved?

Perhaps the greatest travesty of all was Breen’s suggestion that in the notorious beach scene from “From Here to Eternity,” where Burt Lancaster as an Army sergeant seduces his captain’s wife, Deborah Kerr, the two principals to this adultery wear robes .

It may be said to the everlasting credit of Harry Cohn that he rebelled, and for once the Hays Office backed down.