Judge Dread on Nostr: The collapse of the self-imposed Hollywood Hays Production Code: Foreign and art ...

The collapse of the self-imposed Hollywood Hays Production Code:

Foreign and art house films were catalysts for the end of censorship and the revision of the Production Code. Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, which featured full-frontal female nudity, did not receive the Production Code seal and was condemned by the National Legion of Decency. MGM distributed Blow-Up anyway through its shell company, Premier Productions. Grossing about $20 million, the film dealt a huge blow to puritanical attitudes. Foreign films had effectively created a double standard. As more theaters showed films without the Production Code seal, nudity became even more prevalent on-screen, raising questions about whether children and families were being driven away. But as the negative effects of censorship on creativity—not to mention the box office—became increasingly apparent, calls for an age-based classification system, which would give parents control over what their children could see, started to gain traction. In 1960, New York became the first state to establish the classification “Adult Only” for moviegoers above 18, sparking similar bills in other local legislatures.

Six years later, Jack Valenti became the third president of the MPAA. Valenti was preoccupied with censorship and the rising insurrection of Code-challenging filmmakers from the beginning of his tenure. In his first few weeks in office, he revised the Code to include the label “Suggested for Mature Audiences” on advertising posters. Shlyen welcomed the revision and praised Valenti’s “Herculean feat” for “giving the industry and the public a Code of Self-Regulation from which any benefits can be derived, not the least of which is the ‘better image that so much is spoken of and which can be the means for increasing attendance as well as to revive the custom of multitudes of lost patrons.”

But foreign films were no longer the only problem. A year before Valenti’s hiring, Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker was approved by the Code despite its nudity on the grounds of the “high quality” of the film. The decision created a loophole: Nudity was tolerable for “good” films, but not for ordinary ones. Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which broke barriers with its strong language,finished what The Pawnbroker had started. The National Legion of Decency, supposedly influenced by Jacqueline Kennedy, gave the film an endorsement of “acceptable for adults with reservations.” Jack Warner released it in 1966 with a warning that the film was for adults only and provided individual contracts for theaters to sign, pledging that they would not admit any minors. Valenti was forced to approve the film with a “Suggested for Mature Audiences” label.

This became the first step toward the establishment of the new MPAA voluntary classification system, enacted in 1968. Movies were rated G (Suggested for general audiences), M (Suggested for mature audiences), R (Persons under 16 not admitted unless accompanied by an adult), or X (Persons under 16 not admitted). Valenti declared in Boxoffice Pro that “the creative filmmaker ought to be free to make movies for a variety of tastes and audiences, with a sensitive concern for children. That’s what this voluntary film rating plan does—assures freedom of the screen and at the same time gives full information to parents so that children are restricted from certain movies whose theme, content and treatment might be beyond their understanding.”

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