But such freedom would be short-lived. Powerful forces were already at work. Religious and women's groups had been protesting the movies' permissiveness throughout the twenties and thirties, lobbying for federal censorship of the movies.
Screenwriter Gore Vidal describes how the movie moguls responded by attempting to censor themselves: "Let's save Hollywood. We must get an outsider, preferably some politician who is above reproach.
So they looked into the cabinet of Warren G. Harding -- at that time there were a number of unindicted members of his cabinet -- and they picked the Postmaster General, Will Hays of Indiana. Will Hays would head the movies' first voluntary effort at self-censorship.
The early Hays Code was a token gesture, seldom taken seriously. But by 1934 the Catholic Church had devised a scheme of its own.
The Legion of Decency not only rated movies as to content [an A rating meant a movie was acceptable; a B indicated it was morally objectionable; and a C meant it was condemned] -- but threatened massive boycotts. Hollywood promised to play by the rules.
Code director Joe Breen ran Hollywood's censorship machinery for over two decades. He was authorized to change words, personalities, and plots.
"The Lost Weekend," a novel about a sexually confused alcoholic, became a movie about an alcoholic with writer's block. "The Brick Foxhole," a novel about gay-bashing and murder, became" Crossfire," a movie about anti Semitism and murder.
As Jay Presson Allen explains, "The Hays code just set up a series of rules that were inviolable". In addition to depictions of homosexuality -- or "sex perversion," as it was called -- other restrictions of the 1934 Hays Code included: open-mouthed kissing, lustful embraces, seduction, rape, abortion, prostitution and white slavery, nudity, obscenity and profanity.