Sex & Scandal in Hollywood’s Golden Age

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Sex & Scandal in Hollywood’s Golden Age

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society – March 6, 2026
Host: Dr Kate Lister
Guest: William Mann, author of “Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood”

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Overview

On this episode, sex historian Dr Kate Lister is joined by Hollywood historian William J. Mann to dive into the raucous underbelly of early Hollywood. They explore how the burgeoning film industry—the so-called “Golden Age”—was both a hotbed of creative (and sexual) freedom and the target of escalating moral and legal crackdowns. The conversation unpacks forgotten scandals, groundbreaking representations, and the eventual imposition of the Hays Code, showing how sex, queerness, and society’s changing morals all left indelible fingerprints on American cinema.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Hollywood: Wild West of Creativity (04:48–11:04)

• Dr Lister likens the explosion of film to the arrival of the Internet—a new technology with limitless possibilities.
• William Mann describes early film as an entrepreneurial free-for-all dominated by immigrants, mavericks, and misfits:

  “Anybody who could save up enough money to buy a camera could make a movie and get it shown because there was no control, there was no top down control of the industry.” —William Mann (08:58)

• Remarkable early participation by women filmmakers: Over 350 women in significant creative roles in the 1910s, dropping to just one by the early talkies.

2. Sex and Queerness on the Silver Screen (10:51–13:10)

• Mann outlines the surprising sexual frankness and playfulness in early films—often adapted from bawdy vaudeville sketches.
• Queer and gender-bending themes were common:

  “There’s a wonderful film with Charlie Chaplin where he doesn’t know that the man next to him is actually a woman and he’s coming on to … the man. It’s a lot of playfulness around sexuality and gender that’s delightful to see today.” —William Mann (11:48)

• Famous “Sunrise” tracking shot features same-sex couples kissing openly.

3. From Scandal to Censorship: The Moral Backlash (17:07–23:40)

• Rapid industry growth led to moral panic in the 1920s, with right-wing groups (e.g., Lord’s Day Alliance) attacking Hollywood’s perceived immorality.
• Scandals fueled these efforts:
  • Fatty Arbuckle scandal — false allegations of rape & manslaughter destroyed his career despite acquittal (19:20).
  • William Desmond Taylor’s unsolved murder — implicated several stars and intensified calls for censorship.
• Studios, faced with threats of government intervention, opted for self-censorship, hiring Will Hays to oversee industry morality.

4. The Hays Code: What Changed? (23:40–36:55)

• The Hays Code was initially symbolic (“steady on now”), with vague rules about not “lowering the morals” of audiences (26:14).
• Introduction of talking pictures and the Great Depression brought stricter enforcement and more public scrutiny, especially from the Catholic Church:

  “‘Silent smut was bad, but now that we can hear it, it’s worse.’” —Catholic newspaper sentiment, paraphrased (26:47)

• By 1934, fines and theater restrictions compelled serious compliance.

Specific Code Restrictions:

• Language: No profanity, no “God” or “Jesus Christ” outside religious context, no “damn,” “hell,” or even “pregnant.”
• Sex and Gender: Banned “sex perversion” (i.e., any reference to homosexuality), forbidden depiction or implication of queer people, or even playful gender-bending.

  “You couldn’t even imply that these people existed.” —William Mann (31:11)

• Violence: Graphic or suggestive violence (even Frankenstein’s infamous drowning scene) was suppressed.

5. Impact on Hollywood and Queer Lives (34:11–38:36)

• Once enforced, the code required actors to live “moral” lives on and off screen:
  • Morality clauses forced queer performers into “lavender marriages” or out of the industry.
  • Public personas of stars—like Joan Crawford—were reshaped for PR.
• The cost was invisibility for anyone marginalized—queer people, women averse to marriage, actors of color.

  “For a generation, young queer people didn’t see themselves on the screen. It was a way of controlling society and trying to make society fit this very narrow, religiously prescribed view.” —William Mann (42:55)

6. Resistance and the Slow Death of the Code (37:16–44:01)

• WWII spurred demand for more complex, “adult” stories.

• Strong-willed figures (e.g., producer Howard Hughes with “The Outlaw”) defied the code and proved it could be broken (38:35).

• Loopholes and subversive cleverness abounded:

  “What was so great about the golden age of Hollywood is they’re making these films with so many restrictions and so many rules, but they find ways to subvert that.”—William Mann (40:34)

• The code eventually gave way to the MPAA rating system (G/PG/R/X) around 1968 (39:32).

7. Did Censorship Inspire Creativity? (44:54–45:44)

• Ultimately, Mann concedes the code, in forcing subtlety and “if you know, you know” subtext, sometimes led to literary and cinematic ingenuity, citing “Casablanca” and “A Place in the Sun” as examples of smoldering yet coded romance.

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On the loss of female filmmakers:

  “We counted the number of women who were involved in significant filmmaking roles in during this period of time ... something like 350 ... by the end of the 1920s it goes down to six, and by the time of the talking pictures, it’s down to one.” —William Mann (09:27)

• On morality cycles in society:

  “These kind of attitudes, they’re always sort of circular. ... It is a sort of periodic fits. Like there’s this panic about it. And then the politicians go, ‘oh, we better do something.’ And then it’s suppressed. And then ... everyone’s kind of going, going, what was that? ... and then the whole thing starts all over again.” —Dr Kate Lister (36:21)

• On censorship and erasure:

  “People who didn’t see themselves on the screen must have believed they didn’t exist.” —William Mann (42:55)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 04:48–11:04 — The anarchic spirit and surprising sexual openness of early Hollywood.
• 17:07–23:40 — Scandal erupts: Arbuckle, Taylor, and the birth of business-driven self-censorship.
• 26:14–32:42 — The evolution and content of the Hays Code; queerness and gender erased.
• 34:11–36:21 — Morality clauses and the chilling impact on LGBTQ+ and women’s lives.
• 38:35–39:32 — Studios and rebels test the Code’s boundaries, leading to its gradual collapse.
• 40:34–45:44 — Creativity under constraint and the lingering effects of enforced morality.

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Tone and Takeaways

• Conversational, wry, and deeply informed—Kate Lister and William Mann gleefully revel in the era’s naughtiness while sharing empathy for those silenced by moral panic.
• The episode pulls back the curtain on Hollywood’s mythic golden era, revealing it as wild, diverse, and far gayer than textbooks admit—until censorship shut things down.
• Listeners come away with a richer understanding of how art, commerce, sex, and power have always been intertwined in American popular culture, and how the cycles of moral repression and creative rebellion are never-ending.

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For more of William Mann’s work, visit williamjmann.com or follow @therealMrMan on Instagram.

(Episode production by Hannah Theodorov & Stuart Beckwith, Senior Producer: Freddie Chick)

Transcript

[A]

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[A]

Hello my lovely betwixters. It's me, Cadalista. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. Hello. How lovely to see you again. Can I get you a cup of tea? Sit down and take a load off. But before we go any further, I have to tell you this is an adult podcast spoken by adults, other adults, about adults things and adults. You wake up a range of old subjects. Used to be an adult too, and now we've covered that. Let's have tea. Right, on with the show. Glad you could make it to the party betwixt us. We are in Hollywood at the start of the 1930s and despite it being the prohibition era, the liquor is frightened flowing. You got studio stars mixing with Hollywood producer bigwig people. You've got people sneaking off together upstairs. I'm telling you, it's all go here and the night is yet young. The industry is not without its scandals though, that's for sure. And sex seems to be a big one and it's been a sticking point for this industry since day dot. But how will this all play out in the business that they call show? Well still stick around and we're gonna find out. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex chandeline society with me, Kate Lister. The so called golden era of Hollywood started in the 1920s when it was a wild west of filmmaking, literally and figuratively. It was a time when sexuality and queerness was actually portrayed on screen. But as America became more conservative, so did Hollywood and a brutal censorship soon followed. But just how raunchy was it? Who were the raunchiest stars and what were the scandals that started the need for censorship sponsorship? Joining me today is William Mann, author of Tinseltown Murder, Morphine and Madness at the dawn of Hollywood. And he's going to help us find out more. And whilst I'm here, I wanted to let you know once more about the two betwixt the sheep's live shows that happening in May. One in Edinburgh and one in London. Tickets are [e-mail] just search for Betwixt the Sheets and we would love to see you there. Right, without any further ado, let's crack on. Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only William Mann. How are you doing?

[D]

I'm doing lovely. How about yourself?

[A]

I'm doing fabulous and I'm even better because we're here to talk about Hollywood naughtiness and scandals, which is everyone's favorite topic, isn't it? We still do that. We still live vicariously through Hollywood.

[D]

We do. It's been over 100 years now. We're still doing it.

[A]

Oh, well, your research, I mean you've covered all areas of Hollywood. But I'm particularly interested in early Hollywood because it sounds a little bit to me like it's almost like when the Internet broke is, is there, was it like it happened and then there was a real kind of trying to put the genie back into the bottle of when everyone realized of quite what was going on. So could you kind of talk us through the early days of, of Hollywood and what was Hollywood before it was Hollywood?

[D]

You're right, the Internet is a great metaphor here because it's the same thing, this new technology that suddenly takes off and it starts making money for people and the possibilities seem endless. You know, in the beginning motion pictures were made in cities. So in New York, in London and in Paris, this is, you know, they were made in, on tops of buildings because they needed sunlight in in New York. However, some directors, you know, these early directors who were, you know, basically just shooting a, you know, a quick joke film or something like that, they Realized they could get a lot more done if they went out to California because the sun was out there and they didn't have to be, you know, stuck on the roof. So let's, yeah, we can actually do western pictures because we can go outside. So there's all these kind of itinerant filmmakers who go out cross country and set various makeshift studios. I mean, they're storefront studios, you know, in around the area of Hollywood and Southern California. And eventually this becomes the place to be because the possibilities are endless. And so by, you know, I think the first filmmakers went out in 1907. There was another burst of activity around 1909. By 1912, 1913, Hollywood is now the place where American movies are made. And it's, you know, and every year it grows a little bit bigger and stronger. Stronger.

[A]

When they first started making films, I'm curious, was what was the wider public reaction to it? Because we seem to do it with all new technology. There's a moment there where everyone's going, it'll never catch on. They'll never catch on. They did it with radio, they did it with tv, they did it with the Internet. And now looking back, it seems ridiculous. What did people think of these early? They weren't even talkies then, were they? They were just the silent films, right?

[D]

Yeah. In the very beginning they were seen as novelties. And you're right, the assumption was, you know, people get tired and you know, in the very beginning they were peep shows. You had to look into a box and turn a crank to watch these things. And then eventually they learned how to, to project films onto a screen. Actors look down their nose at them, you know, serious actors. I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna be in a, in a little flicker, you know, and, but by, you know, by 1905, 1906, this, this is a growing business. You know, it was. It only cost a nickel to go see a movie. Which meant that for the first time, working class people could go to the movies. They could, I mean, go to some kind of mass entertainment. They couldn't, many of them couldn't afford vaudeville. Many of them couldn't, certainly couldn't afford the theater. So they, you know, they would go to minstrel shows and, and, you know, low rent vaudeville. But the movies. Suddenly they were able to go in all these immigrants who had come to the United States and, and they were filling up these little, these little storefront theaters. And then, of course, then the storefront theaters become more grandiose and, and, and they SU moving picture palaces because the money is there. And the, the directors and the producers of these pictures were mostly immigrants themselves who came to the United States. Yeah, yeah, they were all immigrants and had no money and suddenly they're rich. You know, they never expected that this little novelty that they started showing in a, in a back room of their parlor, you know, their pool house. They're suddenly making all this money and they become wealthy. So Hollywood by 1913 is. The money is flowing in and people are getting rich.

[A]

We think of like 1913 and we think, oh, what a quaint period over 100 years ago. It's just a few years after the Victorians, all very buttoned down, all very prim and proper. But that's not quite the case, is it?

[D]

No, it's not. The people who came to California were mavericks and they were free thinkers and they were independent filmmakers, writers, directors. The many of them were immigrants themselves. Many of them had conflictual relationship with society, expected. We see an awful lot of women come to Hollywood at this time making films. It's really the Wild West. That's the way I describe it. You know, this, this period of, you know, the 19 teens, Hollywood is free for all. Anybody who could save up enough money to buy a camera could make a movie and get it shown because there was no control, there was no top down control of the industry. It was all independent. And if you made a film that was funny or it was adventurous, you could get it in the local theater and then they'd tell somebody else and then suddenly it's playing all over the country. And this was this freedom, this, you know, kind of democratization of moviemaking, which, you know, is never seen again. It does allow in people who later on would not have the same access to the industry. So as I said, women there, you know, there was something. A friend and I a few years ago did a presentation and we counted the number of women who were involved in significant filmmaking roles in during this period of time. And we came up with something like 350. And that was, you know, directors, producers, writers, certainly actors as well. But we were looking at the people who were actually making the films. And by the end of the 1920s it goes down to six. And by the time of the talking pictures, it's down to one. One woman, Dorothy Arson are the director. So that gives you a sense of just how the early Hollywood was this free for all and people were coming in and making movies and there were no rules.

[A]

And surprisingly sexy too.

[D]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

You know, it's not Like Emerald Fennel's Wuthering Heights Today or, you know, 50 shades of gray. But you would be surprised by how spicy some of this early stuff is.

[D]

Oh, absolutely. And a lot of the early films were taken from vaudeville sketches which were all very bawdy. And so it's put onto the screen by the time of the late 19 teens. Movies are now an hour, two hours long, and there are actual stars and people are paying to see them. And, you know, it starts to resemble the Hollywood we would come to know. And sex sold Cecil B. DeMille. Every movie he made was about some kind of a sex romp. And then often would go back in time to show the Romans, you know, having wild sex. So it was. There was no strictures about what you could or couldn't make?

[A]

No. So of course people are making rude things and there's some queer undertones to it as well. A lot of this stuff.

[D]

Oh, absolutely. Some of the early films are. They play with gender. So there's a magical thing where the man becomes his wife and the wife becomes the husband for a while. And so it's playing with that and there's. It's playing with sexual desire. There's a wonderful film with Charlie Chaplin where he doesn't know that the man next to him is actually woman and he's coming on to the. To the man. And, you know, it's just. It's a lot of playfulness around sexuality and gender that's delightful to see today because, you know, it disappeared for a

[A]

long time and it's easy to think that it was never there in the first place. What's that really famous shot where they've clearly got the camera and it's just moving through tables. It looks like it's in a Parisian restaurant. There are. There are same sex couples kissing in that sketch. And that must be like, how. When was that?

[D]

Yeah, that was Sunrise. That was. That was in. That was one of the great silent films. And you're right, that scene is so technically perfect. But when it ends with the two women kissing, it's just. It's this moment of saying, you know, we're in this world and there are lots of different people in this world. And the movies will show you all of these people.

[A]

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[B]

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[D]

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[E]

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[D]

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[A]

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[D]

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[C]

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[B]

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[A]

What a fantastic time to be there. Unfortunately, we do have a habit of fucking these things up, don't we? Because.

[D]

Yes, we do. Yes, we do.

[A]

It's like this beautiful, like vision and there's these creative people turning up and women are being involved, gay people, and we're gonna make art together.

[D]

Right?

[A]

But unfortunately, Hollywood, early Hollywood, is rocked by a number of scandals.

[D]

Right. It's important to point out that Hollywood by 1920, 1921 is the four biggest industry in the United States.

[A]

Oh, oh, that's very big.

[D]

There's a lot of money and a lot of these, these producers, you know, as I said, came in with no money. They were not going to risk losing these fortunes they built. And so what we're starting to see is a fierce attack on movies, moral on the morals of the movies by some far right religious groups, the Lord's Day alliance and things like that. And they're trying to ban moving picture houses from coming into small towns the way they had banned the saloons. Not long.

[A]

They're always there.

[D]

They're always there.

[A]

Go back through history. I can go back to the 17th century, the Society for the Suppression of Vice or the Society for the Reformation of Manners. They were there raiding pubs and theaters and causing a hell of a time for all these other people. And here they are again on cue.

[D]

They're always there. Yes, yes. And brother Wilbur Crafts was his name and he would have these fiery orations in his, at his pulpit, but then he'd take them to the street, he'd show up. And he showed up in Washington and began to lobby some of the legislators. And that got a movement going saying that the government should step in and censor the movies, regulate the movies. And that appealed to some politicians because they wanted a piece of the movie money. They saw how much movie was out there. So, you know, you have to kind of understand that the attempt to self censor themselves or was not just because they were caving into pressure from, you know, the far right critics, but also because they didn't want government censorship. You know, they didn't want to give up that autonomy they had about making pictures. So this is all made worse by the fact that there is, as you mentioned, these scandals that happened. So this is just evidence for the critics of Hollywood to say that it's a den of immorality. Because look at these horrible scandals, you know, Roscoe, Fatty, Arbuckle the murder of William Desmond.

[A]

There used to be a restaurant called Fatty Arbuckle.

[D]

What was this?

[A]

Yeah, what was that? What happened? What was that scandal?

[D]

He was, Fatty Arbuckle was, was the most popular comedian in Hollywood, second only to Charlie Chaplin and a really funny, funny actor from everybody from. I've interviewed a really nice guy and he, he was known for throwing big parties and he had the. One of the, one of the most well stocked sellers in Hollywood. This is prohibition, so, you know, prohibition. So he's got. But he's got all the booze you need. And he'd have these parties and at one of the parties, a woman is struck with some kind of seizure, a stomach seizure at the party. So of course that's bad enough, but then some people, the party said, oh, I think Fatty had forced himself on her. And then the image of the fat, you know, very large comedian with this young woman and, and he suddenly goes from being this beloved figure to being this, this vile creature who needs to be kicked out of movies. So. And he, he's tried for murder or manslaughter, actually rape and manslaughter. And is it went that far to the courts? Yeah, three, three times. You know, he was twice a hung jury and then he was, he was finally acquitted, but they wouldn't let him back to make movies. Even though he had been acquitted. He was now banned. And because the public had so turned on him and the far right critics had used him as a lightning rod. This is the sordidness, this is the immorality that's taking place in Hollywood. And your children are being influenced by this.

[A]

And was there any evidence that he'd had sex with this girl at all?

[D]

No, no, there was never any evidence. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. Okay.

[D]

And you know, he hoped that he would be, once he was acquitted, he'd go back into making pictures, but he was, he was banned.

[A]

Wow. Okay. And then there was those, the William Taylor.

[D]

Yeah, so. So, so at the same time there's this murder of.

[A]

What a druther. At the same time?

[D]

Yeah, exact same time. They were, they were competing for headlines in the newspapers and William Desmond Taylor was found murdered and shot to death. And I had written a book about that case too, called Tinseltown. And the importance about that murder was that it involved some of the most popular actors in Hollywood. So Mabel Normand, Mary Miles Minter, these. They were all suspects. So now we've got, you know, you know, all of these fingers pointing at Hollywood and it's in its players saying they're all. They're all immoral. They're all, you know, they're committing murder, rape. And this meant that the studios had to make a decision because now they're being forced with boycotts, and they were. They were being confronted with the possibility of having government censorship. So they had to make some decisions here.

[A]

Okay, and what was the decision that was made?

[D]

Well, to avoid outside censorship, they brought in a. An individual from the Warren G. Harding administration. And he was the former day.

[A]

Who do you mean they brought. Brought in?

[D]

It was the. The studios. The heads of the studios got together and said, you know, we need to bring someone in and to try to control this situation. So they brought in the former Postmaster General, Will Hays. And Will Hays sets up what would later be known as the Hays Code, or the Hays Office, in which there were certain rules that you could do and you couldn't do in movies. Also, this brings in morals clauses for the actors, so the actors couldn't go to those kinds of parties anymore, and they couldn't be seen in compromising situations or they could be fired because is violating their morals clause. And this is. This is all accepted. A lot of handshakes, you know, are made and people said, okay, we've got this under control now. We've got this movie czar who's gonna. Yep. Fixed it. Yep. And. And that. That seems to be okay for a while. But then, of course, the scandals keep happening and movie content doesn't change because it's, you know, sex sells. So, you know, Cecil B. DeMille keeps making his movies called Male and Female, and. And the Adventures of Anatole and Gloria Sw. Naked on the. You know, the. The balconies. And Rudolph Valentino comes in. I mean, so it's still just as sexy as ever. But at least they've, for the moment, avoided the government censorship.

[A]

They can't get away with that forever, though. I mean it, Holly. One of my favorite game. You know that game you can play Seven steps from Kevin Bacon, where, like, you're linking people? Yeah. You can do that with sex. You can. It's the game that I call Leylines, where you try and link people through hookups. And as soon as you hit early Hollywood, all bets are off. When you get Greta Garbo, that's it is. You are just. Oh, my God, Tallulah Bankhead. You're just reams of people. So these aren't people going, oh, but we've got rules.

[D]

Right? Exactly, Exactly. And you're right, because by the middle part of the 1920s, Hollywood is now, you know, it's as big as it's ever going to be. It's, you know, dripping with glamour and everybody wants to, you know, be a movie star. And people like Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson are now the, you know, the heroes, the heroines of the world, you know, and the thing about the silent films was that Hollywood had a monopoly really everywhere because you'd have to worry about language. So, you know, everybody, you know, anybody around the world would know who Greta Garba was or Gloria Swanson or Charlie Chaplin. So it was big business. And these people who came out to Hollywood, like Garbo, like Swanson and so many others, they were non conformists. And Hollywood became a place where free thinkers and free lovers could go.

[A]

So many gay people too.

[D]

So many gay people.

[A]

So many gay people.

[D]

Yeah. I mean, William Haynes was the top box office star in 1930 and he, everyone knew he was gay. He lived with his husband or, you know, his partner at the, at that time. And they entertained Hollywood. They were like two of the most important hosts in Hollywood. Garbo had affairs with women as well as men. Marlena Dietrich shows up and, you know, makes a movie called Morocco.

[A]

Shocked everybody.

[D]

Everybody. Yeah. I mean, so it's so much sex. And, you know, there was an understanding, there was a tolerance of it. The studios weren't telling people, oh, calm down, you know, because sure, the code wasn't even called the code yet, but the Hayes office was there. It was just, it was titular. It wasn't actually effective. And so far they were getting away with. They were still making so much money that they were at that point figuring, we can, yeah, we can keep going, we can just. Nobody's going to stop us now because we're making so much money.

[A]

And the code in its early days was kind of like, oh, steady on. Now that's kind of what it was saying. I mean, it was a bit more pointed than just steady on. But what kind of rules did it have? Early doors.

[D]

The rules in the first days were nebulous. It was just basically saying things like the movies can't lower the morals of people who are watching them. So that's pretty broad.

[A]

So vague.

[D]

Come on. So vague. So, you know, you have to recognize, you know, that we can't imply that crime is good. You know, crime doesn't pay. So those very vague rules that will Hays basically, you know, rubber stamped for each film.

[A]

Okay, okay. So we move into the 1920s and then we get talking film. Did that make a difference?

[D]

Yeah, it did. It's really, you know, it's a couple of things that happen at the end of the 1920s. First of all is the stock market crash. So suddenly, you know, the economy of Hollywood is now at risk, but also the movies are now talking and the Catholic Church becomes the new face of the movie opposition, more so than the, the Protestant of a decade earlier. And in one of the Catholic newspapers that they said something like, it's not the exact quote, I've got the gist of it. It says silent smut was bad, but now that we can hear it, it's worse. Oh dear. And you know, if anybody ever seen, you know, one of Garbo's films is, you know, she's kissing the guy and stroking his hair and, you know, and moaning and all of that, that was, you know, that was enough to send some people into fits, you know, seizures. Right. And so there was a new pressure now to go after and clean up up the movies.

[A]

I'll be back with William after this short break.

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[A]

So we're getting more external pressure, more morality and I guess for politicians as well, like you're always balancing this. They don't want to lose votes. And if this seems like there's a, a public sway of opinion like we've. And no politician ever wants to be seen condoning smut, even though we all enjoy.

[D]

Exactly, exactly. And the politicians even more so sometimes. Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Mentioning no names, but moving swift.

[D]

Exactly.

[A]

So what happens now then? So we're in the 1920s, they're talking, which is even more shocking. It makes things even more pearl clutchy than before. Then what happens?

[D]

Well, so what they do is they actually write the code out and they actually put real regulations on this code this time it's, it's There's a real list of things that could be shown and what could not be shown.

[A]

Like really strict.

[D]

Yeah, really strict. So, so there's no pointed profanities. You can't use the name of God in vain. You can't say God, Lord Jesus Christ, anything like that. Unless you're talking about, you know, worshiping God. You can't say damn, you can't say hell, you can't say sob, you can't say nuts, you can't say cripes.

[A]

You know, he goes on, he's definitely out then.

[D]

Yeah, that was, that's, that goes without saying.

[A]

Wait a minute, what about Gone with the Wind? What about Franklin? My dear, I don't give a damn.

[D]

I thought we might talk about that because in 1939 of course we know Clark Gable does say, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. You should see the paperwork that went back and forth between, between the Celtz office and the, the Production Code administration saying please, we've got to use it this time. You know, it was in the novel, if we say Kim Dyk darn, everybody's going to laugh. And finally. Yes, so the code, the code is finally, you know, lifted just for that one word in that film. And yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing.

[A]

Nothing stronger than damn in the, in the language use. What about, what about gender? What about sex?

[D]

Yeah, so you couldn't even say. You couldn't use the word virgin. You couldn't use the word seduction. You couldn't use the word mistress. Pregnant. You can't say pregnant. You know, and it usually, it just shows a woman just with a free flowing dress and she says, oh, we've been blessed by God or something like that, you know, can't even say that, you know, she's expecting a baby, you know, and then of course there's all of the absolute do nots. And that up high on that list is sex perversion. Which means any, any depiction of homosexuality. And that doesn't mean just like flirtation or, or you know, sexual attraction. It means you couldn't even imply that these people existed. You know, the early part of the 1930s in what we call the pre code talking pictures. The pansy or the fairy character is a, a big part of films. You know, there's always some fashion designer comes in, flitting around and you know, he's not, you know, he doesn't say, I'm gay, I'm homosexual, but it's very clear. And he was generally a beloved Figure he was. He was somebody that people liked. Some people, you know, look back at it now and say it was very stereotypical. And I suppose it was, but. But at the same time, it was visibility. He was there, it was there. And once that is taken away, then for the next 30 years, queer people no longer see themselves in any way on the screen. And we're not.

[A]

We're not just talking like sort of overtly stereotyped gay people. We're talking like anything that we were talking about sort of, you know, the gender, playing around with gender stuff. That was pre code. That's all out as well, right?

[D]

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, there's. Katharine Hepburn makes a movie with George Cukor, both of them not heterosexual, and they make a movie in which Hepburn spends most of her time in boy drag. And there's a scene with Cary Grant where he's attracted to her, but is kind of like, oh, but why do I feel weird about this? And then eventually decides, I don't care whether. Whether you're a boy or a girl. And of course that movie bombs at the box office because, you know, barely passed the code.

[A]

What about violence? Where did they stand on violence?

[D]

Yes, the code also covers violence and sometimes we forget that the violence was a big part of this as well. So in the early 1930s, again, in the pre code Hollywood talking pictures, we see gangster pictures becoming really big, very popular, in which, you know, Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney are playing gangsters and they get machine gunned down and we see all these bodies and, you know, it is. It is pretty violent. Even some of the early horror films, like Frankenstein, which is a, you know, beautiful film made by James Whale, and there's a scene where he throws the little girl into the lake. That was in the early versions of it. And then when it was released, re released after the code, that scene had to be cut. So there was a lot of violence. And again, not the kind of violence we see today. It's not like we saw blood all over the screen, but it was still graphic enough to make some people concerned. So that also was forbidden by the code.

[A]

Did this have an. I mean, obviously it had an impact on how people make films. They must have just woken up the next day and just gone, oh my God, like, what. What would have said that? Would they that about. So, oh, darn that. What are we gonna do now? Like, we can't make. But did it also have an impact on lives of people in Hollywood? Because you were saying earlier that it was quite open, it was quite permissive. Like, everyone knew that people were gay, they were living with their husbands. How did this impact that?

[D]

Yeah, that's. It's right. It really begins in 1934 when the code is decided that it's going to be. They put an enforcement mechanism to it. So if. If a studio released a film without a seal of approval from the Hays Office, they would be fined $25,000, which is a lot of money.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

And also, so many of the studios own so many of the theaters that they wouldn't be able to show these films because they weren't allowed to show these films in a theater that was licensed by the Hays Code. So there was. Now there was an imperative to. An incentive to follow the rules of the code. And yes, what happens is once the code is enforced, all of these people who had been living open, free lifestyles are affected because now they could be easily fired. And William Haynes, who I mentioned earlier, was one of the first. He was told that he had to get married, he had to give up his boyfriend and get married or he was going to lose his job. He chose the boyfriend, which is a rare case, but he was kind of like, gave up his throne for the man he loved. But most people played by the rules. So you see somebody like Joan Crawford, who had been known as this wild Charleston dancer on top of tabletops, and she was always sleeping her way to the top in some of these movies and very sexual. She suddenly starts adopting children. And we know how that goes because that was a big PR bust. But it's all of these people start getting married, queer people start getting married.

[A]

Thrives the lavender marriage.

[D]

The lavender marriage, yes. Becomes a big part of Hollywood at this point. And it does. It affects people's lives.

[A]

W. So I mean, obviously the Hays Code isn't still with us, but when do things start to change? I mean, these kind of attitudes, they're always sort of circular. I can't remember who said it. I think it was the Oscar Wilde trial in Britain. And they said, oh, he just managed to catch the English in one of their periodic fits of morality, which I've always quite liked that quote. And when you look at these, it is a sort of periodic fits. Like there's this panic about it. And then the politicians go, oh, we better do something. And then it's suppressed. And then give it a few years, everyone's kind of going, going, what was that? Why are we doing this? And then the whole thing starts all over again.

[D]

Yeah. I think it really takes World War II to start making some changes. So when people come back from World War II, you know, they've seen the. You know, the devastation and the destruction and the loss of life, and they want to start telling more adult stories, more empathic stories, stories that actually meant something to people.

[A]

It must have seemed pretty stupid as well to be telling people that you can't show mild violence to a group of people that have just come back from the trenches.

[D]

Exactly. And had seen the true horrors. You know, the horrors of a man flirting with another man is suddenly not as horrible as what they'd seen. You know, so it's. Yeah, but it's still gradual because there's a guy named Joseph Breen who runs the Code. He works under Hayes, and Hayes is actually a more pragmatic sort. So when he was in charge, or directly in charge, there was a lot of leeway. But once Breen takes over, he's hard, devout, zealous, Roman Catholic.

[A]

Sounds loads of fun.

[D]

Oh, yeah. And his letters revealed the depth of his anti Semitism and his homophobia and his sexism, misogyny, even. So. And this is the guy who's deciding what's on the American screen for about 15 years. And he's. He's not going to let this, the code slip away that easily. But it does. It starts to. You know, Howard Hughes makes a film called the Outlaw, and when he. When it doesn't get a seal of approval from the Code, he says, Jane Russell. Yes, yes. And that's exactly why it doesn't get a seal of approval. Not because of so much what's in the film, but because of the advertisements which show Jane Russell on a stack of hay. And her breasts are very prominent in the advertisements.

[A]

They are spectacular.

[D]

Yes, they are. And that's why it doesn't get a seal of approval. But Howard Hughes says, I'm gonna release it anyways. And a lot of independent theaters start to show it, and it becomes a huge hit. So you realize at that moment the Code could be broken. The Code doesn't hold all the power anymore. And we start to see that slowly. We start to see films like Crossfire that deals with anti Semitism and films that deal with alcoholism and other social problems. It takes a while for us to see sexual freedom, whether that be queer or heterosexual. We don't really see the expression of sexuality until later in the 1950s, but it starts to break away bit by bit until the 1960s when it falls away completely.

[A]

Was it officially abolished or did everyone just ignore it to the point where it's still There, actually, but no one cares.

[D]

Yeah, it was officially abolished, the Production Code Administration, which later becomes the mppda, the Motion Picture Producers Directors Association. And at that point they moved to a rating system system. And that was like in 1968 or so. And so the code was officially abolished. And then they had this rating system that, you know, G was for general audiences, PG was for parental guidance, and then R was if it was restricted. And then, of course, X was forbidden.

[A]

The films that were made during the height of the code, did they find ways of getting around it? Because when you watch some of this old stuff, you. There's a certain amount of. Of, if, you know, you know, like there's been so much scholarly work done on lots of. Was the film Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. Gentlemen prefer blonde.

[D]

Gentlemen prefer blonde, yeah.

[A]

The swimming pool scene, how gay is that? That's super. How on earth did they get that past them? Like, things like that, you think, are they playing with it? Is this kind of like if you know, you know stuff.

[D]

Absolutely. Directors. What was so great about the. The golden age of Hollywood is they're making these films with so many restrictions and so many rules, but they find ways to subvert that. So that's a great example, you know, Jane Russell saying, isn't there anyone here for love? And all these muscle guys are ignoring her and playing around with her with

[A]

flesh colored, very tight trunks.

[D]

Yes, exactly, exactly. You know, because, you know, the producers weren't truly happy with the code. They knew they had to do this economically, but it was. It was basically Catholic dogma being layered onto the moving picture process. And for most of these, the, the studio heads who were Jewish, most of them were Jewish. They resented that, like, we now have to play by somebody else's rules. And, you know, Irving Thalberg was, you know, one of the most important producers of the golden age, and he was very smart when Tarzan of the Apes was being made. And now here's an example of a man and woman barely, you know, almost naked, living together in the woods, unmarried, clearly having sex, because they actually end up having a child. And what he does is he suggests the director shoot a scene of them swimming in the water completely naked. And it's shot. It's there, you can see it. It's the two of them swimming. Johnny Weissmiller and Maureen o' Sullivan swimming naked in the water. And that so outraged Joseph Breen that he said, that needs to be cut immediately. And it blinded him to the other stuff. And so Tarzan of the Apes goes out with this couple living without the sanctity of marriage, and it gets passed. Thalberg also, for example, made sure that when they made the movie Queen Christina, who is a lesbian, Queen Christina of Sweden, that he made sure that he knew we couldn't say it, but he made sure there were enough scenes with her and her lady in waiting giving her a kiss on the lips, you know, sitting there so that it was. It was there. It was still there in the film.

[A]

They knew what they were doing even. So you kind of. I mean, obviously, you know, like, there has to be some kind of censorship in movies. We can't just be having an absolute free for all crazy stuff. But you just sort of think, like, how much creativity was lost during that period by all of this. Like, don't say damn and make sure everyone's in skirts and pants.

[D]

Right, exactly. And you think about that, too, and you think about the messages it was giving to the public. So, you know, anyone who was a little bit different would know that they weren't valued. You know, so a young woman who doesn't want to get married and find the right guy, you know, African Americans and other people of color who only saw themselves in, you know, domestic roles because one of the provisions of the code was keeping the races apart. You know, there could be no interracial. Interracial, you know, Anna May Wong, a Chinese American actress, was passed over to play a Chinese lead in the Good Earth because she would be playing opposite a white actor. So they cast a white actress. You know, so it's. People who didn't see themselves on the screen must have believed they didn't exist. Queer people, you know, there was no. There was no evidence that there was anybody like them. So for, you know, a generation, young queer people didn't see themselves on the screen. It was a way of controlling society and trying to make society fit this very narrow, religiously prescribed view.

[A]

Is that why, like, was it Laurence Olivier did blackface to play Othello? I mean, the raging racism aside, I'm not downplaying it, but, like, was it actually on the books that you couldn't have mixed race on film? Is that why another reason you had actors doing that?

[D]

Well, I think it's because it was certainly there were people of color in films, but they were always playing domestics or, you know.

[A]

Oh, okay, yeah.

[D]

But they were always in subservient roles, and certainly they were never seemed to be equal.

[A]

God, that's wild, isn't it?

[D]

And certainly it was never a romantic lead in this, you know, and yet this did happen. In pre code times, you know, you know, there were several stories with Anna May Wong where she actually played the romantic lead to a white actor.

[A]

So the final question then, did the Hays Code do any good at all?

[D]

Well, I think if we're going to look at anything that might have helped the industry or helped the art form of movies, I think it forced directors and writers to be clever and forced them to say, okay, if we can't say it this way, how can we still say it? And perhaps there's so many films that I can think of where just a line, just a look tells you what you need to know. And it's sometimes just as sexy. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. I mean, that connection is still there. You could feel it. Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun. It's just the chemistry is still so strong that I think it forced directors to be as sharp and as creative as they possibly could.

[A]

Liam, you have been wonderful. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? You.

[D]

You can find me on my website, williamjman.com and on Instagram. You can follow me at thereal Mr. Man.

[A]

Well, you have been marvelous to talk to. Thank you so much.

[D]

Thank you so much for having me.

[A]

Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to William for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to, like, review and follow along whatever it is you get. Your podcasts Coming up, we will be continuing our exploration of Hollywood with an episode about the infamous Black Dahlia murder. Never a dull moment here on betwixt. And if you would like us to explore a subject or if you wanted to say hello, then you can email [e-mail] this podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again. Betwixt sheets the history of sex, scandal and society. A podcast by history hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

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