Motion Picture Production Code

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"Production Code" redirects here. For the television broadcasting term, see Production code number.

Production Code cover

The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of most United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the time, Will H. Hays. The Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), which later became the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), adopted the code in 1930, began enforcing it in 1934, and abandoned it in 1968, in favor of the subsequent MPAA film rating system. The Production Code spelled out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States. The office enforcing it was popularly called the Hays Office in reference to Hays, inaccurately so after 1934 when Joseph Breen took over from Hays, creating the Breen Office, which was far more rigid in censoring films than Hays had been.

Background

In 1922, after some risqué films and a series of off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars, the studios enlisted Presbyterian elder Will H. Hays to rehabilitate Hollywood's image. Hollywood in the 1920s was expected[by whom?][citation needed] to be somewhat corrupt, and many felt the movie industry had always been morally questionable. Political pressure was building, with legislators in 37 states introducing almost 100 movie censorship bills in 1921. Hays was paid the then-lavish sum of $100,000 a year.[1][2][3] Hays, Postmaster General under Warren G. Harding and former head of the Republican National Committee,[4] served for 25 years as president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), where he "defended the industry from attacks, recited soothing nostrums, and negotiated treaties to cease hostilities."[1] The move mimicked the decision Major League Baseball had made in hiring judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as League Commissioner the previous year to quell questions about the integrity of baseball in the wake of the 1919 World Series gambling scandal; The New ...