The Hays Code
William Harrison Hays, Sr. the once chairman of the Republican National Committee (1918-1921), U.S. Postmaster General (1921-1922), and Campaign Manager for former President Warren G. Harding. Become the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.
He was hired in an attempt to clean up the image of the industry in the wake of the Rosco "Fatty" Arbuckle rape and murder scandal. He was given the arduous task of keeping films financially viable by keeping state censor boards from banning specific films outright due to content. In essence his task was two fold reduce studios cost and improve the industry's image.
So Hays was forced to try to understand the minds of the men/women on state boards in terms of what would and would not be permitted when it came to the release of motion pictures. Needless to say his first attempt aptly named "The Formula" failed. As did his second attempt "The Don'ts and Be Carefuls." His third attempt had him work with a group of catholic bishops to come up with what would come to be called "The Hays Code" in 1930.
This became the standard by which the studios would conduct business. I leave it up to you to inspect the code to see if Hollywood has lived up to it.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikisource-logo.svg
William Harrison Hays, Sr. the once chairman of the Republican National Committee (1918-1921), U.S. Postmaster General (1921-1922), and Campaign Manager for former President Warren G. Harding. Become the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.
He was hired in an attempt to clean up the image of the industry in the wake of the Rosco "Fatty" Arbuckle rape and murder scandal. He was given the arduous task of keeping films financially viable by keeping state censor boards from banning specific films outright due to content. In essence his task was two fold reduce studios cost and improve the industry's image.
So Hays was forced to try to understand the minds of the men/women on state boards in terms of what would and would not be permitted when it came to the release of motion pictures. Needless to say his first attempt aptly named "The Formula" failed. As did his second attempt "The Don'ts and Be Carefuls." His third attempt had him work with a group of catholic bishops to come up with what would come to be called "The Hays Code" in 1930.
This became the standard by which the studios would conduct business. I leave it up to you to inspect the code to see if Hollywood has lived up to it.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikisource-logo.svg
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