Pre-1934 movies full of scandal, sex, catty jokes

Jessica Pickens
Arts and Entertainment editor

Have you ever watched a happy, wholesome 1950s movie such as “Pollyanna?”

Everyone has wholesome values, treats each other fairly and politely and never does anything bad.

That’s how all old films and TV shows are right?

Wrong.

Dating back to early silent films in the 1900s and 1920s, many movies are practically considered pornographic.

In the 1927 film “Wings,” you get a quick glimpse of Clara Bow’s chest, and Hedy Lamarr runs around nude in the scandalous German film “Ecstasy” (1933).

Pre-1934 movies in Hollywood were anything but wholesome.

Films were rather sexy, sensual and catty.

An example of this would be the 1933 film “Baby Face” where Barbara Stanwyck’s character literally sleeps her way to the top of a corporation. Starting as a mail room secretary, she ends up becoming the mistress to the president of the company.

In the 2003 documentary “Complicated Women” about pre-code actresses, it said women unnecessarily undressed in front of the camera: scampering around in their underwear as they sang songs or washed out their stockings in the sink.

Films had no set production code or censorship until 1934 when the Hayes Code came around. Some of the rules the Hayes Code dictated were:

1. Suggestive dancing and nudity was prohibited.

2. Religion could not be ridiculed.

3. Scenes of passion could not be so lustful as to arouse audience  members.

4. The United States flag could not be mistreated.

5.  Sympathy should never be given to crime against the law.

The code was created after several scandals occurred in Hollywood, such as the drug-related death of Olive Thomas in 1920 (she was accidently poisoned when taking the wrong medication) and the rape and murder case of Virginia Rappe by Fatty Arbuckle in 1921.

Hollywood was called “Sin City.” William Hayes looked for reformation, and the code was created.

Though the Hayes Code seems strict and unreasonable, I think it is one of the reasons old movies are more clever and witty.

Screenwriters had to carefully work their way around the rules in order to make sensual jokes and scenes.

Where jokes in movies today bluntly make an obscene sexual reference, old movies had to be more creative.

For example, in the 1939 movie “The Women,” Joan Crawford tells a group of catty women, “There is a word for women like you, but it isn’t used in high society…outside the kennel.”

In a movie today, screenwriters can easily throw in a four-letter word, but Anita Loos’ screenwriting in

“The Women” allowed the audience to be semi-intelligent and figure out what Crawford was calling the women.

Next time you want to watch a movie with sexual jokes, catch a movie from after 1934.

As Turner Classic Movies primetime host Robert Osborne says, “There is no such thing as an old movie if you have never seen it before.”