Hertha Thiele, Dorothea Wieck, Mädchen in Uniform, Leontine Sagan, Carl Froelich, 1931
Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry between the introduction of sound in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code (usually labeled, albeit inaccurately after 1934, as the “Hays Code”) censorship guidelines. Although the Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934. Before that date, movie content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and the major studios, and popular opinion than strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers.
As a result, films in the late 1920s and early 1930s included sexual innuendo, miscegenation, profanity, illegal drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, intense violence and homosexuality.
Marlene Dietrich in Dishonored, 1931. Dir. Josef von Sternberg
Without that job and those lines to say an actress is just like any ordinary girl trying not to look as scared as she feels.
Stage Door (1937)
Myrna Loy in Double Wedding (1937)
Deborah Kerr gives a nod to Irene Dunne in An Affair to Remember by reciting a similar line previously done in the film The Awful Truth as Irene was in the original version of the film Love Affair.
250 Films in 2012 | 212 | Viktor and Viktoria (1933)
► Foreign (39/50)
Renate Müller in Viktor und Viktoria, 1933. Dir. Reinhold Schünzel.
