Hello, my name is Justin the Kluwer, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And today, we're going to be talking about pre-code Hollywood movies.

And you may be wondering, wait, I don't know what that is, but Will's going to give you the lowdown.

Okay, so the big period of pre-code movies

is 1929 to 1934, period just after the introduction of sound and before the actual real enforcement

of the production code. What is the production code, you ask? That was in the 1920s, because

scandals, sexy scandals, were racking Hollywood.

Well, actually not that sexy.

It was...

Faddy Arborical was accused of killing a young woman.

Yeah, and also, Mabel Norman, the Keystone comedy star, was involved with the last person to see the director William Desmond Taylor alive.

And it's still an unsolved murder.

And there was...

Were the important cinema club going to crack the case?

Yeah, it was me.

Oh my God.

But, you know, in that trial, details of affairs and cocaine addiction came out.

So that plus risque films in general led to a lot of women's groups, conservative groups,

religious groups, saying we need a boycott on

Hollywood. So Hollywood introduced the production code, which was a self-censorship office that would

reign Hollywood's successes in to keep movies from being censored at a local level.

And for a long time, it was mostly something that was state run. Movies would be censored based on whatever the state statured would be.

...