Movies & Morals

THE HAYS OFFICE--Raymond Moley --Bobbs-Merrill ($3.75).

One lobby billboard advertised "brilliant men, beautiful jazz babies, champagne baths, midnight revels, petting parties in the purple dawn." Across the nation, marquees blazed with titles like Red Hot Romance, Give Her Anything, The Fourteenth Lover. Hollywood was being denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate and censorship bills were being pressed in 36 state capitols.

In Hollywood itself, Comedian Fatty Arbuckle was being tried for the death of an actress following a pajamaed "orgy." There, too, a small group of men who knew less about show business than fur dealing (Marcus Loew), jewelry merchandizing (Lewis J. Selznick), glove selling (Samuel Goldwyn), cloth sponging (William Fox), railroad engineering (Sam Warner), were struggling among hundreds of others "from Saturday night to Saturday night" in an atmosphere of "ruthless conflict, chicane, daring, and genius."

Such was the jungle of the cinema industry in December, 1921, when these and other pioneer cinemagnates asked Postmaster General William Harrison Hays to become their leader at a salary of $100,000 a year. Since his acceptance a month later, Will Hays has achieved what Raymond Moley considers a marvelous record of industrial statesmanship. In this history, ex-New Dealer Moley mainly confines himself to an objective, minutely detailed recitation of facts and figures, but an introduction clearly states his point: cinema's self-regulation is a splendid example of how business can stay out of the government's "paralyzing" clutches.

Potentate Without Power. A shrewd, good-tempered administrator, Will Hays brought to his office (chairman of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America) what Moley calls "a political intelligence as remarkable as any that America has produced in the past 25 years." He was to need every bit of it.

Never in any sense a czar, he was at best what George Eastman called the "cat's whiskers" of the industry, at frequent worst a whipping boy whose weapons for achieving order in the chaotic young industry were persuasion and patience.

The first crude agreement to submit scripts to the Hays Office was not signed until 1924. It collapsed two years later with the advent of sound and the ensuing conflicts with the Authors' League over scripts. A year later, producers agreed to abide by a list of eleven "Don'ts" and 26 "Be Carefuls," but the broad interpretations they allowed themselves soon roused another storm of public protest. It was not until 1930 that the present Production Code, based on the Ten Commandments, was drawn up. And even that did not noticeably improve movie bad manners and morals until producers, threatened with a Catholic boycott, finally agreed in 1934 to let the Hays Office levy a $25,000 fine for every violation of the code.

Thou Shalt Not Drink. The Code is a specific, relatively short (about 4,000 words) list of prohibitions covering Crime, Sex, Vulgarity, Obscenity, Profanity, Costume, Dances, Religion, Locations (i.e., bedrooms), National Feelings. (Sample rule, under Crime: "The use of liquor in American life, when not required by the plot or for proper characterization, will not be shown.") Under its provisions, the 28 member-companies of M.P.P.D.A. consult the Hays Office on every step in the making of a picture, from the purchase of a story idea to exhibition. If critics com plain that such prohibitions result in a childishly unrealistic portrayal of American life, cinemen reply that political censors would probably distort the picture even more.

Not all the moviemakers' problems are moral. When James Cagney portrayed an honest, crusading employe of a city department of weights & measures (in Great Guy), gas-station owners and retail grocers cried that it reflected on their honesty.

Atlantic City hotelmen complained that Hollywood too often pictured their resort as a week-end hideaway for the boss and his secretary, asked that the movies indicate that at least some men go there with their wives. The casual remark of a popular star -- "They say white bread is not good for you" -- brought thousands of angry letters from millers, bakers, wheat farmers. The Hays Office keeps a weather eye out for such unwitting antagonizers, warns producers to avoid them wherever possible.

Tired of Hays Office punctiliousness, some member-studios have from time to time moved to resign (six-month notice from United Artists is on file now). But only Warner Bros, has gone through with it. Author Moley believes the Hays Office is here to stay.

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