Hollywood had a racy reputation in the 1920s and 30s. As audiences had less money to spend on entertainment during the Great Depression, studios produced salacious films featuring sex, violence and drinking to lure them into cinemas.
Concerned that movies promoted loose morals, and scandalised by tabloid stories of stars behaving badly, religious and civic groups lobbied the studios to clean up their act. To avoid government censorship, the industry responded with the Motion Picture Production Code. Nicknamed the Hays Code after its enforcer, William Hays, it was a set of self-imposed guidelines that restricted sex, violence and profanity. It also prohibited depictions of adultery, homosexuality and drug use, and mandated the promotion of traditional values.
You can see one of the commandments printed in this pocket-sized booklet: ‘The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. No film shall infer that casual or promiscuous sex relationships are accepted.’
The Hays Code led to less overt depictions of liberated people on screen, but it also forced filmmakers to find creative ways around the rules, like innuendos and double entendres that were hard to identify in scripts. In 1968, the code was replaced with the ratings system.
Coochee-Coochee cover up
Women’s bodies have been controlled on screen since the beginning of cinema. The white tracks across Coochee Coochee Dance (1896) obstruct the rhythmic hips and breasts of belly dancer Fatima Djamile. Though the humble belly button occasionally slipped past censors, during Hollywood’s Golden Age some believed its visibility was a slippery slope that would lead to sex all over the silver screen. Until 1983, belly buttons were banned on US TV amid a debate about decency that mirrors the #FreeTheNipple movement on social media today.
See the uncensored version of the video below.
Related articles
Related works
Content notification
Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.
Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.
Collection
Not in ACMI's collection
Previously on display
1 October 2023
Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
193582
Curatorial section
Goddess → Crafting the ideal → Hays Code → Marilyn Monroe