1. Hecht, Ben, A Child of the Century (New York, 1954), 466.Google Scholar

2. For a complete listing of Hecht's credits, see Martin, Jeffrey Brown, Ben Hecht: Hollywood Screen Writer (Ann Arbor, 1985), 183–209.Google Scholar

3. Friedrich, Otto, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (New York, 1986), 358.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., 469.

5. For an analysis of the code, see Black, Gregory D., “Hollywood Censored: The Production Code Administration and the Hollywood Film Industry,” Film History (1989), 167–89.Google Scholar Two recent books have given attention of the role of censorship. See Leonard J. Leff and Jerold L. Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship and the Production Code Administration from the 1920s to the 1960s (1990), and Gerald Gardner, The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934 to 1968 (1987).

6. Sklar, Robert, Movie Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (New York, 1973), 173–74.Google Scholar

7. Dunne, Philip, Take Two (New York, 1980), 183.Google Scholar See also his “Blast it all,” Harvard Magazine (September/October, 1987), 8–10, for the relationship between the writer and the PCA office.

8. Jowett, Garth, “A Capacity for Evil: The 1915 Supreme Court Mutual Decision,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (1989): 59–78.Google Scholar

9. Jarvie, Ian, “Dollars and Ideology: Will Hays' Economic Foreign Policy, 1922–1945,” Film History (1988): 210Google Scholar; Johnston, Alva, “Profiles: Czar and Elder, New Yorker, 10 June 1933, 18–21Google Scholar; Shaw, Albert, “Will Hays: A Ten-Year Record,” Review of Reviews (March 1932): 30–31Google Scholar; “Celluloid Czar,” The Nation, 19 June 1933, 62.

10. Jowett, Garth, Film: The Democratic Art (Boston, 1976), 475.Google Scholar

11. House Committee on Education, Hearings, Proposed Federal Motion Picture Commission, H. Rep. 4094 and H. Rep. 6233, 69th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D. C, 1926), 139.

12. Black, , “Hollywood Censored,” Film History (1989), 171Google Scholar; Vaughn, Stephen, “Morality and Entertainment: The Origins of the Motion Picture Production Code,” Journal of American History (June 1990): 39–65.Google Scholar

13. For a copy of the “The Formula,” “The Don'ts and Be Carefuls,” and the Lord's code, see Jowett, Film: The Democratic Art, 466–72.

14. “Suggested Code To Govern the Production of Motion Pictures,” n.d., Daniel A. Lord Papers, Jesuit Missouri Province Archives, St. Louis (hereafter Lord Papers).

15. “General Principles To Govern the Preparation of a Revised Code of Ethics for Talking Pictures,” n.d., Lord Papers. The producers presented an alternative to Lord's code which argued that censorship was unnecessary because the studios would in the long run only produce films that were acceptable to the general public or go bankrupt. They maintained that they had to respond, and respond quickly, to the market. While they lost the argument, the studios continued to produce films that ran counter to Lord's view of the code.

16. Martin, Olga J., Hollywood's Movie Commandments, (New York, 1937), 17–19Google Scholar; Sklar, Movie Made America, 173–76.

17. Joy to Hays, 15 December 1931, Possessed, PCA Files; “Protests Against Gangster Films,” 1931, Box 43, Will Hays Papers, Indiana State Historical Society, Indianapolis (hereafter Hays Papers).

18. Ibid.

19. “Protests Against Gangster Movies,” 1931, Box 43, Hays Papers.

20. Daniel Lord, “The Code—One Year Later,” 23 April 1931, Box 42, Hays Papers.

21. Burns, Robert E., I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! (1932).Google Scholar

22. O'Connor, John E., I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1981), 13–19.Google Scholar For other discussions of the film, see Andrew Bergman, We're In the Money (1971), 93–96; Roddick, Nick, A New Deal in Entertainment (1983), 123–26Google Scholar; Roffman, Peter and Purdy, Jim, The Hollywood Social Problem Film (1981), 25–29Google Scholar; Campbell, Russell, “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” Velvet Light Trap (June 1971): 17–20Google Scholar; Raeburn, John, “History and Fate in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” The South Atlantic Quarterly (Autumn 1986): 329–38.Google Scholar

23. Joy to Hays, 1 April 1931, I Am a Fugitive.from a Chain Gang, PCA File.

24. Joy to Selznick, 31 May 1932, Hell's Highway, PCA File.

25. Ibid.

26. Trotti to Files, 2 June 1932, ibid.

27. Joy to Hays, 4 June 1932, ibid.

28. Joy to Thalberg, 26 February 1932, ibid.

29. Schatz, Thomas, The Genuis of the System (New York, 1988), 143.Google Scholar

30. Joy to Zanuck, 27 July 1932, ibid.

31. Schatz, The Genius of the System, 145.

32. Joy to Albert Howson (Warners), 17 October 1932, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, PCA Files.

33. Schatz, The Genius of the System, 148.

34. Ibid., 42; O'Connor, John E., I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Madison, 1981), 41.Google Scholar

35. Joy to Albert Howson (Warners), 17 October 1932, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, PCA File.

36. The most complete account of the film is McConnell, Robert L., “The Genesis and Ideology of Gabriel Over the White House,” Cinema Journal (Spring 1976): 7–26.Google Scholar Unfortunately McConnell did not have access to the PCA files. See also Crowther, Bosley, Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer (1960), 178–180Google Scholar; Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy, The Hollywood Social Problem Film, 68–73; Bergman, We're in the Money, 115–20.

37. Wingate to Thalberg, 8 February 1933, Gabriel Over the White House, PCA Files.

38. Wingate to Thalberg, 15 February 1933; Wingate to Louis B. Mayer, 16 February 1933, ibid.

39. Wingate to Hays, 30 January 1933, ibid.

40. Fred L. Herron to McKenzie, 27 February 1933, ibid.

41. Hays to Mayer, 16 February 1933; Hays to Wingate, 16 February 1933; Fred W. Beetson to Wingate, 17 February 1933; McKenzie to Wingate, 20 February 1933; Wingate to Hays, 23 February 1933, ibid.

42. Quoted in McConnell, “The Genesis and Ideology of Garbiel over the White House,” 9.

43. Hays to Files, 6 and 7 March 1933, Lord Papers. Many of these documents are in the Lord Papers because Hays sent Lord highly sensitive MPPDA documents trying desperately to show him that the industry was concerned with the same issues he was.

44. Ibid. For a detailed case study of Baby Face, see Richard Maltby, Baby Face or How Joe Breen made Barbara Stanwyck Atone for Causing the Wall Street Crash,” Screen (1986), 22–45.

45. Hays to Mr. Blank, 7 March 1933, Lord Papers.

46. Hays to Blank (copy of the letter was sent to all studio heads), 7 March 1933, Lord Papers.

47. Breen to Lord 18 March 1933, ibid. Raymond Moley, The Hays Office (1945), 78.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. Copies of the telephone conversation and details of the cuts demanded are in Hays to Wingate, 11 March 1933, Lord Papers.

52. Wingate to Thalberg, 30 March 1933, and Wingate to Hays 31 March 1933, Lord Papers.

53. “Fascism Over Hollywood,” The Nation, 26 April 1933, 482–83; Lippmann quoted in “A President After Hollywood's Heart,” The Literary Digest, 22 April 1933, 13.

54. For background on the speech, see Facey, Paul W., S.J., , The Legion of Decency (New York, 1945), 45Google Scholar; Parsons to Maguire, 22 June 1934, and Parsons to M. J. Ahern, S.J., 10 August 1934, Box D2O2–2O3, Wilfred Parson Papers, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (hereafter Parsons Papers).

55. McNicholas to Dinneen, 3 March 1934; Quigley to Parsons, 17 March 1934; Quigley to McNicholas, 20 March 1934, Box c-76, Parsons Papers. This agreement, negotiated in Cincinnati, set off an incredible fight within the Church. Cardinal Mundelein was furious that the publicity over the agreement failed to give him proper credit for beginning the code in the first place. He refused to speak to Quigley and encouraged Lord and Father Dinneen, a local Chicago priest, to publish “black” lists and boycott films. Dinneen and Lord both accused Quigley and Breen of selling out the Legion of Decency movement and substituting the PCA seal as the national standard of morality. The two priests maintained that neither Quigley nor Breen could represent the Catholic Church because they both had economic interest in the industry. At this point the Catholic Church was badly split over the entire Legion movement, and it might have been possible for Hays to resist Catholic intrusion into the affairs of the industry. Hays choose to accept the Catholic offer because it did not call for federal censorship and kept selfregulation firmly in the Hays Office. Breen was an employee ($35,000 per year) of Hays, not of the Legion of Decency. Within two years conservatives within the Catholic Church officially opened a Legion of Decency office with headquarters in New York. They often clashed with Breen over what was permissible in the movies.

56. “Compensating Moral Values,” 13 June 1934, Box 47, Hays Papers.

57. Hays to Zukor, 21 November 1934, The President Vanishes, PCA Files; for a detailed account of the crisis caused by The President Vanishes, see Black, , “Hollywood Censored,” Film History (1989): 182–85.Google Scholar

58. Breen to Warner, 18 June 1936, Black Legion, PCA Files; Breen to Mayer, 27 January 1936, Fury, PCA Files; “Hollywood's Half a Loaf,” The New Republic, 10 June 1936, 130.

59. Breen to Jack Warner, 12 September 1934, Black Fury, PCA Files.

60. F. S. Harmon to Breen, 18 September 1939, and 10 October 1939, One Third of a Nation, PCA Files.

61. Sherwood, Robert E., Idiot's Delight (New York, 1936), 54, 102, 190.Google Scholar

62. Leuchtenburg, William E., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New York, 1963), 218–19.Google Scholar

63. Internal Memo “Idiot's Delight,” 26 March 1936, Idiot's Delight, PCA Files.

64. Breen to Warner, 9 April 1936; Breen to Herron, 11 April 1936, PCA Files.

65. Herron to Breen, 7 January 1937, PCA Files.

66. Herron to Breen, 7 May 1937; Breen to Herron, 11 May 1937, PCA Files.

67. Herron to Fred Beetson, 7 May 1937; Breen “Memo for Files,” 12 May 1937; Breen to Herron, 13 May 1937; Breen to Herron, 21 May 1937; Caracciolo to Breen, 8 June 1937-XV, PCA Files.

68. Breen to Herron, 13 May 1937; Hunt Stromberg to Breen, 23 June 1937, PCA Files.

69. Stromberg to Mannix, 5 August 1937, MGM Legal Files, Culver City, California.

70. Stromberg to Breen, 12 May 1938, MGM Legal Files.

71. Stromberg to Nayfack 2 September 1938, Idiot's Delight, MGM Legal Files.

72. Stromberg to Breen, 12 May 1938; Breen to Mayer, 13 May 1938; Breen to Mayer, 26 August 1938, MGM Legal Files.

73. Caracciolo to Breen, 20 June 1938; Breen to Mayer, 26 August 1938, MGM Legal Files.

74. Brown, The World's of Robert Sherwood, 348; Newsweek, 6 February 1939, 24; The North American Review, September 1939, 174–75.

75. Ibid.

76. Yetman, Elizabeth, “The Catholic Movie Censorship,” The New Republic, 5 October 1938, 234.Google Scholar

77. Breen to Hays, 29 September 1939, The Grapes of Wrath, PCA Files. See also Miller, John M., “Frankly my dear I just—don't—care: Val Lewton and Censorship at Selznick International Pictures,” The Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin (1986), 10–31.Google Scholar

78. Forsythe, Robert, “Who Speaks for US?” New Theater, 3 August 1936, 6.Google Scholar

79. Rev. Michael J. Ready to Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, 19 April 1938, National Conference of Catholic Bishops Archieves, Washington, D.C.

80. Ibid. Breen and Martin Quigley were regularly sent internal Legion of Decency reports. See the Martin Quigley Papers, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

81. Isreal, Edward, “Movies and Morals,” The Forum, October 1934, 201.Google Scholar

82. For Breen's impact on World War II, see Koppes, Clayton R. and Black, Gregory D., Hollywood Goes to War: How Profits, Politics and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (1986).Google Scholar

83. lngliss, Ruth, Freedom of the Movies (1947), 183.Google Scholar

84. Redman, Ben Ray, “Pictures and Censorship,” The Saturday Review of Literature, 31 December 1938, 3.Google Scholar

85. Harper's March 1935, 480.

86. Redman, , “Pictures and Censorship,” The Saturday Review of Literature, 31 December 1938, 3.Google Scholar

87. Lord to Dinneen, 21 May 1935, Lord Papers.

88. Dinneen to Lord, 22 May 1935, Lord Papers; Rev. E. Oliver Boyle to Editor, The Commonweal, 6 March 1936, 526.