The Waning Production
Code and the Rise of the
Ratings System

The Production Code and Threats of Censorship

The popularity of many foreign films in the United States, the growth of the art houses, and the appearance of such vehicles promoting a new film culture as the New York Film Festival occurred early in the decade that would witness the most extensive shift in film content in the history of the American motion picture. The widely perceived "mature content" of many foreign films, especially their approach to sex and eroticism, revealed the burden of Hollywood's long established "Production Code" and posed a direct challenge to the kind of movies that the Hollywood majors had been producing.¹

The motion-picture industry's Production Code had been established in 1930 by the major Hollywood studios in order to avoid threats of government-imposed censorship. The majors agreed that any feature film they produced and/or distributed had to earn the "Seal of Approval." Such a seal was awarded based on adherence to a set of guidelines largely concerned with how sex and criminality were treated in a film.² During the 1930s and 1940s, relatively few features produced in Hollywood skirted the Code, but by the early 1950s the Code began to be challenged on occasion. Even before foreign films made inroads at the box office in the United States, United Artists released THE MOON IS BLUE (1953, Otto Preminger) without obtaining a seal of approval. Tellingly, even without the seal, and although it was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church's Legion of Decency, THE MOON IS BLUE was a financial success.³

Indeed, many observers within the movie industry believed that the attention and publicity brought to the film by the decision to release it without a seal of approval actually helped its business significantly at the box office.⁴ Another direct challenge to the Code occurred when financially ailing RKO-Pathe released THE FRENCH LINE (1954), starring Jane Russell. The Catholic Legion of Decency condemned this movie too, meaning that practicing Roman Catholics viewed it only under the onus of committing a mortal sin. RKO-Pathe apparently was unconcerned, however, carrying on an advertising campaign that brazenly referred to the film's 3-D photography and the lead actress's ample bosom: "THE FRENCH LINE will knock out both your eyes."⁵

Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty play out a theme directly
contradictory to the Hollywood Production Code in Elia
Kazan's SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961).

A few years later, SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961, Elia Kazan), starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, was released with a seal of approval, even though the script ran directly counter to the Code: it dealt with the story of two young lovers who paid no price for their sexual indiscretion and who suffered emotionally by having denied their sexual impulses.⁶ Clearly, the administrators of the Production Code were beginning to bend their interpretations in order to try to accommodate changing times and market conditions for the movie industry. John Wayne dismissed SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS as "too disgusting for discussion,"⁷ but by then few American adults appeared to agree. The erosion of the Production Code was evident, and numerous Hollywood releases were decidedly more adult in the way in which they treated sex and references to it.

In the spring of 1961, Eric Johnston, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which administered the Code, suggested for the first time that his organization might be willing to consider dropping it entirely in favor of the introduction of some sort of voluntary classification system for movies.⁸ When Johnston's signal was interpreted as a green light by a production company run by the Mirisch brothers to attack the Production Code directly, the major production companies elected to publicly defend both the Code and the seal, even though there was widespread sentiment among the management of the Hollywood majors that the Code and the seal were outdated.⁹ Their defense was underscored by the official position taken by exhibitors, a branch of the industry the Hollywood majors no longer controlled directly. At the end of 1961, the independent Theater Owners Association of America (TOA) went on record to reject any form of self-classification or rating of movies by producers. TOA preferred continuation of the Code and the seal to any rating scheme that theater owners would be expected to enforce at the box office. For the time being, the notion of scuttling Hollywood's Production Code was dead in the water.¹⁰

Nonetheless, simple continuation of the Code and the seal was becoming increasingly problematic. Foreign film imports were gaining at America's box offices; since they were not produced or distributed by the Hollywood majors, they circulated freely without the seal. Movies from France, Great Britain, and Italy, such as THE LOVERS (1958, Louis Malle), ROOM AT THE TOP (1959, Jack Clayton), HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR (1959, Alain Resnais), A BOUT DE SOUFFLE (BREATHLESS, 1959, Jean-Luc Godard), L'AVVENTURA (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni), and LA DOLCE VITA (1960, Federico Fellini), were all sexually daring compared to contemporary Hollywood releases.¹¹ These films sometimes faced censorship problems, but they represented the fictionalized treatment of sex in ways considered more mature, complex, and sophisticated than anything permitted by the Hollywood Code. Their success pointed to a market for movies with adult treatment of sexuality and occasional nude scenes that could not be seen at home on television in the United States. Nonetheless, it was just as these foreign movies began showing in movie theaters in America's hinterlands, that calls for local censorship of movies in general increased in many parts of the nation.¹² That, in turn, rekindled the American film industry's deepest and most long-standing fear (which dated back to the 1920s and which the Production Code had been intended all along to circumvent)-that local ordinances restricting motion pictures would he upheld by the courts, creating havoc for movie exhibition nationwide. By the mid 1960s, in fact, many local American newspapers began refusing to print advertisements for movies that they considered too provocative or suggestive.¹³

THE PAWNBROKER (1965) challenged the Hollywood Production Code with scenes that
included nudity. Lead character Rod Steiger as a pawnshop owner in an encounter
with a prostitute shown here.

Still under the control of Geoffrey Spurlock, whose tenure had begun in 1932, the actual administration of the seal of approval was thought to have remained largely rigid and wedded to the past. Many observers within the Hollywood industry believed that a real shift in the Code's policy was discernable only with the release of THE PAWNBROKER (1965). The film contained nudity in a scene of an encounter between the protagonist and a neighborhood prostitute who comes to his pawnshop desperately seeking money for her boyfriend. Even more surprising than the issuance of a seal of approval for THE PAWNBROKER from Geoffrey Spurlock's office, however, was the Catholic Film Office's revision of a rare "C" rating ("condemned") to a rating of "A-3" ("morally unobjectionable for adults") after a mere two feet of film were cut from one scene. The tandem of events indicated that cultural shifts were finally being acknowledged in the very quarters that had been holding Hollywood films hostage to what many people regarded as entirely outmoded and puritanical standards.

The entire issue of control over movie content, after all, involved complex assessments as to what the public wanted or would tolerate, what parts of society would object to changes in Hollywood's traditional standards, and just how to proceed most efficaciously on behalf of an industry for which image and popular approval were vital. The principle source of protest against the "dubious morality" of Hollywood films during the late 1950s and the early 1960s came from agencies of the Roman Catholic Church, which frequently judged movies by standards that appeared to be rigid. In 1963, for example, the Church's Legion of Decency saddled both CLEOPATRA and IRMA LA DOUCE with a "B" rating (meaning "morally unacceptable, in part, for all").¹⁴ The revision of the Church's rating for THE PAWNBROKER in 1965, then, marked a decided shift toward greater lenience in the official Catholic ratings. It was followed closely by a similar decision on WHO's AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966, Mike Nichols), which broke the Code's standard on language. The movie contained eleven "goddamns," seven "bastards," a "screw you," a "hump the hostess," "up yours," and a reference to "monkey nipples." Initially denied approval by Spurlock, who was backed in his decision by the new MPAA President Jack Valenti, the seal of approval was actually granted after the film was cleared by the National Catholic Office of Motion Pictures (NCOMP). As a member of that office's staff wrote, "I can see little moral harm that will come from the use of vulgar language. Shock and disgust are not moral evils in themselves." More conservative Catholics, however, found this decision shocking and disgusting. Public protests occurred in many cities where the film played. At one of them, a devout parishioner carried a placard demanding the Catholic Church's hierarchy to "Get Rid of the N.C.O.M.Petents."¹⁵

Presidential aide Jack Valenti in the White House with
Lyndon Johnson shortly before Hollywood called him to
head the Motion Picture Association of America.

In 1966, Jack Valenti was chosen to succeed Eric Johnston as president of the movie industry's primary trade organization, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). MCA/Universal Pictures President Lew Wasserman, a prominent Democrat, had reviewed a list of President Lyndon Johnson's White House staff and selected Valenti, a presidential aide, because of his extensive background in advertising and public relations. After Wasserman secured the endorsement of the heads of the other major Hollywood studios, the job as Johnston's replacement was offered to Valenti. He took over at the MPAA just as debate over the industry-wide Production Code was coming to a head. Prior to Valenti's arrival, the Code had been streamlined in order to make approval of scripts easier and to adjust the seal of approval decisions modestly in the direction of America's changing mores and attitudes toward sex and violence. These modest reforms, however, did not resolve the tensions between the continued existence of a Production Code in Hollywood, the vastly changed audience for motion pictures, and evidence of the broader society's changing values. While one industry insider argued that of Valenti's duties as president of the MPAA, only about 5 percent were concerned with the Code, it was in this arena that Valenti's leadership was held to be most critical in the public eye.¹⁶ In fact, Valenti faced his first real challenge in his new job when BLOW-UP (1966, Michelangelo Antonioni) was denied a seal of approval for release by Metro-Goldwyn-Maser (MGM). The studio, in order to skirt the Code and the board's decision, decided to proceed and distribute the film anyway through one of its subsidiaries called Premier Productions.¹⁷

In BLOW-UP (1966), the photographer played by David Hemmings romped with two
teenage "birds" in a scene that showed pubic hair The stunning box-office success of
this film in the U.S. essentially broke the Hollywood Production Code and led to the
MPAA's ratings system.

Among all the major Hollywood studios, MGM had most strongly supported the Code historically. Their decision to proceed was enhanced by the fact that the film's director was an internationally acclaimed film artist. MGM had entered negotiations to secure approval under a new, reformed category called "SMA" (Suggested for Mature Audiences) by initially agreeing to two cuts from the movie-the main character's erotic tussling with two teenage girls that revealed a glimpse of pubic hair, and a brief sequence of his watching his neighbors' lovemaking. Antonioni, however, vociferously objected to this compromise. Even after its premiere in the United States in December 1966, however, MGM was looking for ways to gain a seal of approval for BLOW-UP in order to fully legitimize its release, and Production Code officials were still working with the studio. In the first six weeks of its release as a "premier picture" without the seal, however, BLOW-UP enjoyed extraordinarily good box-office business, and MGM decided to drop the matter. The entire BLOW-UP incident demonstrated to most observers that the Hollywood Production Code and the seal of approval had, in essence, become irrelevant.¹⁸

VIOLENCE ON THE BIG SCREEN

The related issue of graphic violence depicted on the screen heated up not long after the release of BLOW-UP, when BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967, Arthur Penn) received Geoffrey Spurlock's blessing and a seal of approval.¹⁹ At the time, widespread debate in the mainstream press and in public policy circles over the film's violence fed growing public concern over the content of movies, television, and magazines. That same year, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a "National Commission on Obscenity and Pornography" to assess the situation and to report to the nation.²⁰ Valenti, Johnson's former aide, immediately wired the president on behalf of the MPAA to praise his decision and to pledge Hollywood's full support to the Commission.²¹ Many in Hollywood trusted that Valenti's links to Johnson would help assure a Commission favorable to the industry's interests. Others, however, like the conservative Hollywood feature columnist Abe Greenberg, found neither Valenti's commitment, nor LBJ's commission, promising. "We are delighted with Valenti's strong language in which he excoriated pornography and violence in movies," wrote Greenberg. "But what, we feel constrained to ask, does Mr.Valenti plan to do about it.²²

Valenti's position, as reconstructed from the record, consisted of carefully negotiating a moderate posture of apparent compromise. He recognized that a changing society had created new audience tastes. At the same time, he quickly became a prime mover in advancing the idea that Hollywood producers must move cautiously toward exploring new ground. Finally, whatever position the MPAA took, Valenti recognized that the issue was ultimately in the hands of the courts-the branch of government over which the movie industry had little or no influence and could not control.

Blood squibs enhanced pictorial realism, and the amplified sound of gunshots contributed
to graphic scenes of violence that were the subject of controversy upon the release
of BONNIE AND CLYDE.

Hollywood faced complicated issues. First Amendment protections had been extended tentatively to the motion-picture industry only in the early 1950s, but film was still bounded by restrictions that did not apply to print media. Additionally, the legal situation was especially threatening to the movie industry because court decisions being made in similar cases in different jurisdictions during the mid 1960s were not at all consistent. In 1966, for example, one federal court, deciding on a challenge by Columbia Pictures to the practices of the State of Kansas Film Review Board (whose existence dated back to 1917), held that actions by state review boards were unconstitutional.²³ Immediately after that decision, however, another federal court ruling in a similar case involving a Texas movie exhibitor and a local government (Interstate Circuit v. The City of Dallas) upheld the right of the states or of municipalities to classify films and, hence, to regulate their exhibition.²⁴ The Kansas decision encouraged those who sought more liberalized practices. The Dallas decision was applauded by those who sought to impose stricter legal restraints on what might be seen in America's movie theaters and by whom.

1968 proved a decisive year on the issue. It began with the state of Maryland banning any showing of a sexually explicit movie from Sweden, I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW) (1967, Vilgot Sjoman), even though it was playing to large audiences in many other states at the time, including ones bordering Maryland.²⁵ Not long after, a Washington, D.C. movie theater owner and his employees were convicted under the city's new anti-obscenity law for showing sexually explicit films. As those defendants were being sentenced in the nation's capital, the municipality of Salt Lake City, Utah, passed a similar ordinance. At the same time, a city court judge in Detroit, Michigan, found several Wayne State University students guilty of showing films by political radical Wendi Tsen that portrayed what was judged "obscene" material.

Eroticism in I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW) (Sweden, Vilgot Sjoman, 1967) heated up debate
over obscenity laws after its U.S. release in 1968.

In late spring of 1968, the United States Supreme Court declared in Ginsberg v. City of New York that state and city ordinances which drew a clear legal distinction between what motion-picture materials adults and minors could see in places open to the public were constitutional and enforceable.²⁶ In the wake of that decision, the Boston Globe newspaper launched an editorial campaign to encourage the commonwealth of Massachusetts to pass a law banning promotional trailers for films that might contain sexually explicit scenes from showing in movie theaters. The newspaper's argument for such a restriction was predicated on the notion that "family audiences" who came to a given theater to see a specific film would be oblivious to what coming attractions might be presented before the feature film; hence, they could be blindsided by material the parents might consider offensive or improper for their children.

There were calls rising in many quarters for control of movie content. At the same time, other Americans were arguing that Hollywood was still lagging far behind European countries in bringing adult materials to the screen, and that Hollywood stood to lose what was left of the college-aged audience. Many of the films drawing public outrage were not Hollywood features, although legal decisions about them established a judicial context in which the mainstream feature film industry had to operate. As the audience for movies was increasingly narrowing to an age group in their late teens and early twenties, the entire Hollywood movie industry was confronted with the acute need to tread a thin line through a morass of claims and counter claims regarding what kind of standards-and, hence, what kind of movies-were best for society. Ultimately, it was the changing demographics of the audience for movies that would be most telling on what direction the standards took. One internal staff report, prepared in 1968 for MPAA executives, concluded that "parents of elementary and junior high school children do not pay much attention to films and are not greatly concerned with them."²⁷

The ultimate and definitive position taken up by Valenti on behalf of the MPAA in 1968 was to distinguish between "sexual explicitness" and "violence" as offensive materials. "When so many critics complain about violence on film," he argued, "I don't think that they realize the impact of thirty minutes on the Huntley-Brinkley [NBC television] newscast-and that's real violence."²⁸ In the midst of nightly coverage from combat zones in the Vietnam War, evening network broadcasts often carried graphic and bloody scenes of violence. Certainly, Valenti's logic helped to compartmentalize graphic sexuality as distinct from graphic violence. Not long after, Valenti refined his argument publicly when testifying before the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. He argued that conflict was "the essence of drama." Sexually explicit material, however, he labeled as "trash" during the same hearings.²⁹

Press releases and testimony were not the primary avenues through which Valenti was working. Not long after he became president of the MPAA in 1966, he began lining up support from the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) for Hollywood to abandon its Production Code in favor of a ratings system for movies.³⁰ Indeed, Valenti's role in effectively lobbying the theater owners as a group to change their position on a ratings system was likely his greatest accomplishment as MPAA president during the 1960s. The support of exhibitors across America was crucial because any ratings system would shift the burden of enforcement from the people producing movies to owners and managers of movie theaters. Compliance with ratings would be implemented by listing them in local newspaper ads and by maintaining that admission to certain movies would be controlled and restricted at the box office. The question of how successful theater owners were perceived to be by the surrounding community in publicizing and enforcing the ratings was key to the rating scheme's success.³¹ The ratings system, clearly, did not prohibit a producer from making any particular kind of film. At the same time, however, Valenti was increasing his appeals to producers not to abuse the newly won freedoms that would come from dropping the Production Code in favor of a ratings system.³² If the MPAA spokesperson who had described Valenti's responsibilities as being only 5 percent devoted to matters having to do with the Production Code was correct, then that 5 percent was awfully, awfully large indeed.

The MPAA's new ratings system was actually modeled on one that had been in place for years in Great Britain. All films produced and/or distributed by the MPAA companies were to carry a rating of suitability: "G" (for general audiences); "M" (for mature viewers; later changed to "PG," for parental guidance); "H" (for films restricted to minors unless accompanied by an adult); or "X" (no one under 17 admitted; changed to "NC-17" nearly three decades later). Over the years, the rating designations would go through several permutations and a number of variations. At first, even the rating "X" was respectable: several highly regarded films, including THE DAMNED (1969, Luchino Visconti), the Oscar-winning MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969, John Schlesinger), and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971, Stanley Kubrick), carried that rating. Only during the 1970s did exhibition of hard-core pornographic films, and the media's attention to that phenomenon, turn "X" into a stigma.

Officially announced on October 7, 1968, the MPAAs motion-picture ratings system took effect on November 1 of that year. The ratings did not eradicate debate over movie content, of course, but the system provided excellent public relations for the movie industry and was widely accepted by the public. Hollywood appeared to be doing something proactive and positive about what sorts of movies America's youth would be seeing. For producers and distributors the solution was especially advantageous. Productions could proceed unimpeded and earn a rating-that could, moreover, be appealed or modified while the actual burden of responsibility for enforcement of the system was left in the hands of movie theater owners. To further please Hollywood producers, with the single exception of one owner of a major movie theater chain, Walter Reade of New York City, the nation's exhibitors lined up solidly in support of the scheme.

Across the country, movie theater owners recognized that such a system could be highly useful for them as well. The ratings system was voluntary, not statutory, which meant that individual theater owners could decide how rigorously the ratings system was to be enforced in their specific theaters. The ratings system was, after all, industry policy, not law. In essence, any individual theater was left in a position to assess its own sense of community standards in booking features and permitting audiences to see them. Nonetheless, the ratings appeared highly responsible and constructive to most citizens, many of whom likely did not understand that they were voluntary, not statutory, and that their enforcement was left entirely to the discretion of the movie theater owners.

In the MPAA's ratings system, Hollywood had found a method of operation to accommodate the sexual revolution, a rapidly changing culture, and the shifting demographics of its audiences while appearing to act protectively toward what many citizens considered the larger interests of American society and the common good. Nonetheless, some people, both inside the movie industry and out, were still critical of the decision to replace the moribund Production Code with ratings. The new system posed some hurdles for producers, since the economic viability of a movie could hinge on whether it received an "R" or a "PG": for example, an "R" rating might kill the box-office potential for drawing people younger than seventeen. Some producers argued that the MPAA's rating board was dominated, especially in its earliest years, by pseudo-psychologists who tended to exaggerate the effects on children and adolescents of such genres as horror movies, and to rate such pictures accordingly.³³ Others claimed that the ratings system stood to penalize nearly any emotionally or aesthetically complex movie and would only further reinforce Hollywood's tendencies toward producing films based on safe and conventional stories and formulas.³⁴ Some critics even maintained that the ratings system would prove more restrictive than any limitations the government could have imposed and sustained constitutionally, since they believed that legal challenges to such actions by government eventually would be struck down by the courts.³⁵

The Hollywood Production Code and the system that required each release by one of the major to studios to obtain a seal of approval was replaced by the ratings system. The solution was neither perfect nor could it please everyone. Taken on the whole over many years, however, the ratings system proved a comparatively effective scheme for relieving pressure on the American motion-picture production industry and preventing movies and their producers from becoming tied up in convoluted litigation and court cases that could drag on for years.

Notes

1. See the discussion of the competition posed by foreign films in this regard in Peter Lev, The Euro- American Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), p.14.

2. See, for example, Raymond Moley, The Hays Office (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1945), or Gerald Gardiner, The Censorship Papers:, Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934-1968 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987). The original office was named after Hollywood's first choice for supervising this self-censorship board, Will Hays, a former Postmaster General with a sound reputation and a long string of political connections.

3. Stephen Faber, The Movie Rating Game (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1972), p.12.

4. Gerald Mast and Bruce F. Kawin, A Short History of the Movies, 5th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996), p.310.

5. Robert Stanley, The Celluloid Empire: A History of the American Motion Picture (New York: Hastings House, 1978), p.209.

6. Frank Miller, Censored Hollywood: Sex, Sin, and Violence on the Screen (Atlanta: Turner Publishing Company, 1994) , p.185.

7. Hollywood Reporter, January 11, 1960, p.2.

8. Variety, May 17, 1961, p.1.

9. Variety, August 30, 1961, p.6.

10. Charles Higham, Hollywood at Sunset (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972), p.143.

11. Lev, The Euro-American Cinema, p.13.

12. Box Office, May 1, 1961, p.2.

13. Robert Frederich, "Film Ads? The Nose for News Is Blue," Variety, Special Anniversary Issue, October 1965, p.20.

14. Variety (Daily), June 6, 1963, p.1.

15. Miller, Censored Hollywood, pp.202, 203.

16. Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1967.

17. Faber, Movie Rating Game, p.13.

18. Lev, Euro-American Cinema, p.95.

19. Faber, Movie Rating Game, p.10.

20. Jerzy Toeplitz, Hollywood and After: The Changing Face of American Cinema, Boleslaw Sulik, trans. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1974), p.164.

21. Variety (Daily), June 13, 1967, p.9.

22. Abe Greenberg, "Voice of Hollywood," Los Angeles Citizen News, April 9, 1968.

23. Variety, Special Anniversary Issue, October 1966, p.5.

24. Faber, Movie Rating Game, p.14.

25. Mayer, Film Industries, p.122.

26. Faber, Movie Rating Game, p.14.

27. Letter, Charles Wales to Jack Valenti, May 6, 1968, in Jack Valenti Biographic File, The Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.

28. Variety (Weekly), February 21, 1968.

29. Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1968.

30. Faber, Movie Rating Game, p.14.

31. Wayne Nagra, "Exhibitors Hold Key to 'Valenti Plan'," in Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1968.

32. Film-Television Daily, April 30, 1968.

33. Hollywood Reporter, August 27, 1971.

34. Michael Scragow, "The Wild Bunch," Atlantic Monthly (June 1994).

35. Lois R. Sheinfeld, "Ratings: The Big Chill," Film Comment (May/June 1986).