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Manners Before Morals: Sophisticated Comedy and the Production Code, 1930–1934

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10509200802641119

1543-5326

Jane M. Greene,

Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Jane M. Greene is an Assistant Professor in the Cinema Department at Denison University. She received her Ph.D. in Film Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her scholarship has appeared in Film History and in the anthology, Film and Sexual Politics: A Critical Reader (Cambridge Scholars Press). Her current projects include the book, Regulating Romance: Censorship and Romantic Comedy, 1930–1942 and research on trends in contemporary horror films. Notes 1. “The Suave Mr. Menjou Speaks,” New York Times, July 7, 1929, 95. 2. Ed Sikov, Screwball: Hollywood's Madcap Romantic Comedies (New York: Crown Publishers, 1989), 22. Also see Andrew Sarris, “The Sex Comedy Without Sex,” American Film 3 (March 1978): 8–15. And William K. Everson, Hollywood Bedlam: Classic Screwball Comedies (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1994). 3. Thomas Doherty acknowledges that MPPDA members pledged to abide by the Code in 1930, but he goes on to claim, “compliance with the Code was a verbal agreement that, as producer Samuel Goldwyn might have said, wasn't worth the paper it was written on.” Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 2. This is just one example of the kinds of glib over generalizations and historical inaccuracies that riddle many books on film censorship. For example, in Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man, Mike LaSalle argues that pre-Code technically means “before the enforcement of the Code” because “the SRC had no real power.” (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), 229–230. However, the submission of scripts and release prints was mandatory by late 1931. 4. David L. Hirst, Comedy of Manners (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1979), 1–2. 5. Ibid. 10. 6. Review, Rebound, Variety, September 1, 1931, 21. 7. J. Brooks Atkinson, “According to Mr. Maugham,” The New York Times, December 12, 1926, X3. 8. For an analysis of sentimentality in sophisticated comedy and American film in the 1920s, see Lea Jacobs, The Decline of Sentiment: American Film in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Jacobs work on sentiment and sophisticated comedy has significantly informed my scholarship on classical era romantic comedy. 9. Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik, Popular Film and Television Comedy (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 144. Neale and Krutnik's chapter on romantic comedy is called “Comedy of the Sexes.” Although they profess to be discussing romantic comedy in general, the bulk of their examples are classical-era romantic comedies: e.g. Tom, Dick and Harry, The Awful Truth, It Happened One Night. Indeed, they use the term “screwball” interchangeably with “romantic comedy.” 10. Ibid. 145 11. Shumway, 381–401. 12. Ibid. 387. Shumway is referring to Stanley Cavell's use of the term “comedies of remarriage” but employs that term interchangeably with “screwball comedy.” 13. Plot summary and subsequent citations from W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife, The Collected Plays of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. II (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1931). 14. Atkinson, “According to Mr. Maugham.” 15. Review Our Betters, Variety February 28, 1933, 15. Jacobs identifies the lack of moralizing as one of the hallmarks of 1920s sophisticated film comedy; films such as Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris (1923) and Ernst Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle (1924), were considered sophisticated in so far as they… “eschewed didacticism and highly wrought climaxes.” Decline of Sentiment, 125. 16. Neale and Krutnik, 139–140. Emphasis in original. 17. Review, Smart Woman, Variety October, 13, 1931, 14. Mordaunt Hall, “The Wife and the Siren,” The New York Times, October 12, 1931, 32. 18. Review, Let Us Be Gay, Variety, July 16, 1930, 15. 19. Review, Three Wise Girls, Variety, February 9, 1932, 19. 20. Review, Sin Takes a Holiday, Variety, December 3, 1930, 14. 21. Jacobs, Wages of Sin, 35. 22. Ibid. 40–41. 23. Jason Joy to Robert Yost, May 28, 1930, Common Clay, Production Code Administration Files, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA (hereafter PCA Files). 24. Joy to John Wilson, May, 18, 1931, Just a Gigolo, PCA Files. 25. Sara Ross, “Comedy, Sexuality and Self-Regulation in Intertitles and Spoken Dialogue, 1928–1930” (paper presented at the annual Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Denver, CO, May 23–26, 2001). 26. Trotti to Hays, April 15, 1932, Red-Headed Woman, PCA Files. Cited by Ross. Similarly, Ramona Curry argues that, prior to 1934, Mae West's comedic performance style allowed her to include suggestive material in her films that would not have been acceptable if presented seriously. Curry cites censor James Wingate's response to the script for West's She Done Him Wrong (1933): “I am assuming that in making a picture of such a period and with such a background, you will develop the comedy elements so that the treatment will invest the picture with such exaggerated qualities as automatically to take care of possible offensiveness…” Wingate to Harold Hurley, November 29, 1932, She Done Him Wrong, PCA Files. “Goin’ to Town and Beyond: Mae West, Film Censorship and the Comedy of Unmarriage.” In Classical Hollywood Comedy, eds. Kristine Brunovska Karnick and Henry Jenkins (New York: Routledge, 1995), 214. 27. There is nothing in the Production Code to indicate that adultery and humor were viewed as an incongruous mix of subject and tone. It states, “The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing. Adultery, sometimes necessary plot material, must not be explicitly treated, or justified or presented attractively.” “Production Code and Resolution for Uniform Interpretation,” formulated by the Association of Motion Picture Producers, Inc. and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., February 17, 1930 and March 31, 1930, from “Documents on the Genesis of the Production Code,” compiled by Richard Maltby, Quarterly Review of Film and Video 15 (March 1995), 54. However, an earlier draft of the Code prepared by Father Daniel Lord reveals a decided bias against the comic treatment of adultery, advising “… comedies or farce should not make fun of good, innocence, morality or justice” and later adds, “Adultery … is never a fit subject for comedy. Through comedy of this sort, ridicule is thrown on the essential relationship of home and family and marriage, and illicit relationships are made to seem permissible, either delightful or daring. “Suggested Code to Govern the Production of Motion Pictures,” November 25, 1929. Ibid. 45–46. Emphasis in original. Several versions of the Code were considered, including one composed by MPPDA staff (including Joy and his assistants Trotti and Wilson). Lord's draft was appended to the MPPDA version with the comment, “The attached … is a document which has important value in that it challenges thought and inspires care in the whole field of production. Ibid. 37. 28. B.N. Sequence synopsis, March, 30, 1929, Let Us Be Gay, PCA Files. 29. Wingate to E. J. Mannix, May 9, 1933, When Ladies Meet, PCA Files. 30. Wilson to William Goetz, August 29, 1931, Good Sport, PCA Files. 31. Ibid. 32. Joy to Winfield Sheehan, August 28, 1931, Good Sport, PCA Files. Joy concludes, that the public “… would never really condone the same action in a woman.” 33. Ibid. 34. Plot summary and subsequent citations from Noel Coward, Private Lives: An Intimate Comedy in Three Acts (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1930). 35. Atkinson, “Mr. Coward Still Going Along,” The New York Times January, 28, 1931, 27. 36. Trotti to Joy, February 4, 1931, Private Lives, PCA Files. 37. Trotti to Wilson, June 4, 1931, Private Lives, PCA Files. 38. Thalberg to Joy, August 29, 1931, Private Lives, PCA Files. 39. There is no indication in the PCA memos that censors were particularly concerned with this moment in the play, but after viewing the film, Joy cautioned the studio, “Some of the official censors may want to shorten the scene on the couch when Elyot kisses Amanda too soon after dinner.” Joy to Thalberg, November 30, 1931, Private Lives, PCA Files. 40. The play's reputation may have contributed to the censors’ concern over the adaptation. The theatrical version was popular, and Coward's insistence on a short run (three months in London and three in New York) increased ticket demand. The play closed less than a year before the film opened, hence the title and subject matter would have been familiar to censors, critics and spectators. The road company stage version of Private Lives opened in January 1931 and was “raced through the U.S. to beat M-G-M's picture into key cities.” See “London Gives Coward Ovation in New Play,” The New York Times, September 25, 1930, 14. Also The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Feature Films, 1931–1940, ed. Patricia King Hanson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 1702–1703. Wingate, in particular, appears to have been unable to separate the source from the adaptation. As Joy wrote to Breen, “I'm afraid what has occurred is that Dr. Wingate remembers the stage play which he saw and about which he expressed some concern, and has overlooked the changes that were made largely to meet his views.” December 15, 1931. Private Lives, PCA Files. 41. Trotti to Wilson, June 4, 1931, Private Lives, PCA Files. 42. Wingate to Hays, June 26, 1933, Design for Living, PCA Files. 43. Breen to Joseph J. Nolan, August 29, 1940, Design for Living, PCA Files. 44. Atkinson, “As Good as New, Comedy of ‘Rich Set’,” The New York Times, November 4, 1930, 29. 45. Plot synopsis and all citations from the 16mm film print at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater research, Madison, Wisconsin (Hereafter WCFTR). The file for Easy to Love at the WCFTR contains the playscript for As Good As New by Thompson Buchanan and seven screenplay drafts by various writers. Only the final draft, written by Carl Erickson and David Boehm, was submitted to the SRC. Except where noted, the finished film is identical to the final draft. 46. Wingate to Warner Bros., October 17, 1933, Easy to Love, PCA Files. 47. Wingate to Hays, March 25, 1933, Easy to Love, PCA Files. 48. Wingate to Jack Warner, November 23, 1933, Easy to Love, PCA Files. 49. This scene is slightly different in the script. Carol does not go upstairs immediately. Instead, she joins her husband for cocktails and invites John upstairs. The screen directions indicate she is “speaking suggestively, somewhat affected by the liquor.” John tells her he will be right up. After this, the scene is almost identical: Carol takes out her lingerie and gets into bed, John comes up and she delivers the line about the evolution of marriage beds. After John leaves, the script describes her reaction to his departure as follows: “She looks disappointed, then angry. She reaches up and snaps off the light.” Erickson and Boehm, Easy to Love, Final Draft, October 5, 1933, United Artists Collection, Series 1.2, Box 110, WCFTR. 50. Atkinson, “As Good as New.” 51. Noël Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 151. 52. Ibid., 152. 53. Censors advocated the use of indirect modes of representation in the scene, asking the producers to make the suggestion of premarital sex less explicit (for example, eliminating “the action of clothes being thrown on the sofa,” and “shots of the underclothing scattered around” in Janet and Paul's hotel room), but it is still clear that John and Carol (and the audience) are meant to think that Janet and Paul have gone to the hotel to have sex. Wingate to Warner Bros., November 4, 1933, Easy to Love, PCA Files. 54. Breen to Warner, September 3, 1936, Easy to Love, PCA Files.