Posted on 04/16/2016 7:06:08 AM PDT by NYer
Personally I love pre code films they were best in genre in Hollyweird I got majority of TCM Pre code films from Warner and MGM
The one film really started the shocking Hayes office was Divorce with Norma Shearer here funny story Iriving Thaldberg the Boy genius at MGM author the rules but his wife Norma broke it
Yes, interesting. Another thing that rose almost to an art form under the code was the double entendre. The old frothy romantic comedies are full of some very clever sexual analogies and hints that can be quite risque. Sometimes so subtle it takes 2 viewings of a film for contemporary minds to get it!
*** David Niven was in it and a young, perky brunette.***
Prudence and the Pill.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063467/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_23
While these pushed the boundaries it was not until 1969 that the filth was unleashed with the new joke of a ratings system.ratings system. G, M,R,X. Then G,GP,R,X. Then G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17.
T&A, full frontal, vile language and worse became the norm. Some movies rated “R” in 1969 are now re-rated as PG-13.
I saw a Glen Ford movie at the theater in 1969, rated “M” due to mild violence. Kids were in the audience.
I saw the same movie a few weeks ago on TV, with extremely nude scenes re-shot which would have rated it a hard “R” rating in 1969.
Oh, here you go! “The Moon is Blue,” 1953. Darling, if you like this type of film.
There was a loosening of the Hays Code in 1956. But the resulting effect wasn’t nearly as severe as the immediate post-1968 changes.
“The Moon is Blue” actually did cause a bit of a stir. It’s also a pretty crummy film. Static and tiresome. I don’t find it so much akin to joyful pre-code risqueness as much as just having a sort of smutty-minded undercurrent.
By the way, in the very first year of talkies, around 1929-1930, you can catch a few instances of mild profanity. I’m always taken aback, seeing cute Marjorie White suddenly blurting out “then, why the hell are crying?” to Janet Gaynor in “Sunnyside Up.” There’s also that fascinating poverty-row item “The Sin of Lena Rivers” (1933) which has about four or five “hells” and “damns.”
I wonder if that was a “European” release print, of that 1969 movie. The studios were more apt in the 1960s to toss in some brief bits of raunch for their foreign-release versions, which weren’t in the domestic release prints.
Annoyingly, it’s those seedier versions that now seem to be accepted as the prime, ‘complete’ versions by dvd-collectors and videophiles.
A correction to my above post. The film with the profanity is “The Sin of Nora Moran” (1933). Not “The Sin of Lena Rivers” (1932), that’s a separate film. Both are poverty-row items with similar titles. Invariably, I mix them up.
***I wonder if that was a “European” release print,***
That is what I thought after seeing it was first released in Austria. The title was HEAVEN WITH A GUN.
I figured that was the film you were referencing. I recall seeing it on tv in the late-1970s, but when I caught a few glimpses of it on cable in recent years, I was taken aback by its somewhat icky, unsavory aura and attitude.
It’s probably why, when it comes to westerns, which I love, I tend to retrench back to the genre’s most pure roots, before the spaghetti-era nihilism and even before some of the post-war introduction of psychological drama. Indeed, I think my all-time favorite western in probably “When a Man’s a Man” (1935) with George O’Brien. Which almost seems like it came from a different planet than “Heaven With a Gun.”
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