Monday, March 6 | 6 Movies
“And from now on, you’re the only man in the world that my door is closed to!”
The Divorcee (1930) is considered by many to be the first true pre-Code film, a ground-breaking examination of divorce that challenged society’s double standards and placed a strong female lead front and center. But the term ‘pre-Code Hollywood’ is actually a misnomer. The Code was adopted by the film industry in March 1930—and then completely disregarded by studios until they were forced to abide by it in July 1934. In the meantime, the industry’s self-censorship office, the Studio Relations Committee (SRC), forewarned studios of potential issues and helped films pass state and territory censor boards. The reasons for the Code’s strict enforcement in 1934 are myriad, but from 1930 through that summer, many movies pushed the envelope with nudity, implied sex, drug use, violence, resilient female characters and more.
On March 6, TCM highlights six Academy Award-nominated pre-Codes as part of our annual 31 Days of Oscar programming.
In The Divorcee, Jerry (Norma Shearer) discovers Ted (Chester Morris) cheated on her on their third wedding anniversary. To “balance our accounts,” Jerry sleeps with his best friend Don (Robert Montgomery). Divorce follows, and the exes adapt in wildly different ways: Jerry travels, parties it up and rekindles a romance with old flame Paul (Conrad Nagel), while Ted drowns his sorrows in alcohol. Will Jerry break up Paul’s marriage or ultimately return to her own?
The Divorcee picked up Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Z. Leonard), Best Writing (John Meehan) and Best Actress (Shearer), the last nod representing the film’s sole win. With her sympathetic portrayal of a progressive working woman, Shearer embodied many of the era’s cultural changes and unlocked a new standard for the way women could be portrayed on screen: sophisticated, frank and sexual. The New York Telegraph noted this new trend, remarking that pictures were now preoccupied with “trying for something sensational and startling.” Indeed, “strong women in risqué situations became the winning box-office formula at every studio,” Mick LaSalle confirmed in “Complicated Women.”
The Divorcee began filming in February 1930; at that time, the Production Code had yet to be approved by the industry. Will Hays, the industry’s chief internal censor, tried to talk producer Irving Thalberg out of adapting Ursula Parrott’s sordid novel “Ex-Wife,” but Thalberg’s persistence won out in the end—with the caveat that MGM use a new title and forgo any reference to the source material in advertising.
Newly minted Oscar winner Shearer received another Best Actress nomination the following year, and while she lost out to Marie Dressler in Min and Bill (1930), Lionel Barrymore, her co-star in the film she was nominated for, A Free Soul (1931), won Best Actor. The movie opens with Stephen (Barrymore), an alcoholic lawyer, successfully defending gangster Ace (Clark Gable), who is accused of murder. Ace meets Stephen’s free-spirited daughter Jan (Shearer), and the two begin a torrid affair to her father’s chagrin—never mind Jan’s engagement to the straight-laced Dwight (Leslie Howard).
Barrymore turned in a gut-wrenching performance as an addict who desperately attempts to protect his daughter. In addition to Shearer and Barrymore’s acting nods, A Free Soul collected a nomination for director Clarence Brown, who showcased Shearer and Gable’s smoldering chemistry in ways that could only have been done during the pre-Code period. “Men of action are better in action. They don’t talk well,” Jan says, confirming that she’s shacking up with Ace for amusement and pleasure, pure and simple. Numerous suggestive lines, including Ace’s “Make yourself comfortable, baby. Your things are still hanging in the closet,” were excised by several state censor boards upon the film’s release.
Shearer granted an eye-opening interview with Motion Picture Magazine in 1932, in which writer Gladys Hall declared that the star’s groundbreaking “emancipation” of women in The Divorcee and A Free Soul proved that ladies who enjoyed a level of sexual liberation were still “fit to be wives and mothers and leaders in their communities.” Shearer, who impeccably curated her public image and espoused broadminded views, also remarked: “A woman of today is good, or she is bad according to the way she does a thing—and not because of the thing itself.”
Clarence Brown had two Oscar nominations under his belt when he helmed A Free Soul, one of which was Anna Christie (1930). The film opens with alcoholic skipper Chris (George F. Marion) receiving a letter from Anna (Greta Garbo), the daughter he abandoned years earlier, informing him that she’s coming to stay. She arrives weighed down with emotional baggage and a secret past as a prostitute. When her father rescues Matt (Charles Bickford) one night, the two fall in love. Their relationship provides Anna with a happiness she’s never known, but when Matt proposes, Anna grapples with revealing her past to the both men.
Anna Christie also racked up nominations for Best Actress (Garbo) and Best Cinematography (William H. Daniels). Anticipation was high for the Swedish star’s first talkie, and it was a success: Garbo’s range from tortured to tender to strong helped Anna Christie become one of the highest grossing pictures of the year. "Although the low-toned voice is not what is expected from the alluring actress, one becomes accustomed to it, for it is a voice undeniably suited to the unfortunate Anna,” The New York Times’ Mordaunt Hall commented.
The subject of prostitution was widely dealt with during the pre-Code period, but subtlety was key. If Anna’s “past life is indicated and not actually pictured, there will be no objection raised,” the SRC remarked. Though the film passed with only a few cuts in most states, MGM was advised to withdraw their application for a re-release certificate in 1936 and formally denied one in 1940. The Production Code Administration’s Joseph Breen informed Louis B. Mayer that the film violated the Production Code “because it is a story of illicit sex (prostitution), without sufficient compensating moral values.”
Speaking of Best Actress nominees and winners, theater icon Helen Hayes walked away with the award for her first starring role in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931). Jilted by lovers, left to care for her baby alone and dealt a million other tough breaks, Madelon (Hayes) lands in jail for a crime she didn’t do. Once she’s released and meets the son she was forced to give up, she tells him his mother is dead so her past won’t follow him, all the while she works feverishly—as a prostitute and later a thief—to anonymously fund his medical school education.
Suffering and trauma await Madelon at every turn as the film crams in the pre-Code earmarks from illicit sex to unwed motherhood to prostitution. Hayes’ husband, Charles MacArthur, wrote the movie for her knowing weepies gained audience sympathy. As an accomplished stage actress, it’s no surprise Hayes turned in such a nuanced, emotional performance; what is surprising is that the film initially flopped with preview audiences and was about to be shelved before the couple fought for retakes that saved the picture—and won Hayes her first Oscar.
Hayes’ win has counted towards several remarkable achievements. Not only did she hold the record for longest gap in between acting awards (between this film and her second and final triumph for Best Supporting Actress in 1970’s Airport), but she also became the first female EGOT winner, completing the rare achievement of earning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.
One of the biggest musical extravaganzas of its year, Gold Diggers of 1933, kicked up an Oscar nomination for Best Sound, Recording (Nathan Levinson). Weaving comedy and social commentary with big Busby Berkeley musical numbers, the film finds chorus girls Carol (Joan Blondell), Fay (Ginger Rogers), Trixie (Aline MacMahon) and Polly (Ruby Keeler) out of work; the show they’re rehearsing hasn’t paid the bills. When Polly’s boyfriend, pianist Brad (Dick Powell), offers to back producer Barney (Ned Sparks)’s new play, they all think he’s kidding. He’s not; he’s just from a wealthy family that disapproves of the theater, only to find themselves thoroughly mixed up in the girls’ antics.
In the six years since sound debuted, musicals had already gone bust once, but the lull didn’t last long. Successfully recording not only dialogue but four intricate musical numbers was a big task, one that Oscar nominee Levinson, who joined Warners as a sound engineer at the start of the talkie era, was clearly up to. As WB’s sound director, he actually accounted for three of the four nominations this year. Despite the odds being 75% in his favor, he lost to Franklin Hansen for A Farewell to Arms (1932).
From nude silhouettes and tin chastity suits in the titillating “Pettin’ in the Park” number to the scant coin costumes in “We’re in the Money,” Gold Diggers of 1933 pushed the pre-Code envelope. Knowing the potential for censor boards to cut haphazardly, WB shot different takes of censorable scenes. As Mark A. Vieira related in “Sin in Soft Focus,” one version of the picture ended with the blistering “Remember My Forgotten Man” number, while another concluded with the resolution of Warren William and Blondell’s romance.
Mae West was no stranger to controversy or censorship. In fact, her 1926 Broadway play “Sex,” which she wrote, directed and starred in, landed her in jail on a morals charge. Though the icon never received an individual Oscar nomination, her second feature and first star vehicle, She Done Him Wrong (1933), based upon her smash hit 1928 play “Diamond Lil,” was nominated for Best Picture.
Bawdy saloon singer Lady Lou (West) has many men in her life—just the way she likes it. Local reformer Captain Cummings (Cary Grant) grabs her attention, and soon enough she’s helping his cause out in more ways than one. But when Lady Lou’s jealous ex, Chick (Owen Moore) breaks out of jail and comes looking for his girl, things turn rowdy for everybody.
She Done Him Wrong raked in over $2 million at the box office, effectively saving Paramount Pictures from the red, but the movie had a rough road to the screen. For one, “Diamond Lil” was included in a 1930 list of plays and books banned from screen adaptation. Paramount pushed hard to use the source material under a different name, and a committee finally gave the green light to utilize the play’s scant “suitable material” to conform with the Code. The SRC encouraged Paramount to “develop the comedy elements… to take care of possible offensiveness.” Luckily, comedy was West’s clutch. In a 1933 interview, the star confirmed: “I’ve developed a different way of selling my sex. I laugh them into it. I cover it with comedy. If you laugh with a sinner, you like her.”
The picture’s rampant innuendo caused a ruckus. The subject matter warranted an adults-only crowd in many places, something Paramount seized upon in advertising. It worked, as one Louisiana exhibitor noted: “The church people clamor for clean pictures, but they all come out to see Mae West.” Many wrestled with that moral conflict, including the Hollywood Citizen-News’ Elizabeth Yeaman, who found the picture “the most flagrant and utterly abandoned morsel of sin ever attempted on the screen, and I must confess that I enjoyed it enormously.” When Paramount attempted to re-release the picture in 1935, they were rigorously denied and informed that “the whole flavor of the picture is in direct violation of all that we have been trying to do by way of the Code during the past eighteen or twenty months.”
Sadly, the freewheeling fun and freedom West and others enjoyed onscreen would last just one more year, until the Code was fully enforced. With that, movies like She Done Him Wrong would be banished from the screen for decades.
