A Damned Nuisance: The Production Code and the Profanity Amendment of 1954

Abstract

Hollywood's Production Code was a remarkably durable document. Adopted in 1930 by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), the Code was created to quiet a mounting public protest over violent and suggestive movies. Its endorsement by the corporations controlling the industry constituted a tacit promise to improve the moral quality of American film. To effectuate that promise, the Code contained a set of rigid guidelines and specific taboos designed to eliminate controversial content from motion pictures. Four years later those guidelines were incorporated into an effective system of industrial censorship enforced by the Production Code Administration (PCA). Under that system, no studio would produce and no theater affiliated with the MPPDA would exhibit any motion picture not bearing the PCA's seal of approval. Because the studio corporations that composed the MPPDA owned the nation's most lucrative theaters, the financial success of a film depended on its receiving the coveted PCA seal. In this way the MPPDA, working through its Code office in Hollywood, controlled the access to the American film market, and the PCA became Holly wood's censor.1