Cleaning Up the Movies.

• Author: PRICE, SEAN

In the 1930s, people said Hollywood was a bad influence. So it cracked down on itself.

The girlfriend gets a pouty look and says, "Maybe you've found someone you like better." So gangster James Cagney, in reply, picks up half a grapefruit from the breakfast table and shoves it in her face.

What's wrong with this picture? Plenty, said critics of Hollywood in 1931, when this classic scene from The Pub& Enemy first appeared on America's movie screens. Religious leaders and politicians said films like this one glamorized violence and sex and set a bad example for the nation's youth. Sound familiar?

These leaders' protests--and the threat of government censorship they hinted at--led producers to establish a tough code for what was acceptable in movies. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the office that administered that code, the Hays Office, told the studios what they could and could not put on the screen. Its record is worth recalling, now that entertainment's influence on youth is a hot issue once again.

When sex scandals had rocked Hollywood in the early 1920s, the movie studios had formed the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America to stop the bad publicity and supposedly make sure the films themselves were clean. They chose Will H. Hays from Indiana, President Warren G. Harding's Postmaster General, to head the group. But Hays wasn't given much real power over the content of films. Racy movies were simply too popular.

In the early 1930s, however, the Great Depression began to hurt ticket sales, and religious groups offended by movies like The Public Enemy threatened to drain Hollywood's pocketbook further. A Roman Catholic organization called the Legion of Decency, flanked by Protestant and Jewish groups, called for a boycott of the movies. On June 9, 1934, Philadelphia's Catholic cardinal told The New York Times:

Perhaps the greatest menace to faith and morals in America today is the motion picture theater.... The Catholic people of this diocese are, therefore, urged to register their united protest against immoral and indecent films by remaining away entirely from all motion picture theaters.

Religious leaders across the country also began lobbying Congress to censor movies. A 1915 U.S. Supreme Court decision had ruled that movies were not protected free speech under the Constitution. As a result, some state and local governments had set up censorship boards, but so far their influence had been spotty.

This time, Hollywood...