When Hollywood came to be viewed as a place of the dammed and sinful, Will Hayes, a republican and Presbyterian, non-smoker, non-drinker, but wired to power in Washington and Wall Street, implemented the Hayes code which has been in force until the early 60s when it formally ended and was replaced by a rating system which rather warns than forbids.
Ironically the enforcement of the code came as a challenge to script writers and directors and one can say that Hollywood’s most creative era was due to it. Clara and Julia Kuperberg selected clips to demonstrate how movies often reflected their time from pre-code sexuality to post-code soberness in line with a Puritan heritage.
