To understand how this unlikely alliance began, we need to go back to 1921. Roughly a decade after its birth, the American film industry had become a big business, and studios were courting Wall Street investors to provide the capital they needed as they grew. But Hollywood had also gained a reputation as the American Babylon, infamous for debauchery both on and off the screen. While newspapers breathlessly covered movie star scandals, state censorship boards hacked apart offending films, resulting in fines for studios and plummeting ticket sales when these clumsily edited versions of the films reached theaters. In 1921 alone, representatives from 37 states introduced nearly 100 bills in Congress calling for federal regulation of the film industry; that made potential investors especially skittish.
Studio heads seized on a bold strategy: self-censorship. In 1922, Hollywood created the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, the predecessor to the modern Motion Picture Association. As its first chairman, the studio moguls appointed William H. Hays, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and postmaster general under President Warren G. Harding.
Hays made several attempts to introduce clean movie guidelines: one was a list of “Don’ts” (topics that were off-limits) and “Be Carefuls” (topics that should be treated with “special care”). He ordered studios to submit all scripts and film concepts to the M.P.P.D.A.—nicknamed the Hays Office—for approval before production could begin.
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