“Woman of the Year” from 1942 was the first movie Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy made together. In this film, which began their dynamic partnership spanning eight films and three decades, they both are journalists working for the same paper. Sam Craig (Tracy) is a sportswriter, and Tess Harding (Hepburn) has an opinion column on world affairs. When Sam hears Tess say on a radio program that U.S. sports should be put on hold for the duration of World War II, he is deeply offended by her assault on the American way of life. He writes a reply to her statements in his column. As soon as Tess sees it, she has to write her own witty comeback in her column. Before this journalistic repartee can escalate into a war of the columns, their editor calls them both to his office and makes them call a truce, since it doesn’t look good for two writers on the same paper to get into a full-fledged fight!
About the Code
Let’s start with the basic facts about the Code. If you read Mr. Tucker’s article, you’ll see he refers to it as the “old Hayes Commission code.” The official name of the document is the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930. It’s commonly called the Hays Code after Will H. Hays (not Hayes); I don’t know where he got the word “Commission.” It’s a common misassumption that the Code was written by Will Hays, who was president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) from its creation in 1923 until his retirement in 1945, at which time it was renamed the Motion Picture Association of America (MPPA). It retained that title until 2019, when it was shortened to the Motion Picture Association (MPA), its current title. The Code was actually conceived and written by Martin J. Quigley, the head of a film trade papers publishing empire who was a community-minded Catholic from Chicago. His co-author was Father Daniel A. Lord, a priest from St. Louis, Missouri. Will Hays, a former Postmaster General and Presbyterian elder from Indiana, introduced the Code to Hollywood’s main moguls as his own document to hide its Catholic authorship.The MPPDA officially adopted the Code as Hollywood’s law of the land in 1930, but that wasn’t when the Code’s glory days began. Laws are useless without any justice department to enforce them. The Studio Relations Committee (SRC) was organized to enforce the Code, but it could only suggest changes. Studios were not compelled to submit scripts, costume designs, and story materials to the SRC during production, so the SRC could only review the finished films and suggest cuts, which defeated the Code’s whole point. As early as the 1910s, Martin Quigley wrote in his trade papers that censorship always destroyed films’ artistic worth, since cutting out dirty parts butchers the story without replacing the excised parts with something good. The only way to achieve clean movies would be for them to be made right in the first place, by following a code. For four years, the SRC failed to enforce the Code, and the resulting films, called Pre-Code, were often daring, risqué, and violent.
The Code finally gained power through proper enforcement when the SRC was replaced with the Production Code Administration (PCA), headed by Joseph I. Breen. This didn’t happen “at some point after about 1935,” as Mr. Tucker said, but in July of 1934. He was accurate, however, in saying the Code was “taken on by Hollywood under duress.” It wasn’t just the threat of federal censorship and other government pressure which made the studios voluntarily adopt a more serious method of Code enforcement, however. The Catholic Legion of Decency, later renamed the national Legion of Decency, was organized in 1933 with the sole purpose of uniting Catholics, as well as Protestant and non-religious citizens, against impure movies. Millions signed the Legion’s pledge within months, and Hollywood knew it had one last chance to prove its decency. Under Joseph Breen’s leadership, the Code proved to be a success, and the Code Era began. This heyday of clean movies lasted until October 1954, when Joseph Breen retired. Although the Code wouldn’t officially be replaced with the modern Rating System until 1968, the PCA failed to uphold its standards without Mr. Breen’s leadership.
Creativity Versus Compliance
In his article, Jeffrey Tucker said “the code is fun to watch unfold in these movies because producers were always trying to find ways around it. They get very creative.” This is the most complimentary point critics of the Code will make. Few people will give the PCA any credit for improving film content, but they will grudgingly admit it inspired creative filmmaking. How could they deny this, when the greatest films of all time were made during the Code’s heyday? On the other hand, Tucker maintains that the Code “really did hinder artistic creativity,” because “the plot endings are always rather obvious from the very outset.” I’d like to delve into this point a little deeper, since it’s a particularly bold statement.Tucker says the following three ultimate plot solutions can be taken for granted from the outset: “the love interest will end in marriage,” “the good guy will be vindicated,” and “none of the good guys in the film will ever face a gruesome death such as in a plane crash.” These are sweeping generalizations which may represent the trend for happy endings that flourished in classic Hollywood but for which many exceptions can be found. There are many Code romances that do not end in marriage, such as the earlier film starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, “Destry Rides Again” (1939); not only do they not get married, but their romance ends in tragedy. Some other famous Code love stories which do not end in marriage or the suggestion thereof include “Casablanca” (1942), “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), and “Sunset Boulevard” (1950). As for movies in which “good guys” face gruesome deaths, I can name countless war films, particularly “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” (1954), in which two main characters die like extras, and “Malaya” (1949), in which Jimmy Stewart dies a shockingly ignoble death. I might also mention “Bittersweet” (1940), a movie operetta in which the leading man is stabbed in an unfair duel for no good reason; this could also qualify as a movie in which the good guy isn’t really vindicated. It’s definitely harder to think of movies challenging this point, but one is “The Little Foxes” (1941), since Herbert Marshall’s character, a good man, receives no vindication in life or death for his wife’s wicked acts against him.
Exceptions to the general principles of happily ever after Code films can be found, because the Code did not specify that movies had to end happily. The Code had three General Principles: “No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin;” “Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented;” and “Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.” The Code did not specify that all romances must end in marriage. It merely stipulated that the “sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld.” Thus, a film couldn’t end with an illicit or adulterous romance being condoned, but every film couple didn’t have to get married. Films didn’t have to end happily as long as “throughout, the audience feels sure that evil is wrong and good is right.” A good guy can die gruesomely and without vindication, but a bad guy can’t get away with murder without some kind of punishment, even if only from his own conscience.
The Dilemma
Jeffrey Tucker concluded his article by saying he agrees with me that Code films are far superior to current releases, and he chooses the old classics for his personal viewing. Nevertheless, he disagrees with the basic principle of the Code, since he believes it fostered a stifling puritanism which, when viewed in retrospect, led to the moral rebellion. I find this conflicted interest particularly interesting in someone like Mr. Tucker, who respects traditionalism, common decency, and conservative values.Tucker is like a native-born Englishman who becomes an American citizen and spends most of his life in the United States. However, he frequently denounces the colonies’ Declaration of Independence from England, criticizing the Constitution and the governmental structure of our republic democracy. He argues that the basic principles of American freedom are flawed, yet he’s made the country his home for most of his life. If I were to encounter someone with such an attitude, he would baffle me as much as those who say they don’t like the Code yet prefer movies made during the Breen Era. How can you embrace the results without supporting the thing which made them possible?
The column battle in “Woman of the Year” is never won by either party, yet Tess admits she was losing when she agrees to a ceasefire. She knows she’s being defeated because Sam’s central point is simple yet strong: don’t abandon the ideals which have made something great when the going gets tough. To quote the dialogue: “Say, look, we’re concerned with a threat to what we like to call our American way of life. Baseball and the things it represents is part of that way of life. What’s the sense of abolishing the thing you’re trying to protect?”
