Are you looking for a primer on how the enforcement of what became known as the Hayes Code on the movie business in the 1930s impacted what came before and after 1934? I might have the book for you. In 1999 Thomas Doherty published what might be considered the go to book on early 1930s Hollywood, deep diving the various social forces at work and how they effected the creative output of the artists (and businesspeople) in Hollywood.
The Code was adopted in 1930 but was without any enforcement measures. By 1934, however, the enforcement was coming and it’s those in-between years that are the focus here. This is more academic than I anticipated going in so it took me a longer time to get through than I expected, but that really isn’t a strike against it. Make no mistake, this book starts off with some very dense writing, but once Doherty gets into the thematic sections of the book the readability increases.
Dougherty hits a wide variety of areas and approaches things that I hadn’t necessarily expected – such as newsreels. But one of the drawbacks for me was that I hadn’t realized before I requested it from my library system that this was published more than 25 years ago at this point. In many ways the research is the research, but I think some of the takeaways that Doherty argues for in the text might have been different had he published this in the past 10 years, especially the ways in which non-white, non-heterosexual, and in many cases non-male stories and the people who created them were systematically removed from the output of studios based on complying with the Code.
Bingo Square: Arts. The art of cinema and all the various types of artists who contributed to it are featured.