Pre-Code Hollywood explores the fascinating period in American motion picture history from 1930 to 1934 when the commandments of the Production Code Administration were violated with impunity in a series of wildly unconventional films -- a time when censorship was lax and Hollywood made the most of it. Though more unbridled, salacious, subversive, and just plain bizarre than what came afterwards, the films of the period do indeed have the look of Hollywood cinema -- but the moral terrain is so off-kilter that they seem imported from a parallel universe. In a sense, Doherty avers, the films of pre-Code Hollywood are from another universe. They lay bare what Hollywood under the Production Code attempted to cover up and push offscreen: sexual liaisons unsanctified by the laws of God or man, marriage ridiculed and redefined, ethnic lines crossed and racial barriers ignored, economic injustice exposed and political corruption assumed, vice unpunished and virtue unrewarded -- in sum, pretty much the raw stuff of American culture, unvarnished and unveiled. No other book has yet sought to interpret the films and film-related meanings of the pre-Code era -- what defined the period, why it ended, and what its relationship was to the country as a whole during the darkest years of the Great Depression...and afterward.
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Scholarly but at ease with a Hollywood aside or period slang... Providing a nearly complete chronicle and casting unifying light on an unexplored era in film. Kirkus Reviews Pre-Code Hollywood is a delight -- a text as witty and lively as the dialogue to be found in most of the pre-Code films under discussion. Filmfax Doherty keenly grasps the paradox at the heart of Hollywood censorship in the studio era. -- Clayton Koppes American Historical Review A pleasure to read. Where film criticism often seems doomed to crush the power and the immediacy of the moving image under the weight of theoretical abstraction and protracted analysis, Doherty's prose is swift, vivid and energetic, much like the films that he addresses here. -- Jeffrey Geiger American Studies Pre-Code Hollywood is not only fun to read, it's instructive -- a valuable, organized dip into a narrow slice of Hollywood history. -- Robert Gottlieb The New York Times Book Review Pre-Code Hollywood is not just a valuable exercise in film scholarship but also a fascinating cultural history of America in crisis. Doherty's discussion of Roosevelt's notorious manipulation of the mass media is itself worth the price of the book. -- Peter Kurth Salon.com Looks to become the standard work on this decidedly nonstandard age. -- Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times Excellent... Thomas Doherty's Pre-Code Hollywood cogently examines the [Pre-Code] pictures and their political impact. -- Richard Corliss Time A detailed and fascinating study. -- J. Hoberman The New York TImes This is a fascinating, in-depth look at an overlooked Hollywood era. Doherty re-creates the horse-trading over censorship and the social tensions and casual racism of a young industry... Highly recommended. Library Journal
About the Author
Thomas Doherty is associate professor in the American Studies Department and chair of the Film Studies Program at Brandeis University. He is the author of Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (Columbia, 1993) and Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s, and is associate editor of the film journal Cineaste.
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On or about July 1934 American cinema changed. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
On or about July 1934 American cinema changed. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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3.5 out of 5 stars
11 reviews
38 of 41 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Exciting subject matter, dull reading
9 Jun 2001
By wrbtu
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a good book, but it doesn't capture the excitement of its subject matter. All kinds of wild & crazy things were happening in pre-code (1930-1934) Hollywood movies (extramarital affairs, prostitution, robbery, violence, etc.), & they happened for the most part without moral judgment on the parts of the movie makers. But this book presents this exciting period in a rather dry, humorless way. It contains lots of useful information about the era & its surrounding politics, but also leaves out a lot of things that should be mentioned. On the plus side, it contains a complete version of the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (which is referred to in so many books, but hard to find a copy of). The photos are great, but small in size & printed on the same porous paper used for the text (which results in less sharpness than if printed on glossy paper). The biggest negative, in my opinion, is that a number of important pre-code movies are not even mentioned in this book (for example, Norma Shearer's "The Divorcee"). And why the author spends 4+ pages analyzing "Congorilla" (a 1932 African documentary that was made during the pre-code era but has little to do with Production Code censorship) is beyond me; it's a good analysis but perhaps belongs in a different book!
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
OK, but there's better out there
1 July 2002
By A Customer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I love this era, and I love reading about this era, but even so, I gave up reading this book about halfway through. There are better books about pre-Code, at least two or three. Geoffrey Blake has a great book about how the Code came to be, and Mick LaSalle and Mark Vierra also have excellent books about the artistry and the gossip and the history. This one is OK, but I'd recommend it only to people like me who just can't get enough. And even then, I found out, I can.
20 of 24 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Better Ones Out There
1 Aug 2001
By Melanie Daniel
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This is a very respectable but uninspired treatment of the pre-Code era. Its virtues come mainly in the beginning, with an interesting introduction. Its weakness stems from the fact that the author seems more fascinated by the politics of the era than with the movies -- and that he fails to connect the politics with the movies in a way that ultimately illuminates THE FILMS, on an artistic level. I don't think he has a feel for the ART of the era at all, and as a result the best chapters are about Franklin Roosevelt and the newsreels of the day. A decent treatment, but better books are out there.
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