San Antonio College Library

Cultural historian Thomas Doherty tells the story of Joseph I. Breen, a media-savvy Victorian Irishman, who controlled Hollywood's Production Code Administration from 1934 to 1954. Breen's role in this Hollywood office was to censor American motion pictures.

This volume traces the rise and fade-out of Hollywood's attempt at self-censorship, the Production Code of Will Hays and Joe Breen, and the variety of social pressure groups and tensions that converged in fear of the power of the silver screen. Breen emerges as something of a hero for his earnest attempt to respect both the latent art and the blatant commercial interests of the industry. The 11 major case studies include the prolonged disputes over...

"'Banned in the USA' is a unique account of the ways in which British films released in America had to undergo an unprecedented form of self-censorship in order to meet the requirements of the US Production Code." "Anthony Slide tells here for the first time the inside story of this on-going dialogue between the British film-making industry and the American censors, making full use of the Production Code Administration's recently opened files. Film-by-film,...

In the libertine 1970s, arguments supporting the right to see challenging films were twisted to provide intellectual cover for movies created solely to lure viewers with outrageous or titillating material. Haberski exposes the unquestioning defense of free expression as an absolutist approach that mirrors the censorial impulse found among the postwar era's restrictive moral guardians.