Authors League, Hollywood Reach Voluntary Censorship Agreement
The Authors League, founded in 1917 and representing leading American authors, on this day reached an agreement with Hollywood producers for voluntary censorship of film scripts.
Under the agreement, whenever a Hollywood film company received an offer for a book that it deemed “unsuitable for the screen,” the author would have the right to appear before an investigative committee and present his or her argument on why the book should not be rejected as a movie. If the book is still rejected, the author would have the right to prepare a new version with the objectionable material removed. If the new version was accepted, it would not be advertised as being connected with the original book, so as to not “mislead theatergoers.”
There is no evidence, however, the this voluntary censorship scheme was ever actually active or had any impact on Hollywood films.
In retrospect, it is astonishing that a group representing the leading authors in the U.S. would agree to any prior censorship arrangement. But in fact the idea was similar to the efforts of the Hollywood studios to create voluntary film censorship codes as a way of preventing government censorship, which they deeply feared. See for example the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” list of October 15, 1927; the voluntary March 31, 1930 production code; and finally the June 13, 1934 Motion Picture Production Code, which had an enforcement process.Learn more: Paul Boyer, Purity in Print: The Vice-Society Movement and Book Censorship in America (1968)
Read: Jay A. Gertzman, Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940 (1999)
Learn more at a timeline of movie censorship: https://www.aclu.org/files/multimedia/censorshiptimeline.html
Read: Frank Walsh, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (1996)
Watch clips of “pre-Code” (that is, pre-1934) Hollywood films: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81DwZgieHmg
Learn more about the history of the Authors League here