Hollywood Production Code Lightens Up – Ends Ban on Miscegenation, Abortion, Illegal Drugs
The Hollywood Production Code on this day loosened censorship of movies by ending the bans on miscegenation, abortion, prostitution, white slavery and kidnapping.
Hollywood was under increasing pressure to ease up on censorship from changing public tastes and attitudes about sexuality, pressure from international movies that treated sexuality more openly, and the 1952 Supreme Court decision in Burstyn v. Wilson, which ruled that films were a form of expression protected by the First Amendment. The rise of television as America’s favorite source of entertainment also threatened film attendance.
The Code was relaxed even further over the next decade as social mores regarding sexuality and drugs changed dramatically. The Code was finally scrapped altogether and replaced by a new ratings system on November 1, 1968. The new ratings system used the categories of G, PG, R and X. The X rating backfired as pornography makers adverstised their films as XXX. In response, Hollywood dropped the X rating.
Learn more: Ellen C. Scott, Cinema Civil Rights: Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era (2015)
Learn more at a timeline on film censorship: https://www.aclu.org/files/multimedia/censorshiptimeline.html
Read: Frank Walsh, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (1996)