Cinemas, Identities and Beyond

To placate the resurgent opposition, the MPPDA promised to abide by a set of guidelines more extensive and restrictive than the simple nostrums enshrined in the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls.” The document that articulated the new commitment to screen morality was the Production Code. Written in 1929 by Martin J. Quigley, an influential editor and publisher of motion picture trade periodicals, and Reverend Daniel A. Lord, a multitalented Jesuit who first lent his spiritual expertise to Hollywood as the Catholic advisor to Cecil B. DeMille’s biblical epic The King of Kings (1927), the Production Code was the...