The Pre-Code Blogathon is an online event hosted by the blogs pre-code.com and Shadows and Satin – a number of blogs are taking part, each one posting about a pre-Code movie or related topic.
Karavansara is taking part in this game by looking back (again) at that weird Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza – Madam Satan.
Click on the banner for a full list of the blogs participating in the event
But first, a quick recap about the Code – the Hays Code was enforced in the 1930s, as a response to the wild, unchecked and scandal-ridden image Hollywood had acquired in the 1920s.
Will H. Hays, the czar of all the rushes had been appointed guardian of Hollywoodland’s morality, and the guidelines – very strict guidelines – that his office enforced on behalf of the production companies themselves: the movie moguls had in fact decided that a central censorship system was probably better than the previous practice of state-by-state censorship regulations.
But between the founding of the Hays Office and the actual application of the rules, there was a brief time in which deregulation was (supposedly) absolute – the Pre-Code era.
When Hollywood was wild – and when Cecil B. DeMille was asked by Louis B. Mayer to do a musical, and he produced a movie called Madam Satan.
Karavansara 