Southern Censorship against Hollywood in Better Films Committees and Local Censorship Boards: Film Control as a Woman’s Political Weapon

Abstract

Despite the advent of the Production Code in 1930/1934, which was supposed to empty local censorship boards of their substance, they continued to act, particularly in the Jim Crow South. The Southern censors used their status to fight against film representations that they considered likely to disturb public order. The control of Hollywood cinema became the place where the political opinions of the South were expressed – mostly those of white Southern women. Censorship committees were organized within Women’s Clubs, Parent-Teacher Associations, and Better Films Committees (BFC). From Florida to Alabama, the Better Films Committees allowed these women to occupy a space where their political voice could be expressed, opposing any representation they deemed ‘obscene’. This article examines the ways in which women made their voices heard, through censorship, in the face of a male-dominated Hollywood industry and Code administration. Censorship of Hollywood films constituted another locus of politics for women in BFCs, even though they did not have access to the vote until the ratification of the 19th Amendment and were very little represented in political institutions. Women censors negotiated constantly with the PCA and Will Hays and saw themselves as the moral center of the United States – which meant that they fought against attempts to push them to the margins of cinema.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Kelly Cornwell at the Atlanta Public Library, who had to look through many boxes to find what I was looking for, and Carolyn Golowka, who provided me with Neil R. Wallace’s autobiography. Kelly and Carolyn were essential to my work, and their support and enthusiasm meant a lot to me. Francis Bordat kindly agreed to read this article and I am grateful for his suggestions, as well as my readers’. I would also like to thank the following institutions, which opened their archives to me and whose archivists went out of their way to help me in my research: Atlanta Public Library, Special Collections; Birmingham Public Library, Special Collections; Little Rock Board of Censors, Little Rock City Clerk Records; MPPDA Digital Archive, Flinders University; Motion Picture Association of America: Production Code Administration records, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS; New York Public Library, National Board of Review of Motion Picture Collection, Special Collections; Selena Sloan Butler Papers, Special Collections, Auburn Avenue Research Library; Atlanta Public Library.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Thomas Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration, Columbia University Press, 2007, 242. Christine Gilliam banned Scarlet Street in 1945, Lost Boundaries in 1949, and Blackboard Jungle in 1955 – all of which led to the board being sued.

2 A 1932 Variety article reads: “Censorship is increasing in the United States and its cost to the industry is mounting. In normal times, when there were far fewer scissor wielders, cuts and eliminations made in pictures cost the business $1,000,000 yearly. Today there is municipal censorship in 17 states and state censorship in seven states.” “Hot and Cold Censoring,” Variety, 27 December 1932, p. 7.

3 Jennifer Fronc, Monitoring the Movies: The Fight Over Film Censorship and Regulation in Early Twentieth-Century America, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017.

4 Kate Hagan, Voice of the People, A Word to Women Voters, Mobile, Alabama, 18 February 1922. Regional Correspondence, Alabama, National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Collection, Special Collections, New York Public Library.

5 Joan Marie Johnson, “The Colors of Social Welfare in the New South: Black and White Clubwomen in South Carolina, 1900-1930,” Elna C. Green (ed.), Before the New Deal: Social Welfare in the South, 1830-1930, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999, pp. 160-180.

6 Corresponding Secretary to Hon. E. C. Payne, May 26, 1917. Regional Correspondence, Alabama, Albany-Birmingham, 1915-1924, National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Collection, Special Collections, New York Public Library.

7 Georgia Women, Georgia Department of Archives and History, 1926.

8 Little Rock Daily News, 17 January 1921, p. 8. Timothy G. Nutt’s article on censorship in Little Rock expands on the role of the board further: “‘Somebody Somewhere Needs to Draw the Line:’ Deep Throat and the Regulation of Obscenity in Little Rock,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Summer 2010, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 91-116.

9 Kathleen Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

10 “Woman’s Suffrage,” Alabama Equal Suffrage Association Scrapbook, 1914-1918; The Handbook of the National American Woman Suffrage, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1911, p. 183. Mary Martha Thomas, The New Woman in Alabama: Social Reform and Suffrage, 1890-1920, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992, p. 160.

11 Robin O. Harris, “Biographical Sketch of Zella (Mrs. Alonzo) Richardson,” Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, accessed online at https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1010111694, 18 July 2023.

12 Ryan Driskell Tate, “Biography of Lulu Alice Boyers Markwell,” Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, accessed online at https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1010596128, 18 July 2023.

13 See the chapter “Southern Enterprises: Building Better Films Committees in the Urban South,” Jennifer Fronc, Monitoring the Movies, 100-126.

14 Will H. Hays, “Upbuilding the Nation’s Life Through Motion Pictures,” General Federation of Women’s Clubs 16^th Biennial Convention.

15 Will Hays’ Open Door policy, which he implemented soon after his arrival at the MPPDA, consisted in inviting members of various organizations and social groups to participate in the “cleaning up” of the movies.

16 “Women as Movie Censors,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, 21 August 1913, p. 6.

17 Letter from Neil R. Wallace to Will Hays, July 8, 1932, Red Headed Woman, Production Code Administration files, AMPAS.

18 Thomas Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor, p. 83.

19 Alison M. Parker, “Mothering the Movies: Women Reformers and Popular Culture,” Francis G. Couvares, Movie Censorship and American Culture, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996, pp. 73-96.

20 “From Mrs. Harriet B. Adams, Amusement Supervisor, City of Birmingham,” undated, circa 1934, The Thin Man production file, AMPAS.

21 Report of May 1926, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Special Collections, Atlanta Public Library.

22 “City Amusement Inspector Attends Meeting of National Review Board,” The Birmingham News, 21 March 1924, p. 13.

23 “The Atlanta press was most complimentary to Mrs. Snell and declared that her address before the Atlanta Better Films Committee was a great inspiration.” “City Amusement Inspector Attends Meeting of National Review Board,” The Birmingham News, 21 March 1924, p. 13.

24 Letter from Colonel Jason Joy to Darryl F. Zanuck, 27 July 1932, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang Production File, AMPAS.

25 Letter from W.D. McGuire to Neil R. Wallace, 17 November 1921, National Board of Review of Motion Pictures collection, Special Collections, New York Public Library.

26 “One wildcat picture brought in, which proved (after a preview readily granted by the exhibitor) harmless and very good for the negroes. It was a negro picture put on by negro stars.” Report of October 1925, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Special Collections, Atlanta Public Library.

27 In the South, because the film’s ideology corresponded to the views of many white Southerners, protests against the film seem to have been less vigorous than elsewhere in the territory (Melvyn Stokes, The Birth of a Nation, 2007). In Atlanta, protests were limited, as Matthew Bernstein shows in his article “At This Time in This City: Black Atlanta and the Première of The Birth of a Nation,” in Stokes and McEwan, In the Shadow of The Birth of a Nation: Racism, Reception and Resistance, Springer, 2023, pp. 175-190.

28 “We hope to have in the near future, a group of intelligent, reliable colored women who will review the colored theatres, of many viewpoints.” Report of 14 July 1925, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Special Collections, Atlanta Public Library.

29 Mrs. H. R. Butler to Mrs. Alonzo Richardson, Chairman and Members of the Better Film Committee, 23 January 1924, Selena Sloan Butler Papers, Special Collections, Auburn Avenue Research Library, Atlanta.

30 Selena Sloan Butler Papers, Auburn Avenue Branch, Atlanta Public Library.

31 Report of July 1926, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Special Collections, Atlanta Public Library.

32 Report of April 1936, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Special Collections, Atlanta Public Library.

33 Report of August 1937, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Special Collections, Atlanta Public Library.

34 “Scenes and acts in which marriage relations or love scenes are portrayed or hinted at between a white person and any colored person, either full or mixed blood.” Section 7, f, Ordinance n°4009, 1926, Little Rock Board of Censors, Little Rock City Clerk Records.

35 “Uncle Tom is Barred in Birmingham,” The Exhibitors Herald, 24 November 1938, p. 25.

36 “Atlanta Censors Ban Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Film Daily, 16 August 1928.

37 “As Four Women Hear It!,” The Atlanta Constitution, 21 November 1926, p. 61.

38 Report of November 1931, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Special Collections, Atlanta Public Library.

39 Report of October 1925, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Special Collections, Atlanta Public Library.

40 Report of December 1935, Minutes of the Library Board of Trustees, Special Collections, Atlanta Public Library.

41 Letter from Lamar Trotti to Will H. Hays, 20 August 1927, MPPDA Digital Archives, Record #396.

42 The Atlanta Constitution, 26 February 1939, p. 47.

43 Leigh Ann Wheeler, Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873–1935, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004, p. 179.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claire Dutriaux

Claire Dutriaux is Associate Professor at Sorbonne Université, Paris and affiliated with the research unit HDEA at Sorbonne. She wrote her PhD dissertation on the representation of white male Southerners in Hollywood films. Her research focuses on portrayals of social issues, race, gender, and politics in Hollywood films, which she has explored in articles such as “Racial Violence at the Crossroads of West and South in Rosewood (John Singleton, 1997)” Revue LISA/LISA e-journal, vol. XVI-n°1 | 2018 or “Outcasts, Hoboes, and Freight-Hoppers: Riding the Freight Trains in Boxcar Bertha (Martin Scorsese, 1972), Emperor of the North (Robert Aldrich, 1973) and Bound for Glory (Hal Ashby, 1976),” Film Journal, n°3, 2016.