October 23, 2025 • 21 mins
In this episode, I spoke with Danny Reid about his latest book "Pre-Code Essentials: Must-See Cinema from Hollywood's Untamed Era, 1930-1934". With unparalleled freedom in the Golden Age of Hollywood, movies produced during the “pre-Code” era between 1930 and 1934 boldly confronted a wide range of provocative subjects, including sexual freedom, the glorification of outlaws, racial taboos, and class consciousness. Films of the period include beloved classics likeGrand Hotel(1932) and King Kong(1933) but also lesser-known gems like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang(1932) and Ann Vickers (1933). These films, produced at the height of the Great Depression, pushed the limits of contemporary social norms at a time when Hollywood studios were desperate to attract audiences—by any means necessary.
Doug Hess is the Producer/Host. Forgotten Hollywood is on Facebook and the books are on Amazon
Doug Hess is the Producer/Host. Forgotten Hollywood is on Facebook and the books are on Amazon
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Let's go. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Forgotten Hollywood,
your podcasts and memories of yesteryear. My name is Doug
Heads and if you're tuning in Forgotten Hollywood for the
first time, what I do in this podcast is take
you on a journey back in time and share with
you pieces of Hollywood that you may or may not
know about. And in this episode, we have a very
special guest with us today, Deanie Reid, and he is
(00:25):
here to talk about his latest book, pre Code Essentials,
Must See Cinema from Hollywood's Unteamed Aaron nineteen thirty nineteen
thirty four. I should also mention that Danie has a
co author with this, Kim Laperi. Unfortunately she is unable
to be with us here today, but Dannie, welcome and
(00:47):
Forgotten Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hi, nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well, thank you for spending a few minutes out of
your time to talk about your book. And one of
the things that we always like to start off with
is allowing the author to state in his own words
what the book is about.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Sure, so I've been writing about pre Coote Hollywood for
about ten years now at my website precote dot com.
So this is kind of a culmination of the book.
I've always been very interested in introducing people to classic Hollywood.
I find that nowadays, when there's not really cable channels
or curated services, like a lot of black and white films,
(01:26):
law of Hollywood history gets overlooked or forgotten. And I
became fascinated with the pre code era. Back I said
ten years ago, this is right after like the housing
market crash and eight So I saw The Divorce, a
which I thought was way ahead of its time. And
I started watching all these movies from the Great Depression
and they really kind of hit hold with what was
going on in the States at the time. And then
(01:48):
over the last fifteen years or so, as history has progressed,
it's been very interesting to see how the nineteen thirties
have lined up with modern times. You know, it's not
just it's not really history itself, but it's a lot
of history rhyming with itself. So this book is kind
of a culmination of my fascination with the early nineteen thirties,
and then also this idea that we want to create
(02:11):
something that's both very easy for people to get into,
kind of like a checklist for people to attempt for
newbies who don't know what pre Coode Hollywood is, but
then also people who know a lot about this era,
hopefully they find out some new stuff as well about
these films.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah. Absolutely, So maybe let's just take a second and
really talk about what pre code is. You know, I
think a lot of people have a little general understanding
of it, but I know you have a chapter in
your book that's really focused and dedicated to that, and
just wanted to get your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Sure, and a lot of this stuff when you get
into Hollywood history, a lot of it could be very
fudgy around the edges, right, Like you know, pre Coote Hollywood,
we'recalling is a genre like film noir and film noir
people are Some people will say it's only the stuff
made World War Two. Some people say it's only the
fifties pre code Hollywood. The definition I typically go with
(03:03):
is movies from April nineteen thirty when the Code was enacted,
till July nineteen thirty four. Now there's a lot of
wiggle room in there. Some of the other authors who've
talked about this era will very definitely say only only
for certain types of content, only for certain movies. Some
people will say like, well, it really should go from
the end of the Silent Era to nineteen thirty four,
(03:26):
because there's some wiggle room there, although not my favorite movies.
And then others will say, well, at the end of
Night in July nineteen thirty four, when it became enacted,
there were still several pictures that have been made of
the early part of nineteen thirty four. They got chopped
up and destroying the rest of nineteen thirty four. So
there's a lot of leeway given there. And I guess
I'm kind of overlooking. I'm kind of counting my horses
(03:47):
before they're coached. So the idea is the code that
we're being referred to is the Motion Picture Production Code
of nineteen thirty and that was a set of guidelines.
What was happening in America was motion picture studios had
for years been kind of pushing boundaries about what they
could and couldn't show on screen. Local sensors would fight back.
(04:09):
There'd be censors in towns and cities and states, and
they'd go back to the Hollywood studios and say, hey,
you can't show this movie here. And this ended up
costing the studios a lot of money because they'd have
one print that had to be made up to go
to Kansas, one print they could go to Massachusetts, and
then you know, Florida might say, Nope, we're not taking
that movie at all because it's terrible. In nineteen twenty two,
(04:30):
when Bill Hayes came to Hollywood, they tried to client
cling them up with the Dews and do not so
they kind of made a list of rules like don't
show this, do show that. Nineteen twenty nine nineteen thirty,
when the Great Depression hit, a lot of these studios
were over leveraged. They'd been rushing to put in speakers
in all their theaters, rushing to make sound films, spending
millions upon millions of dollars upon this, and suddenly all
(04:50):
that liquid assets they had froze up. So they desperately
needed people who suddenly had no money. Quarter of America
was out of work at that time, of those people
to come in the theater, and so a lot of
the movies they made were very timely, were very scandalous,
very like taking on social issues of the day. At
the time, only major competitor was radio. So what they
(05:11):
really had to their advantage was using star power, using
these subjects that couldn't go across the broadcast waves and
exploiting them to their back sill. In this era lasts
until nineteen thirty four. There's a lot of changes within
this time period, but nineteen thirty four is when Joseph
Breen and the Catholics Legion of Decency kind of came
(05:32):
in and forced Hollywood to adopt the code very strictly.
Whereas now there's a Production Code office and every movie
that gets made has to go to this office and
get approved before it can get made. So while there
are movies made after nineteen thirty four that's still scandalous
or might have certain subjects, there's a reason why if
you watch Casablanca, there's not like a sex scene or
people dying, or there's not a topless scene stuck in
(05:54):
to be or not to be, you know. So it's
a very interesting era where you will be watching a
movie that seems pretty innocuous and then suddenly you'll get
to like Murder in the Vanities, where they'll sing a
song about sweet marijuana, and then there's a scene where
cactus blow flowers are topless women just barely covering themselves,
and so it's just very interesting to dive into this
(06:14):
era because there's so much happening in the industry and
American history in the movies themselves. It's really fun and
really invigorating.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I think. Yeah, it's kind of that perfect storm for
lack of a better word, that's going on with society
at that time.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, and it's really like in the technology and industry
as well because sound films. You watch movies from early
nineteen thirty thirty one, they're very creaky for the most part.
You see a couple of amazing ones squeak through, but
then you get to thirty two and thirty three, and
for my money, as much as people talk up thirty
nine or forty two or whatever, I think thirty three
is probably the best year for movies that Hollywood ever had.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
So absolutely very interesting. Well, one thing I really liked
about your book, so you have approximate, I think, through
what fifty different movies that you really talk about in
the book. And what's nice is you can go to
the index table context excuse me, and kind of look
at it and then kind of pick and choose the
(07:11):
films that you want to talk read about you don't
have to read the book in order. I kind of
like that in terms of that, but maybe talk a
little bit about how you pick those fifty films, because
there's some that are obviously classics that we all know about,
and then there's some that are you know, maybe some
of the readers or listeners are hearing about it or
reading about these films for the first time.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Sure, and it was an easy like I had this
idea for this book about ten years ago or so,
and I came up the list, and then Kim and
I met at the TCM Film Festival in twenty fifteen
and we hit it off, and I said, you want
to collaborate on this. She came back to me with
our own list. There's a lot of negotiation there, and
then when the TCM finally accepted our pitch, there's some
negotiation there for what the films are. I'm surprised by
(07:57):
a few that made it in. There's some that now
I look back and like, why do I include that one?
Like myself, So it's kind of trying to be like,
I wanted to make sure if somebody picked up this
book and they're like flipping through it, they're not gonna
know absolutely zero of the movies because I would feel like,
you know, they're just gonna be embarrassed. So we've got
King Kong, Most Dangerous Game, Grand Hotel, which is probably
(08:19):
like the best Best Picture winner other than All Quite
on the Western Front, which is also in there. So
try to do some of the stuff that is well
known but also has a lot of pre code content.
But then kind of went through I've been I've reviewed
over eight hundred of the pre code films at my blog,
which is still like maybe a quarter of the title.
But I have a pretty good understanding of what I've
(08:40):
seen and what I haven't seen. Yeah, and there's a
few of these movies here, like The Wheeler and Woolsey one.
So this is Africa that's never been released on home video.
It's forty minutes, it's on YouTube, So it's kind of
like this interesting blend of you know, some of these
will find in four K criterion discs like Cineas the
(09:02):
Miriam Hopkins one. Oh I'm not gon remember that some
of these have been released on Blu ray and on
HDDVD and everything, and some of these you're not going
to be able to see outside unless you're lucky, like
a printing of one city or another. So we want
to make sure it's a good variety of I've heard this,
it's easy to get and then one or two where
if you've gotten this far and you've got to keep digging.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Right, So it's a good mixture in terms of that. Yeah,
and I'm looking at these as well. And you know,
one of them that jumps out is Public Enemy, that's
early on in the book. In terms of that, maybe
just talk a little bit about that. That film, I mean,
(09:43):
that's it's got an interesting scene in there that's based
off of a true story where Cagney is place in
something in his girlfriend's face. I'm will completely blank on
the scene.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
It's May Clark with the grape fruit.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Grapefruit.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's okay, it's pretty it's pretty random. And
there's stories. There's lots of stories about that scene, in
particular Cagney. That movie is very interesting because Cagney initially
wasn't the lead. He was supposed to be the second lead,
and then they switched the roles because like what are
we thinking? And so one of the rumors was that
Cagney kind of improvised pushing the great Fruit and make
(10:21):
Clark's face. Others have it said that he and William Wellman,
who was the director, came up with it together. May
Clark's biography was very autobiography, was very negative about the
whole thing. It kind of ruined her career to some
extent because that's the only thing people remembered her for.
But there's a lot of stuff going on with her
as well, and even I think the year after that,
(10:42):
May Clark and Cagney starred together in another picture where
they actually just parody it, where they're hanging out together
and she's like, let's go to California. It's beautiful. They
got all sorts of great things like grapefruits, and then
she makes a face. So that's an interesting movie. It's
also part of that crime cycle that was really hitting off,
like thirty and thirty one and then Scarface, which is
(11:03):
in Here is a Bear. So I think it came
out in thirty two because there were so many fights
over it was an independent production. Kim told me that
the production code files for that were over like one
hundred pages long, fifty two hundred pages, and it's just
like so intense just because of how glorified the violence
came across and the implied incest between Paul Mooney and Worak,
(11:25):
And it's a fantastic movie. It's probably one of the
best ones we cover in the book. But it is
also that kind of is like the last, for my money,
probably one of the last great gingster pictures of the time,
because after that you start getting more into the bad
guy I always lose. It's not that Scarface gets away
with anything. We can still feel bad for him to extend.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Right. And then years later in eighty three it was
remade again and with Albacino.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, yeah, there's not as much cocaine in the original.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Right, So tell me a little bit about the writing
in the research. Did anything really surprise you doing this?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Well, this book had such a long germation. I don't
know if that's the right word. Like it started off
ten years ago. We kind of wrote it in fits
and starts. At one point we'd pitched it to TCM
and they're like, oh, last week we just bought Forbidden
Hollywood from Mark Biras so no, and we're like, well, okay,
I guess TCM's not publishing it. I went through a
period of Unemployment where I actually wrote most of the book,
(12:26):
just kind of mosting around, and this book is all original, Like,
this is not stuff for my blog, this is not
stuff Kim's written before, so it's all new material. And
during this time I wrote some of it, Kim lives
in LA could go to the archives of the Margaret
Hare Museum and did research on the actual production code files.
So there's some stuff in here that's not been any
of the other any of the other pre code books. Personally,
(12:49):
it's kind of such a blur to me. Kim was
because it's like I wrote most of this book like
seven years ago, and then GCM came back and I'd
written one hundred and fifty ten one hundred and twenty
thousand words and TCM came back said, great, we'll buy it.
It's eight thousand words. I'm like, you're not even done
with all of it yet. This is terrible. So there's
some good stuff, there's some stuff that had to get
(13:10):
cut out, like a lot of the Probably the craziest
story is the one Kim uncovered where there's one of
the movies it's called Gabriel over the White House, which
is an insane film it's basically the president of the
United States gets bumped on the head in a car
crash and becomes possessed by the angel Gabriel and starts
wreaking vengeance upon the American population. Like he goes out
(13:31):
and arrests gangsters and puts them on military tribunals. So
you have like tanks rolling down This sounded a lot sillier,
like five years ago, tanks rolling down the streets of
Chicago arresting, you know, bootleggers, and then the bootleggers get
their revenge by doing a drive by on the White House.
And the movie ends with Gabriel bombing the American Navy
(13:52):
himself to show the world leaders of the world that
I'm just crazy enough that I'll kill you too. So
it's a very wild movie. And what Kim discovered is
that the people at MGM Maky had actually consulted incoming
President Franklin Roosevelt Audit and gotten his feedback as well.
So there's a lot of like really weird little details
like that about that movie, where it's it's a very
(14:15):
interesting film and was apparently very ahead of its time.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
But yeah, only in Hollywood could you write, yeah, like that.
Oh wow, that's that's great. I know we're getting closer
in time, but we had to have a few more
minutes here. Obviously there's the classics, we all know those.
But what are a couple of films that you would
(14:41):
strongly encourage somebody to watch that made the fifty and
then maybe give us one or two films that didn't
make the book that maybe somebody should think about.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Sure, it's kind of hard for me because at a
certain point I forget what's obscure. I'm sure this yeah,
because you're like, I know this movie, doesn't everybody know?
Like nineteen thirty three's Employees Entrance, which is one of
my favorite films, So obviously I recommend that one in
terms of like really obscure ones in here, I think
if you haven't seen.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Oh what is it?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It's headed a minute ago. Sorry, my brain's going it's
like nine thirty here. Oh I Am Suzanne, which is
this Fox musical about a woman who is a dancer
and she's kind of held up and coddled by these
promoters who are exploiting her, and she falls in love
with this guy who wants to make a puppet of her,
and then she falls in love with him, and they
(15:39):
get married, and she realizes he's not in love with her,
he's in love with the puppet of her. And it
turns into this end where there's this whole weird dream
sequence where she's in hell and all these puppets are
screaming at her, and there's like she's gonna have a
puppet as a baby, and she ends up shooting the
puppet of herself, and it's utterly bizarre. But it's also
(15:59):
like doing the research, and I think I mentioned this
in the book. People are like, this is great for kids.
Kids love puppets, and you're like, this is like an
intense psycho sexual drama about a woman dealing with whether
or not her husband loves the idealized version of her
or not. You're telling kids to go see this? Are
you kidding me? That one's pretty great looking on my list?
(16:22):
Three on the Match is not super obscure in pre
code circles, but it is probably pretty obscure to people
in general. That's an amazing little film where you have
and Devorak, Joan Blondell, and Betty Davis Betty Davis way
before she was super popular, as three women who all
kind of switch social positions, and de Vorak gives this
a fantastic performance where she becomes a drug addict. She's
(16:44):
a socialated, becomes a drug addict and eventually has to
help a gangster kidnap her own kid, and she's clearly
got a cocaine addiction. Humphrey Bogart shows up as very
early in his career as one of the gangsters. He
does a little like nose thing while looking at her
and winking at his friends, like I know what's wrong
with her. It is really interesting because it played on
this event at the time we don't talk about as
(17:05):
quite as much but the Charles Lindberg baby kidnapping, So
it kind of is sensationalizing that, which is wild for
where it goes. In terms of movies that didn't make
it in I Have a couple of Big regrets, nineteen
thirty three is female with Ruth Chatterton. That's one of
the movies where somebody said it to me afterwards, I'm like,
oh no, it did go in the book, which is
(17:27):
a very interesting movie where she plays an auto executive
like she's a woman auto executive in nineteen thirty three
and mainly her main hobby is betting her workers, Like
she just goes around, throws pillows in the floor, invites
them back to her mansion, just makes big eyes at them.
And then the movie ends with her falling in love
with George Brent, which is kind of a downer because
she's going to give up everything. But the people who
(17:48):
made the movie reshot that had were forced to reshoot
the ending because it was a little too progressive, and
they make little subtle jibes at it, like where they
have George Brent standing on her big science saying winnipig
and he's like playing in a shooting game, and it's
utterly ridiculous. That's my bigger gret. I have kind of
a list going of like movies. If this book sells
(18:09):
really well, but the next fifty two Essentials would be
or fifty essentials would be. But there's a lot of
great stuff. I mean, the nice part about this is
we had to really kind of watch ourselves and not
do like you all four of the great Buzzby Berkeley
Warner's musicals, we only did two. But that means if
you like the two, if you watch the two from
here foot like Parade and Gold Bigger's thirty three, you
(18:30):
can say, Okay, you should definitely see Dames, which is great,
which is from thirty four, or forty second Street, which
you could say, save the movie musical thirty two. So
hopefully this gives people, even if they know some of it.
This gives people hyperlinks, which is something I've always been
obsessed with, which gives you ways to find new things,
learn about new things, and explore it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, and there's a lot of great photos in here,
and you've also got copies of letters were Western Union
Grahams out there, so you really got the book well
documented and provides a great insight in some of these movies.
(19:15):
I also like the fact that I'm assuming it was
dedicated to Barbara Stanwick because you have a picture of
her in the beginning of the book.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah. So the funny thing is Kim and I kind
of bonded over our mutual love of Stanwick. Kim I'd
written her master's thesis, I believe on Babyface, where she
went to the academy and went to UCLA and did
all the research on it.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
So she was.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Totally on the standwik train. I've been in love with
Barbara Stanwick. I think ever since I saw Double Indemnity
for obvious reasons. In fact, I have a daughter named Ruby,
who is named after Stanwick's you know, original real name,
Ruby Stevens. So yeah, we're both big fans of her.
I think she's in quite a few of these in
the book, A few entries in the book, a few
(20:00):
that I wish could have made it in too. But
you know, it was very difficult to get time to fifty.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Oh at some point, sure it was.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, at some point. It becomes every movie of the
nineteen thirties and just gets you, except for Eddie Cantor
films because I'm not here.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Well, I'm a big fan of Barbera's as well. I
loved her and Fred McMurray, and there are four movies
that they made. But remember that I had one of
my favorites with hers. It's one of those forgotten films,
if you will. But well, Dan, thank you so much
for coming on spending some time with us today, and
to our listeners, we just touched the tip of the
(20:36):
iceberg and really encourage you to go out and get
a copy of Dan's book, pre Code Essentials, Must see
Cinema from Hollywood's Untamed era in nineteen thirty nineteen thirty four. Again, Dan,
thank you so much for coming on and spending some
time with us today.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Absolutely my pleasure. I hope you guys get a kick
out of it. Well.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Thank you and thank you for listening to this episode
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Thank you for listening and we will see you then.
Let's go. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Forgotten Hollywood,
your podcasts and memories of yesteryear. My name is Doug
Heads and if you're tuning in Forgotten Hollywood for the
first time, what I do in this podcast is take
you on a journey back in time and share with
you pieces of Hollywood that you may or may not
know about. And in this episode, we have a very
special guest with us today, Deanie Reid, and he is
(00:25):
here to talk about his latest book, pre Code Essentials,
Must See Cinema from Hollywood's Unteamed Aaron nineteen thirty nineteen
thirty four. I should also mention that Danie has a
co author with this, Kim Laperi. Unfortunately she is unable
to be with us here today, but Dannie, welcome and
(00:47):
Forgotten Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hi, nice to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well, thank you for spending a few minutes out of
your time to talk about your book. And one of
the things that we always like to start off with
is allowing the author to state in his own words
what the book is about.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Sure, so I've been writing about pre Coote Hollywood for
about ten years now at my website precote dot com.
So this is kind of a culmination of the book.
I've always been very interested in introducing people to classic Hollywood.
I find that nowadays, when there's not really cable channels
or curated services, like a lot of black and white films,
(01:26):
law of Hollywood history gets overlooked or forgotten. And I
became fascinated with the pre code era. Back I said
ten years ago, this is right after like the housing
market crash and eight So I saw The Divorce, a
which I thought was way ahead of its time. And
I started watching all these movies from the Great Depression
and they really kind of hit hold with what was
going on in the States at the time. And then
(01:48):
over the last fifteen years or so, as history has progressed,
it's been very interesting to see how the nineteen thirties
have lined up with modern times. You know, it's not
just it's not really history itself, but it's a lot
of history rhyming with itself. So this book is kind
of a culmination of my fascination with the early nineteen thirties,
and then also this idea that we want to create
(02:11):
something that's both very easy for people to get into,
kind of like a checklist for people to attempt for
newbies who don't know what pre Coode Hollywood is, but
then also people who know a lot about this era,
hopefully they find out some new stuff as well about
these films.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah. Absolutely, So maybe let's just take a second and
really talk about what pre code is. You know, I
think a lot of people have a little general understanding
of it, but I know you have a chapter in
your book that's really focused and dedicated to that, and
just wanted to get your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Sure, and a lot of this stuff when you get
into Hollywood history, a lot of it could be very
fudgy around the edges, right, Like you know, pre Coote Hollywood,
we'recalling is a genre like film noir and film noir
people are Some people will say it's only the stuff
made World War Two. Some people say it's only the
fifties pre code Hollywood. The definition I typically go with
(03:03):
is movies from April nineteen thirty when the Code was enacted,
till July nineteen thirty four. Now there's a lot of
wiggle room in there. Some of the other authors who've
talked about this era will very definitely say only only
for certain types of content, only for certain movies. Some
people will say like, well, it really should go from
the end of the Silent Era to nineteen thirty four,
(03:26):
because there's some wiggle room there, although not my favorite movies.
And then others will say, well, at the end of
Night in July nineteen thirty four, when it became enacted,
there were still several pictures that have been made of
the early part of nineteen thirty four. They got chopped
up and destroying the rest of nineteen thirty four. So
there's a lot of leeway given there. And I guess
I'm kind of overlooking. I'm kind of counting my horses
(03:47):
before they're coached. So the idea is the code that
we're being referred to is the Motion Picture Production Code
of nineteen thirty and that was a set of guidelines.
What was happening in America was motion picture studios had
for years been kind of pushing boundaries about what they
could and couldn't show on screen. Local sensors would fight back.
(04:09):
There'd be censors in towns and cities and states, and
they'd go back to the Hollywood studios and say, hey,
you can't show this movie here. And this ended up
costing the studios a lot of money because they'd have
one print that had to be made up to go
to Kansas, one print they could go to Massachusetts, and
then you know, Florida might say, Nope, we're not taking
that movie at all because it's terrible. In nineteen twenty two,
(04:30):
when Bill Hayes came to Hollywood, they tried to client
cling them up with the Dews and do not so
they kind of made a list of rules like don't
show this, do show that. Nineteen twenty nine nineteen thirty,
when the Great Depression hit, a lot of these studios
were over leveraged. They'd been rushing to put in speakers
in all their theaters, rushing to make sound films, spending
millions upon millions of dollars upon this, and suddenly all
(04:50):
that liquid assets they had froze up. So they desperately
needed people who suddenly had no money. Quarter of America
was out of work at that time, of those people
to come in the theater, and so a lot of
the movies they made were very timely, were very scandalous,
very like taking on social issues of the day. At
the time, only major competitor was radio. So what they
(05:11):
really had to their advantage was using star power, using
these subjects that couldn't go across the broadcast waves and
exploiting them to their back sill. In this era lasts
until nineteen thirty four. There's a lot of changes within
this time period, but nineteen thirty four is when Joseph
Breen and the Catholics Legion of Decency kind of came
(05:32):
in and forced Hollywood to adopt the code very strictly.
Whereas now there's a Production Code office and every movie
that gets made has to go to this office and
get approved before it can get made. So while there
are movies made after nineteen thirty four that's still scandalous
or might have certain subjects, there's a reason why if
you watch Casablanca, there's not like a sex scene or
people dying, or there's not a topless scene stuck in
(05:54):
to be or not to be, you know. So it's
a very interesting era where you will be watching a
movie that seems pretty innocuous and then suddenly you'll get
to like Murder in the Vanities, where they'll sing a
song about sweet marijuana, and then there's a scene where
cactus blow flowers are topless women just barely covering themselves,
and so it's just very interesting to dive into this
(06:14):
era because there's so much happening in the industry and
American history in the movies themselves. It's really fun and
really invigorating.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I think. Yeah, it's kind of that perfect storm for
lack of a better word, that's going on with society
at that time.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, and it's really like in the technology and industry
as well because sound films. You watch movies from early
nineteen thirty thirty one, they're very creaky for the most part.
You see a couple of amazing ones squeak through, but
then you get to thirty two and thirty three, and
for my money, as much as people talk up thirty
nine or forty two or whatever, I think thirty three
is probably the best year for movies that Hollywood ever had.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
So absolutely very interesting. Well, one thing I really liked
about your book, so you have approximate, I think, through
what fifty different movies that you really talk about in
the book. And what's nice is you can go to
the index table context excuse me, and kind of look
at it and then kind of pick and choose the
(07:11):
films that you want to talk read about you don't
have to read the book in order. I kind of
like that in terms of that, but maybe talk a
little bit about how you pick those fifty films, because
there's some that are obviously classics that we all know about,
and then there's some that are you know, maybe some
of the readers or listeners are hearing about it or
reading about these films for the first time.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Sure, and it was an easy like I had this
idea for this book about ten years ago or so,
and I came up the list, and then Kim and
I met at the TCM Film Festival in twenty fifteen
and we hit it off, and I said, you want
to collaborate on this. She came back to me with
our own list. There's a lot of negotiation there, and
then when the TCM finally accepted our pitch, there's some
negotiation there for what the films are. I'm surprised by
(07:57):
a few that made it in. There's some that now
I look back and like, why do I include that one?
Like myself, So it's kind of trying to be like,
I wanted to make sure if somebody picked up this
book and they're like flipping through it, they're not gonna
know absolutely zero of the movies because I would feel like,
you know, they're just gonna be embarrassed. So we've got
King Kong, Most Dangerous Game, Grand Hotel, which is probably
(08:19):
like the best Best Picture winner other than All Quite
on the Western Front, which is also in there. So
try to do some of the stuff that is well
known but also has a lot of pre code content.
But then kind of went through I've been I've reviewed
over eight hundred of the pre code films at my blog,
which is still like maybe a quarter of the title.
But I have a pretty good understanding of what I've
(08:40):
seen and what I haven't seen. Yeah, and there's a
few of these movies here, like The Wheeler and Woolsey one.
So this is Africa that's never been released on home video.
It's forty minutes, it's on YouTube, So it's kind of
like this interesting blend of you know, some of these
will find in four K criterion discs like Cineas the
(09:02):
Miriam Hopkins one. Oh I'm not gon remember that some
of these have been released on Blu ray and on
HDDVD and everything, and some of these you're not going
to be able to see outside unless you're lucky, like
a printing of one city or another. So we want
to make sure it's a good variety of I've heard this,
it's easy to get and then one or two where
if you've gotten this far and you've got to keep digging.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Right, So it's a good mixture in terms of that. Yeah,
and I'm looking at these as well. And you know,
one of them that jumps out is Public Enemy, that's
early on in the book. In terms of that, maybe
just talk a little bit about that. That film, I mean,
(09:43):
that's it's got an interesting scene in there that's based
off of a true story where Cagney is place in
something in his girlfriend's face. I'm will completely blank on
the scene.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
It's May Clark with the grape fruit.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Grapefruit.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's okay, it's pretty it's pretty random. And
there's stories. There's lots of stories about that scene, in
particular Cagney. That movie is very interesting because Cagney initially
wasn't the lead. He was supposed to be the second lead,
and then they switched the roles because like what are
we thinking? And so one of the rumors was that
Cagney kind of improvised pushing the great Fruit and make
(10:21):
Clark's face. Others have it said that he and William Wellman,
who was the director, came up with it together. May
Clark's biography was very autobiography, was very negative about the
whole thing. It kind of ruined her career to some
extent because that's the only thing people remembered her for.
But there's a lot of stuff going on with her
as well, and even I think the year after that,
(10:42):
May Clark and Cagney starred together in another picture where
they actually just parody it, where they're hanging out together
and she's like, let's go to California. It's beautiful. They
got all sorts of great things like grapefruits, and then
she makes a face. So that's an interesting movie. It's
also part of that crime cycle that was really hitting off,
like thirty and thirty one and then Scarface, which is
(11:03):
in Here is a Bear. So I think it came
out in thirty two because there were so many fights
over it was an independent production. Kim told me that
the production code files for that were over like one
hundred pages long, fifty two hundred pages, and it's just
like so intense just because of how glorified the violence
came across and the implied incest between Paul Mooney and Worak,
(11:25):
And it's a fantastic movie. It's probably one of the
best ones we cover in the book. But it is
also that kind of is like the last, for my money,
probably one of the last great gingster pictures of the time,
because after that you start getting more into the bad
guy I always lose. It's not that Scarface gets away
with anything. We can still feel bad for him to extend.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Right. And then years later in eighty three it was
remade again and with Albacino.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, yeah, there's not as much cocaine in the original.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Right, So tell me a little bit about the writing
in the research. Did anything really surprise you doing this?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Well, this book had such a long germation. I don't
know if that's the right word. Like it started off
ten years ago. We kind of wrote it in fits
and starts. At one point we'd pitched it to TCM
and they're like, oh, last week we just bought Forbidden
Hollywood from Mark Biras so no, and we're like, well, okay,
I guess TCM's not publishing it. I went through a
period of Unemployment where I actually wrote most of the book,
(12:26):
just kind of mosting around, and this book is all original, Like,
this is not stuff for my blog, this is not
stuff Kim's written before, so it's all new material. And
during this time I wrote some of it, Kim lives
in LA could go to the archives of the Margaret
Hare Museum and did research on the actual production code files.
So there's some stuff in here that's not been any
of the other any of the other pre code books. Personally,
(12:49):
it's kind of such a blur to me. Kim was
because it's like I wrote most of this book like
seven years ago, and then GCM came back and I'd
written one hundred and fifty ten one hundred and twenty
thousand words and TCM came back said, great, we'll buy it.
It's eight thousand words. I'm like, you're not even done
with all of it yet. This is terrible. So there's
some good stuff, there's some stuff that had to get
(13:10):
cut out, like a lot of the Probably the craziest
story is the one Kim uncovered where there's one of
the movies it's called Gabriel over the White House, which
is an insane film it's basically the president of the
United States gets bumped on the head in a car
crash and becomes possessed by the angel Gabriel and starts
wreaking vengeance upon the American population. Like he goes out
(13:31):
and arrests gangsters and puts them on military tribunals. So
you have like tanks rolling down This sounded a lot sillier,
like five years ago, tanks rolling down the streets of
Chicago arresting, you know, bootleggers, and then the bootleggers get
their revenge by doing a drive by on the White House.
And the movie ends with Gabriel bombing the American Navy
(13:52):
himself to show the world leaders of the world that
I'm just crazy enough that I'll kill you too. So
it's a very wild movie. And what Kim discovered is
that the people at MGM Maky had actually consulted incoming
President Franklin Roosevelt Audit and gotten his feedback as well.
So there's a lot of like really weird little details
like that about that movie, where it's it's a very
(14:15):
interesting film and was apparently very ahead of its time.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
But yeah, only in Hollywood could you write, yeah, like that.
Oh wow, that's that's great. I know we're getting closer
in time, but we had to have a few more
minutes here. Obviously there's the classics, we all know those.
But what are a couple of films that you would
(14:41):
strongly encourage somebody to watch that made the fifty and
then maybe give us one or two films that didn't
make the book that maybe somebody should think about.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Sure, it's kind of hard for me because at a
certain point I forget what's obscure. I'm sure this yeah,
because you're like, I know this movie, doesn't everybody know?
Like nineteen thirty three's Employees Entrance, which is one of
my favorite films, So obviously I recommend that one in
terms of like really obscure ones in here, I think
if you haven't seen.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Oh what is it?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It's headed a minute ago. Sorry, my brain's going it's
like nine thirty here. Oh I Am Suzanne, which is
this Fox musical about a woman who is a dancer
and she's kind of held up and coddled by these
promoters who are exploiting her, and she falls in love
with this guy who wants to make a puppet of her,
and then she falls in love with him, and they
(15:39):
get married, and she realizes he's not in love with her,
he's in love with the puppet of her. And it
turns into this end where there's this whole weird dream
sequence where she's in hell and all these puppets are
screaming at her, and there's like she's gonna have a
puppet as a baby, and she ends up shooting the
puppet of herself, and it's utterly bizarre. But it's also
(15:59):
like doing the research, and I think I mentioned this
in the book. People are like, this is great for kids.
Kids love puppets, and you're like, this is like an
intense psycho sexual drama about a woman dealing with whether
or not her husband loves the idealized version of her
or not. You're telling kids to go see this? Are
you kidding me? That one's pretty great looking on my list?
(16:22):
Three on the Match is not super obscure in pre
code circles, but it is probably pretty obscure to people
in general. That's an amazing little film where you have
and Devorak, Joan Blondell, and Betty Davis Betty Davis way
before she was super popular, as three women who all
kind of switch social positions, and de Vorak gives this
a fantastic performance where she becomes a drug addict. She's
(16:44):
a socialated, becomes a drug addict and eventually has to
help a gangster kidnap her own kid, and she's clearly
got a cocaine addiction. Humphrey Bogart shows up as very
early in his career as one of the gangsters. He
does a little like nose thing while looking at her
and winking at his friends, like I know what's wrong
with her. It is really interesting because it played on
this event at the time we don't talk about as
(17:05):
quite as much but the Charles Lindberg baby kidnapping, So
it kind of is sensationalizing that, which is wild for
where it goes. In terms of movies that didn't make
it in I Have a couple of Big regrets, nineteen
thirty three is female with Ruth Chatterton. That's one of
the movies where somebody said it to me afterwards, I'm like,
oh no, it did go in the book, which is
(17:27):
a very interesting movie where she plays an auto executive
like she's a woman auto executive in nineteen thirty three
and mainly her main hobby is betting her workers, Like
she just goes around, throws pillows in the floor, invites
them back to her mansion, just makes big eyes at them.
And then the movie ends with her falling in love
with George Brent, which is kind of a downer because
she's going to give up everything. But the people who
(17:48):
made the movie reshot that had were forced to reshoot
the ending because it was a little too progressive, and
they make little subtle jibes at it, like where they
have George Brent standing on her big science saying winnipig
and he's like playing in a shooting game, and it's
utterly ridiculous. That's my bigger gret. I have kind of
a list going of like movies. If this book sells
(18:09):
really well, but the next fifty two Essentials would be
or fifty essentials would be. But there's a lot of
great stuff. I mean, the nice part about this is
we had to really kind of watch ourselves and not
do like you all four of the great Buzzby Berkeley
Warner's musicals, we only did two. But that means if
you like the two, if you watch the two from
here foot like Parade and Gold Bigger's thirty three, you
(18:30):
can say, Okay, you should definitely see Dames, which is great,
which is from thirty four, or forty second Street, which
you could say, save the movie musical thirty two. So
hopefully this gives people, even if they know some of it.
This gives people hyperlinks, which is something I've always been
obsessed with, which gives you ways to find new things,
learn about new things, and explore it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, and there's a lot of great photos in here,
and you've also got copies of letters were Western Union
Grahams out there, so you really got the book well
documented and provides a great insight in some of these movies.
(19:15):
I also like the fact that I'm assuming it was
dedicated to Barbara Stanwick because you have a picture of
her in the beginning of the book.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah. So the funny thing is Kim and I kind
of bonded over our mutual love of Stanwick. Kim I'd
written her master's thesis, I believe on Babyface, where she
went to the academy and went to UCLA and did
all the research on it.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
So she was.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Totally on the standwik train. I've been in love with
Barbara Stanwick. I think ever since I saw Double Indemnity
for obvious reasons. In fact, I have a daughter named Ruby,
who is named after Stanwick's you know, original real name,
Ruby Stevens. So yeah, we're both big fans of her.
I think she's in quite a few of these in
the book, A few entries in the book, a few
(20:00):
that I wish could have made it in too. But
you know, it was very difficult to get time to fifty.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Oh at some point, sure it was.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, at some point. It becomes every movie of the
nineteen thirties and just gets you, except for Eddie Cantor
films because I'm not here.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Well, I'm a big fan of Barbera's as well. I
loved her and Fred McMurray, and there are four movies
that they made. But remember that I had one of
my favorites with hers. It's one of those forgotten films,
if you will. But well, Dan, thank you so much
for coming on spending some time with us today, and
to our listeners, we just touched the tip of the
(20:36):
iceberg and really encourage you to go out and get
a copy of Dan's book, pre Code Essentials, Must see
Cinema from Hollywood's Untamed era in nineteen thirty nineteen thirty four. Again, Dan,
thank you so much for coming on and spending some
time with us today.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Absolutely my pleasure. I hope you guys get a kick
out of it. Well.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Thank you and thank you for listening to this episode
Forgotten Hollywood. Just search for dodcast Forgotten Hollywood. You can
also folld me on Twitter, Instagram at has step fourteen.
If you listen to this podcast on iTunes or another
podcast service, please subscribe, rate, and review this episode. Tune
in th next time for the latest episode of Forgotten Hollywood.
Thank you for listening and we will see you then.
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