Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934) When Sin Ruled the Movies

Doomsayers, naysayers, and other closedminded types have always tried to paint forms of entertainment as gateways to sin. Whether it’s dancing, video games, television shows, or Dungeons & Dragons, some dimwit or another has attempted to condemn it as injurious to our culture as a whole and the souls of the innocent in particular.

It’s BS. And it’s been going on for a long long time. Take, for example, the story presented in Forbidden Hollywood. The movie industry was barely a few decades old at this point, and crusaders were already seeking to blame society’s ills on the silver screen.

Forbidden Hollywood explores the rise of adult content in films, the numerous attempts to regulate and censor “scandalous” film content, and the development of the Hays Code as a tool to rein in the film companies who dared to coax filmgoers into their movie houses with sinful wanton storytelling.

As a film fan, this book is absolutely gorgeous, loaded with black-and-white photography of classic and obscure film scenes, as well as promotional shots of starlets and leading men from an iconic era in Hollywood. The accompanying history is fascinating, detailing the political games played behind the scenes and the studio efforts to keep the money rolling in during the Depression. Film history is rarely this detailed, this richly illustrated, or this ridiculous.