“American morality is not to be trifled with”: Content Regulation in Hollywood after 1968

Abstract

In 1968, the American ?lm industry was in its second decade of a box of?ce slump. Many Hollywood executives and ?lmmakers put the blame on the Production Code, a strict regime of censorship authored by a Jesuit priest (Daniel Lord) and a Catholic pro-censorship activist (Martin Quigley).1The Code had hamstrung production since 1930 and American ?lmmakers and ?lmgoers seemed primed for a change (see Chapter 1).