TWEAKING THE CODE

Kathleen Norris on TWEAKING THE CODE

When my father was growing up as a Methodist pastor’s son in the 1920’s he was forbidden to attend movies. Well-publicized scandals in Hollywood convinced many Christians that morally questionable people were engaged in making entertainment that was corrupting America’s young. And looking at some films that would have been available to my father as a young man I can understand the objections. In what is now called “Pre-Code” Hollywood, thrillers about gangsters tended to glamorize them. In many films characters were depicted in night clubs smoking, drinking, and dancing, activities banned at Christian colleges such as Wheaton. Sexual activity, while never depicted onscreen beyond a kiss and embrace, was strongly implied. Worst of all, characters who engaged in prostitution, adultery and sexual promiscuity often got away with it. (See my Soul Telegram essay Pre-Code Bad Girls in Soul Telegram). 

My father survived. And when he was finally on his own, on his first day in Chicago in 1935 when he was about to enter college, he went to three movies in one day. A Night at the Opera, Anna Karenina, and G Men made him a movie fan for life.