Perplexiglass

FILMS IN 2023: → A Free Soul (1931) — dir. clarence brown

Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the era in the American film industry between the introduction of sound in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code (usually labeled, albeit inaccurately after 1934, as the “Hays Code”) censorship guidelines. Although the Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934. Before that date, movie content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and the major studios, and popular opinion than strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers. As a result, films in the late 1920s and early 1930s included sexual innuendo, miscegenation, profanity, illegal drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, intense violence and homosexuality.

El Paso Herald, Texas, January 6, 1928

The Women (1939) dir. George Cukor

They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching… they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly…”

PSYCHO (1960) dir. Alfred Hitchcock

Lana Turner, 1942

“It’s interesting that Mother never thought of herself as beautiful. To her, the great beauties were brunettes. Dark was beauty, while women like herself and Betty Grable were bubbly, popular, and pretty, but not beautiful.  The epitome of beauty to Mother was Hedy Lamarr. She was so impressed by an entrance Hedy made at Ciro’s, glamour personified and wearing a single diamond on her forehead at her widow’s peak. Years later Mother was still impressed, telling me she had never seen anyone look as manificent in her life. Nevertheless, Mother didn’t do badly with what she had.”

- Cheryl Crane

Norma Shearer and John Gilbert in He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

Lana Turner in JOHNNY EAGER (1941) dir. Mervyn LeRoy

Currently torn between wanting to learn something useful and wanting to escape reality.

They should invent a brain that lets you sleep