Pre-Code Cartoons
This is a lengthy article about pre-Hays Code animation, with many clips illustrating the referenced cartoons.
Excerpt
How The Hays Code Censored Cartoons And How Animators Responded
by Vincent Alexander
We’re living in a strange era of Hollywood self-censorship right now. With physical media dying out and streaming services becoming the default method of watching films, sites like Disney+ are free to scrub out “objectionable” material like Elisabeth Shue’s F-bomb in Adventures in Babysitting and Daryl Hannah’s posterior in Splash, and the censored cut becomes the only cut available.
What some people may not be aware of is that there was an earlier attempt at Hollywood self-regulation in the form of the Motion Picture Production Code, popularly known as the Hays Code (named after its founder Will Hays). The Hays Code had strict rules regarding language, sex, nudity, and violence, and Hollywood films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s had to gain a certificate of approval in order to be released. These rules applied to animated cartoons, which were targeted largely toward adult audiences at the time, as well as live-action features, and the Hays Code is directly referenced in this great gag from the Warner Bros. cartoon A Tale of Two Kitties (1942).
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With the explosion of talkies in the late 1920s, movie studios looked to talent from the New York stage to write dialogue and musical numbers. Studios quickly found that the salaciousness typical of Broadway wouldn’t fly in other parts of the country.
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