A look at the forces that shaped Pre-Code Hollywood and brought about the strict enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934.
Looks at the stereotype-breaking films of the period from 1929, when movies entered the sound era, until 1934 when the Hays Code virtually neutered film content. No longer portrayed as virgins or vamps, the liberated female of the pre-code films had dimensions. Good girls had lovers and babies and held down jobs, while the bad girls were cast in a sympathetic light. And they did it all without apology.
The wife of a doctor in China falls in love with a diplomat.
A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter. The two women start a successful business but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.
A naive farmer encounters a beautiful burlesque dancer on the streets of New York and agrees to pose as her husband during her mother's visit.
A criminal lawyer's wife is blackmailed when she is falsely accused of infidelity.
A recently released prisoner lives alone in his cabin so that his bad temper won't get him back in any more trouble, but his peaceful existence is disrupted when a mysterious woman arrives.
Prohibited from seeing her actor sweetheart Herman Brandt by her tyrannical parents, sweet young Vienesse lass Mariette defies authority by regularly visiting Brandt's downstairs apartment. The lovers' signal is a song called "The Firebird," which Brandt sings whenever he wants Mariette to visit him. When the actor is murdered, poor Mariette and her parents are prime suspects. But the truth is a bit more complicated than that, involving as it does a haughty aristocrat, a powerful diplomat and a most unusual "candid camera" device.
A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country.
On the French coast, unlucky Marie Galante is abducted and forced to board an American cargo ship bound for the Panama Canal. When an escape attempt leaves Marie high and dry in the Yucatan, she takes work as a nightclub singer to earn her safe passage to the Canal region. But Marie faces bigger problems when she gets mixed up in a destructive plot against the U.S. Naval fleet, and so she accepts the kindly assistance of secret agent Dr. Crawbett.
The queen of Egypt barges the Nile and flirts with Mark Antony and Julius Caesar.
A bitter woman who thinks she'll never love again marries, only to fall for a brash young man.
A woman's dubious past proves to be a stumbling block when she becomes engaged to marry.
Heiress Hedda Nillson certain that her family is about to lose all its money, takes a job as a maid. After the usual trials and tribulations, Hedda falls in love with humble chauffeur Eric Landstrom.
A very nervous man named Cartwright comes into Perry's office to have the neighbor arrested for his howling dog. He states that the howling is a sign that there is a death in the neighborhood. He also wants a will written giving his estate to the lady living at the neighbors house. It is all very mysterious and by the next day, his will is changed and Cartwright is missing, as is the lady of the house next door. Perry has a will and a retainer and must find out whether he has a client or a beneficiary.
Cabaret entertainer Ruby Carter shifts her operations to New Orleans and becomes exceedingly popular with the local men.
Remarkable poet Elizabeth Barrett is slowly recovering from a crippling illness with the help of her siblings, especially her youngest sister, Henrietta, but feels stifled by the domestic tyranny of her wealthy widowed father. When she meets fellow poet Robert Browning in a romantic first encounter, her heart belongs to him. However, her controlling father has no intention of allowing her out of his sight.
In the seventeenth century, in Massachusetts, a young woman is forced to wear a scarlet "A" on her dress for bearing a child out of wedlock.
An Englishman falls in love with a Russian spy.
An engaged attorney and a divorcee fall for each other in 1870s Manhattan.