Sinners' Holiday: An Ode to Pre-Code Hollywood

(Imogen Sara Smith) - Once upon a time, Hollywood movies showed us Spencer Tracy skinny-dipping with Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck ducking into the ladies' room with her boss in exchange for a promotion, and chorus girls singing a tribute to marijuana.
This, of course, was pre-Code: shorthand for the era of Hollywood movie-making between the advent of sound in 1929 and the ascendance of Hays Office censorship in 1934. The term is in fact a misnomer. The Production Code was written and officially adopted in 1930, but for the next four years, like Prohibition, it was flouted with near impunity. Continued