The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code (Revised Edition)

The new edition of this seminal work takes the story of the Production Code and motion picture censorship into the present, including the creation of the PG-13 and NC-17 ratings in the 1990s.

Starting in the early 1930s, the Production Code Director, Joe Breen, and his successor, Geoff Shurlock, understood that American motion pictures needed enough rope—enough sex, and violence, and tang—to lasso an audience, and not enough to strangle the industry. To explore the history and implementation of the Motion Picture Production Code, this book uses 11 movies: Dead End, GoneWith the Wind, The Outlaw, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Bicycle Thief, Detective Story, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Moon Is Blue, The French Line, Lolita, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The authors combine a lively style with provocative insights and a wealth of anecdotes to show how the code helped shape American screen content for nearly 50 years.

“A readable, intimate account of the rise to near-tyrannical power, and the fall to well-deserved ignominy, of the old Production Code Administration.” —Atlantic Monthly

“A valuable insight into our own innocence and naiveté.” —The New York Times Book Review

“The triumph of Leff and Simmons’s fine work is that they have reminded us of how fatuous and inimical a code of conduct can be: how tempting it is as a theoretical answer, and how intrinsically flawed it is as a working solution.” —The Times of London