In what many see as Hollywood’s Golden Age, the offices of William Hays and Joseph Breen worked overtime to combat sexuality and subversion in American movies. This program examines the products of that era—films that danced around the standards of the Production Code and paved the way for increasingly daring storytelling and images. From the modesty of It Happened One Night to the shocking and nearly prohibited use of “damn” in Gone with the Wind to the ambiguous morality of Double Indemnity, the program surveys the achievements of Clark Gable, Hedy Lamarr, Errol Flynn, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, Jane Russell, Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, and other screen artists. The forces that led to Hays’s dismissal and the weakening of the Code are discussed in depth. (72 minutes)