Vice & Virtue in Hollywood: An Introduction with Dick Segreto

A new and remarkable energy animated American cinema between the addition of sound at the end of the 1920’s and the strict enforcement of the 1934 Production Code which censored “unwholesome” onscreen behavior. During the pre-Code era, Hollywood found commercial and critical success in a series of films that radically challenged the previously accepted thresholds for exploring sex- and crime-related themes. The twilight of the Jazz Age and the Great Depression encouraged directors and screenwriters to examine seriously the moral and sociopolitical underpinnings of the changing nation. Encouraged by box office earnings, Hollywood produced titillating, graphic, even shocking depictions of infidelity, prostitution, drug use, and crime.