Broadway productions like Eugene O'Neill's "All God's Chilllun" had the advantage of a sophisticated audiences that had no problems with issues like miscegenation. Prejudices in other parts of the country didn't have and real effect on what was presented. Above all the stage, along with literature, was protected by the First Amendment's freedom of expression clause. It's not that plays or books couldn't be banned, they were, but it was not something that could be done arbitrarily behind closed doors and it could be fought in court.
During the early nineteen hundreds the Supreme Court ruled motion pictures were not an art form, but a business that could be regulated as such. The result were censorship boards reflecting the prejudices and moral diversity of the country. This led to the production code and the Breen Office which attempted to simplify things by reflecting everyone's prejudices. Movies couldn't show social relationships between black and whites because southerners wouldn't like it, they couldn't denounce Fascism in Europe because isolationists and Fascist governments wouldn't like it and on and on.
Ironicly the beginning the of the end of the iron fist-ed control of the Breen Office resulted from the Marshal, Texas censorship board's decision to ban "Pinky" for violating the rule against the depiction of miscegination. Never mind the title character, who was passing for white, was played by a very white Jeanie Crain. During the early fifties the Suppream Court ruled "Pinky", along with the "Moon is Blue" (banned for using the term "virgin") were in fact protected as free expression under the Constitution.
In 1956 the Code rule against was quietly dropped, just in the time for the release of "Island in the Sun" with Dorothy Dandridge. None the less when "Imitation of Life" was remade it still had the ending the Breen Office insisted on and this time a white actress, Susan Kohner, played Sarah Jane (Peola in the first movie).
In 1964 "One Potato Two Potato", the first movie to explore interracial marriage in a meaningful way, was released. It took a realistic working class look at the subject. Three years later "Guess Who's Coming For Dinner" was released, but it was more about the hypocrisy of white liberals then the realities of interracial marriage in the late sixties.
At the end of the decade the current MPAA rating system replaced the Code system.
As for Fanny Hurst's motivations for writing "Imitation of Life" I've actually have heard people who initiated, with a straight face, the book and the first film were based on Aunt Jemima and her daughter. The problem is there never was a real "Aunt Jemima: rather a succession of black spokeswomen who demonstrated the product, going back to the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, who demonstrated how to make the pancake mix of the same name, but had nothing to do with its development.
Fanny Hurst was involved with people in the Harlem Renaissance She certainly would have known about C.J."Madam" Walker, the first black women to become a millionaire on her own, and possibly met her daughter; an important black cultural figure during the twenties. Yet she wrote a novel about a black women who, even after becoming wealthy, continued to live with her employer as a maid of sorts and had a daughter who hated everything about being black. It is enough to make one wonder if the story was supposed to be taken seriously.
TAG LINE: True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.
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digitaldiva
15 years ago
Hi andrewwjohnson,
As a student of film, I am aware of the history of censorship in cinema and the films you mentioned. My conversation was specifically about Imitation of Life and the issues regarding that particular film. One of the reasons Breen hated it most especially was because the author, Fanny Hurst, was a liberal Jew. Personally the only interest the film has for me was Fredi Washington who was deprived of a Hollywood film career because of the code. As far as I'm concerned she is the saving grace in that film.
Producers had ways of getting around censorship including releasing films in one market and not in another. My belief is that art should be subversive and the studio heads made a real mistake by backing down to someone like Joseph Breen who had absolutely no qualifications to be a censor (other than the fact he was a bluestocking and a bigot) The threats of federal censorship had been used to for years and filmmakers continued making films the way they wanted to.
By the way, the early American reviewers of All God's Chillun were shocked by the interracial theme and the Provincetown production caused a riot but when Paul Robeson performed it in London years later with Flora Robson it was a hit. There was a possibility of it being filmed in England. Though this is off topic but plays like the Shanghai Gesture, The Captive, Lullabelle were optioned in the late 20s but except for The Captive were filmed much later in sanitized versions. I believe they could have been filmed as written but shown as arthouse cinemas in the north, censors be damned.
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andrewwjohnson
15 years ago
The Breen office certainly didn't help Fredi Washington's career. Before "Imitation of Life she appeared in musical shorts with black performers like Cab Galloway and all black movies like "The Emperor Jones" with Paul Robeson. This was her one exposure to mainstream audience, but her screen time was minimized by censorship. Because of all of the controversy she couldn't even try out for another passing role. From then on no major studio would even think of doing a movie on the subject with an actual black actor. Not for another forty years would Lonette McKee, who, in 1984, Ironicly looked a lot like Ms. Washington in the thirties, played Rose Oliver in "The Cotton Club"; character worked on both sides of the color line. Ms. Washington did a couple more all black films and then went on to become a civil rights activist.
Recently when I Googled "passing for white in Hollywood" I ran across a number of entries about Fredi Washington; not because she thought of doing such a thing, but because she didn't. After all she didn't look African American. Actors like Kay Francis and Constance Bennett were darker then she was. According one site, during her Cotton Club Days a white promoter actually offered to take her to Europe, change her name and introduce her to America as a newly discovered French actress. She refused the offer. If she had accepted she may have become more successful, but she refused to turn her back on what she was.
There was an alternative to the racist Hollywood system; what has become known as the separate cinema. These were mostly low budget films shown in black theaters. It wasn't like these films weren't censored, Oscar Micheaux"s "Within Our Gates" was censored in many places for discussing miscegination and lynching, but they weren't constrained by rigged rules of the Hollywood motion picture code. On the negative side the production values weren't that good. The sound, when sound became available wasn't that great and the acting was often amateurish because many of the actor were off the street amateurs. Instead of being film in studios most of these movies were filmed in private homes and on the streets not that that's always a negative.
During the late thirties Micheaux filmed his own take on "Imitation of Life": "God's Step Children". It was also about a light skinned black women who decided to "resign from the Negro race". Unlike Hollywood for the next four decades he used a real light skinned women for the role of the main character. Actually Micheaux, whose stated reason for making movies was "to up lift the Negro" was often accused of using very light skinned black too often in all his films. The preference for light skin is still an issue in the entertainment industry today.
Obviously "God's Children Children" would have been very controversial during the twenties because of its depiction of interracial marriage. Unlike Hollywood the script didn't have to be cleared censorship code people, at least in the north east, but that didn't prevent it from being savaged by critics or mobs from disrupting its performance. Today a play about a black law student who is trying to succeed and his white wife hates his color and is trying to sabotage his efforts and uses the "N" word would be attacked; not by racists but liberals who would accuse the play of supporting negative stereotypes. It is interesting how things have changed.
Also with all of Bradway protestations of liberalism it wasn't until 1983 the role of the mixed character of Julia in "Show Boat" was cast with an actual mixed actress: again Lonette McKee in the Houston Opera production. Ten years later she played the role in the Bradway revival.
TAG LINE: True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.
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digitaldiva
15 years ago
Fredi Washington did another mainstream film with Clair Trevor a couple of years after Imitation of Life. It was very provocative though I've never seen it.
Breen was probably the architect of the miscegnation clause in the Production Code, it certainly wasn't in the original draft. I think Breen feared mixing the races because prior to the code, you can see attempts at race mixing in Hollywood films, not love affairs but causual mixing, like a black man with his arm around a black woman in the famed Shanghai Lil number with Ruby Keeler and James Cagney. European directors certainly used African Americans to good advantage. Broadway was much more enlightened and a number of Hollywood producers were looking at them for potential movies.
Eugene O'Neil wrote All God's Chilin' which wasa big hit in London and almost filmed in 1934. Flora Robson played the white wife onstage opposite Paul Robeson and I understand it was a great production.
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andrewwjohnson
15 years ago
In "One Mile From Heaven" Fredi Washington played a black women who claimed white child was hers. Clair Trevor plays a reporter who discovers the child is really the son of a prominent women who is trying to cover up her own past. I haven't seen the movie either so I don't know if her past involves being black herself or having a child out of wedlock. Both subjects would have been controversial in the thirties.
In "Ouanga" she played a mulatto plantation owner in Haiti who is attracted to white man. When he refuses her advances she retaliates by putting a voodoo curse on him. Metaphysics aside any sort of interracial relationship was controversial. The movie was filmed in Haiti and Jamaica and released in the US by a one shot production company. It was Ms. Washington's last movie........She became a civil rights activist. The fact her sister Isabella was married to Adam Clayton Powell Jr., then the most powerful black political figure in America, may have influenced her discussion.
Many black actor beat the system by working in Europe. Paul Robeson did "Jericho" and "Sanders of the River" with Nina May McKinney, for London Films in Great Britain. There wasn't the same level racism. Also the British Empire provided a large nonwhite audience for such films.
TAG LINE: True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.
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