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St. Louis Cultural History Project—Fall 2022

  

  

Father Daniel Lord, S.J.

Daniel Lord and the Motion Picture Production Code:
The Story of the Hollywood Priest
by Stephen A. Werner, Ph.D.1

  

The Life and Work of Daniel Lord

St. Louis priest Daniel Lord, S.J. (1888-1955) was one of the most influential American Catholic religious figures of the twentieth century. The 2018 article Daniel A. Lord, SJ: A Forgotten Catholic Dynamo of the Early Twentieth Century, provides an overview of his life and work.2

However, Lord is best known by some for his connection to Hollywood. Lord was involved in the making of the 1927 silent film classic of Cecil B. DeMille on the life of Jesus: The King of Kings. Lord also wrote the original 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, known later as the Hays Code. These efforts led David J. Endres in his 2005 article in America to call him Dan Lord, Hollywood Priest.3 For better or worse, the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code is arguably the most influential document written by an American Catholic religious figure in the twentieth century. This article will cover both Lord’s work in the creation of the Code, The Feature Attraction, and Lord’s relationship with Cecil B. DeMille, The Opening Short.

Lord’s interest in the movies should not be surprising. Born in 1888, he lived in the great age of live theater that included the glory days of Vaudeville. From his infancy on, his mother Iva Jane took him to the theater weekly. Often, she was the first one at the box office so she would get the front row in the cheaper balcony. Lord remembered this theater as being great entertainment and totally clean. In grade school Lord got the theater bug and by college he was writing and performing in his own plays. He also took lessons in music and dancing and became adept at leading singers as he played the piano.

Lord lived through the early stages of the creation of movies, starting with hand-cranked Kinetoscopes watched by a single viewer. In his years of Jesuit training, he played piano for the silent movies watched by his community. They only watched a couple a year, but dozens had to be previewed as the Jesuit superiors made the selection. Lord saw them all. By ordination time I found myself with a speciality unexpected and unusual. My youth in the theater audiences, my adolescence at the time when I could see the movies a-borning, my good luck in catching the first great pictures, the interest of my mother in the films, my years of watching films as I prepared to play the piano to accompany them, meant I was by way of being a minor authority on the subject.4 And Lord had loved reading plays since his college days. Finally, Lord was involved with the creation of the Sodality magazine, The Queen’s Work, under the editorship of Edward Garesché, S.J. (1876–1960). In time, Garesché would be writing articles critical of the content of movies in both The Queen’s Work and the Ecclesiastical Review.5

Knowledge of Lord’s many accomplishments and his national impact is important for understanding his role in writing the Code. Most of the books written on the Code make no mention of the scale of Lord’s work and influence, leaving the impression that he was an obscure moralist, or a hack, from the Midwest who led the Ladies Sodality movement.

Also, Lord was not unknown in Hollywood. And he would earn the respect of the greatest Hollywood producer of the era.

The Opening Short:
Daniel Lord, Cecil B. DeMille, and The Kings of Kings

In 1926, the famous Hollywood producer Cecil B. DeMille began filming his movie epic on the life of Jesus titled, The King of Kings.6 Wanting to avoid mistakes that would be ruinous at the box office, he sought advice from a protestant minister, a rabbi, and a Catholic priest. (The three advisers never met as a group and they never walked into a bar.) Lord, as Technical Adviser, would be the only one listed in the credits. DeMille had contacted John J. Burke (1875-1936), Executive Secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the N.C.W.C., asking Burke to send a priest. Burke thought of Daniel Lord, a St. Louis Jesuit who had written several articles for him on the theater. Burke met with Lord in Washington, D.C. and then sent Lord to Los Angeles.

Lord’s stay lasted from September 22 through October 2, 1926. Some days he visited the studio. On other days he visited the location shooting on Catalina Island, during which he spent several nights on DeMille’s yacht. Lord found DeMille cordial and friendly, and in fact they would begin a lifelong friendship. Lord watched the daily film takes in the evening with DeMille. Most days Lord said mass on the set. In one photo, he can be seen on the set using the workbench of the carpenter’s shop of Jesus as the altar for Mass surrounded by stage crew members and actors in biblical costumes. H. B. Warner as Jesus stands in the front row.

Daniel Lord SJ Saying Mass on the Set of King of Kings 1926
Father Lord saying Mass on the set of The King of Kings

Cecil B. DeMille had arrived in Hollywood in 1913 and helped to create the film industry. In his long career—some seventy films—he would become known for epic movies with enormous sets and enormous casts such as The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). On the set DeMille often wore equestrian riding boots and pants (jodhpurs) and created the stereotypical image of a Hollywood director of his era.

DeMille had released The Ten Commandments in 1923 as a two-part film. Part One covered Moses receiving the Ten Commandments; Part Two covered their multiplied fracture by a group of very rebellious characters in modern times. When he met DeMille, Lord suggested that the first part was sufficient. DeMille disagreed saying the modern part made the movie a success. In 1956, DeMille released his later version of The Ten Commandments focusing just on the story of Moses. Charlton Heston dividing the Red Sea needed no Part Two.

Lord’s first suggestion for The King of Kings was to alter the proposed ending of Part One: a recitation of the Our Father with the Protestant ending For Thine is the Kingdom . . . Lord said this would confuse Catholic audiences, especially in Europe.7 The ending was rewritten and then eventually dropped. Lord also pointed out a scene after the Resurrection in which Jesus appeared to his mother: That’s not in the Bible, you know. DeMille answered, I know, but wouldn’t any man want to see his mother first on such an occasion.8

Mary Magdalene

Lord’s biggest shock was the treatment of Mary Magdalene. A careful scrutiny of the Gospels had failed to uncover any love story that Minnie and Jake (those mythical and all-powerful gods of the box office) would recognize. So to my horror I soon discovered that into the scenario had been written a love story that would satisfy the moron’s desire for red meat.9 The writers had used a little-known German legend of a love story between an ambitious Judas and Mary Magdalene. When Mary Magdalene follows Jesus and changes, Judas resents his intrusion and betrays him. (Years later Dan Brown would prove the market potential of fantastical stories about Mary Magdalene.)

They had already shot 2500 feet on the Judas-Magdalene sequence. It was De Mille at his most De Mille-ish. A Roman banquet with roistering drinkers, dancing girls, ballets, animals on the prowl, zebras harnessed to a chariot, and a Mary Magdalene, played by the beautiful but soon-to-disappear Jacqueline Logan, who combined the charms of generations of females of that fatal stripe. I winced.10 DeMille believed the portrayal necessary to win over the Broadway audience. Because of Lord’s persistence, the Judas-Mary Magdalene scene was cut to 250 feet of film in the final movie.

Lord described one event with DeMille.

We were sitting watching rushes one evening, when Mr. DeMille leaned over and touched my hand. He is great, isn’t He? he said. Warner? I asked, pretending not to understand that he had capitalized the pronoun. Jesus, he replied. He is great. There was a long pause, and then he spoke very quietly. I doubt if we shall need the story of Mary Magdalene and Judas. I grinned at him through the dim light of the projector.11

Originally The King of Kings was also to be a two-part movie: Part One, the story of Christ; Part Two, the story of modern men trying to live like Christ. However, as Lord put it, the gospels are deceptively slim volumes. Lord estimated that DeMille shot 5 to 10 times what went into the final film. DeMille came around to Lord’s view and dropped Part Two.

When completed, The King of Kings became the first movie to premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in May 1927. A giant gate built for this film was seen in the 1933 film King Kong and was set afire along with other scenery for filming the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind (1939). Some costumes and sets wound up in the 1965 Elvis Presley movie, Harum Scarum.

Last Supper in The King of Kings

The film cost $2,300,000 to produce. In the next decades, hundreds of millions saw the film. Into the 1950s it was always being shown somewhere in a theater around the world. The King of Kings is available on YouTube and is worth watching. (The short 1928 version runs 112 minutes. The longer 1927 version at 155 minutes is worth the extra time.) Despite the style of a 1920s silent movie, many of the scenes are deeply moving. And the scene of seven demons being driven from Mary Magdalene is particularly engaging. As for the crucifixion scene, well, it is over the top with all the latest special effects for movies of the time, but this is a Cecil B. DeMille film, and one should expect no less.

In one of the many recent books written on Hollywood and the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code an author states about Lord:

Like many a Midwest transplant plunked down in Hollywood, the Jesuit caught the glitter bug. Hanging around the set of a garish faux Jerusalem, kibitzing over title cards, and rubbing shoulder with DeMille while screening dailies (the priest and the director developed a lifelong friendship), Lord came to fancy himself a Hollywood player. Life back in St. Louis with the Ladies Sodality must have seemed pretty tame after schmoozing with C.B. in the Paramount cafeteria. Two unglamorous years later, when Quigley called with the Production Code assignment, Lord leapt like a starlet getting her big break.12

This quote illustrates the problem that a number of writers on the Code seem to need to fill in the Daniel Lord story according to their preconceptions, and in doing so, seem to demean him. Lord had no illusions about Hollywood. In Played by Ear, Lord’s autobiography he describes how scriptwriter Jeanie MacPherson worked sixteen hours a day. Lord described the heartbreak and broken lives of people who had caught the glitter bug. As in tragedy, I saw the stars of last year and a few years before haunting the casting offices begging for bit parts to pay overdue rent in cheap boardinghouses. . . . I came to Hollywood with great curiosity and zest. I left it with infinite relief. It burned up human life too fast.13 Lord called Hollywood the Cuckoo Colony.14

As for title cards, it was more than kibitzing. In silent movies, the title cards showed the dialogue of the characters in the movie or gave background information. Lord described working very hard with Jeanie MacPherson, the scriptwriter, on the title cards. In his 1932 pamphlet, The Best Best Seller, Lord would have the fictional Father Hall describe the process:

A friend of mine, went on the priest, was once engaged in a most difficult task. He had to boil down the sentences of Christ, rearrange them, and possibly rewrite them to suit the needs of subtitles for a Biblical film. After three weeks he was simply exhausted by the job. It was flatly impossible to rewrite anything that Christ had said. His form was perfect. Any change was not merely desecration; it was a total loss of force, a complete cutting away of strength and beauty, the substitute of the tawdry and second rate for what came close to perfection.15

In the 1930s DeMille considered a sequel: The Queen of Queens. DeMille’s brother William came to St. Louis.16 He and Lord looked over the script built around a story of a love affair between Judas and Salome, the daughter of Herodias, the wife of King Herod. During the famous dance of the seven veils scene, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is in the shadows trying to save John the Baptist. Thinking the plot was stupid and offensive, Lord warned DeMille: If you do a film on Mary you run the risk of offending both the Protestants and the Catholics. Protestants will think you pro-Catholic if you praise Mary and present her beautifully. But if you put into the film the slightest element that Catholics think unfitting to associate with Mary, you will hear such an outcry that you’ll be forced to run for shelter.17 Lord convinced a reluctant DeMille to drop the project.18

Lord and Cecil B. DeMille would keep in contact over the ensuing years. DeMille gave Lord a standing offer of $50,000—an immense sum at the time—to join him in Hollywood and make movies.19 (Has any priest today gotten a similar offer from Steven Spielberg?) Lord turned DeMille down noting that he was much happier in his current work. However, this offer shows how highly DeMille thought of Lord’s knowledge and insights from Lord’s help on The King of Kings.

The Feature Attraction:
The 1930 Motion Picture Production Code

I was brought into the writing of the Code by Martin Quigley, editor of Motion Picture Herald. We cooked up the code in Father Dinneen’s rectory in Chicago and I wrote it and presented it to the industry. They signed.20 —Daniel Lord

Understanding the Mindset Behind the Code

Motion Picture Production Code

The Motion Picture Production Code is controversial because it involves important moral questions about public morality and the freedom of speech and expression. The Code itself was intended as a guide for how moral situations should be portrayed in the movies. As mentioned above, for better or worse, the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code is arguably the most influential document written by an American Catholic religious figure in the twentieth century.

However, one must be cautious and circumspect about making moral judgments about events and attitudes so many years in the past. It is important to take a moment to imagine the world of 1930. Radio was the primary means of mass communication; but still very new. Television was a long way off. Movies had only been a popular entertainment for some twenty years. Sound in movies was only a few years old. Prohibition, although failing, was still the law. Women had been given the right to vote only ten years earlier.

The Great War had ended only a dozen years earlier. The Influenza Epidemic of 1918, the worst epidemic in history, had swept through the United States and the world and then was pushed out of public memory. In Germany, Hitler had not yet risen to power. The worst of Stalin’s rule was yet to come. For almost everyone in 1930 the scale of the slaughter to come under these two men and the scale of carnage of World War II would be totally unimaginable. Equally unimaginable was the Holocaust.

Many of the common moral values of the period seem alien to contemporary people. In the 1930s, having a child out of wedlock could ruin a woman’s chance of marriage. Forced marriages when a girl became pregnant were common because of the great shame of either having or being an out-of-wedlock child. At the time, Catholic priests would encourage such marriages although they might take place in the rectory and not the church. Children born out of wedlock often carried a stigma the rest of their lives. Even adopting a child was often kept secret.

Divorce could lead to ostracism. Throughout the rest of one’s life, a divorced person would be identified as being divorced. Divorce carried a great stigma.

Most people thought that homosexual acts were terribly sinful. But most people had no understanding that there were people we now call homosexuals or gays. For many people homosexuality was off the radar. Men and women who never got married, even if they were not gay, often seemed odd to many people.

Most people, including most women, took it for granted that the role of women should not be equal to men. Most people thought that women were incapable of performing a wide range of jobs. A common view was that when a working woman married, she should quit her job so an unemployed man would have a job. Or she would simply be fired. In 1930, birth control advocates where still fighting laws prohibiting birth control. The Comstock Act prohibited even mailing information on birth control. The Catholic Church opposed birth control and of course, still does. Many, perhaps most, Americans would think that any kind of sex outside of marriage was wrong. And for many religious people, God was a harsh punisher of sin.

Society had all kinds of mores including the requirement that men wear hats and ties and jackets. Old news clips of baseball games of the period show most men wearing hats and ties. Women were not supposed to wear pants. Girls in schools, including colleges, wore skirts. Boys often had to wear ties. Other than for athletics and picnics, hardly anyone wore shorts. Keep this world in mind when following the story of Daniel Lord and the Code.

Most people have moral codes and although many do not admit it, most people have moral codes about what is acceptable in movies. Today, for example, smoking is no longer acceptable, despite the fact that for many years product placement by cigarette companies insured that viewers saw lots of movie stars glamourizing smoking. Today most people would oppose movies that involved children and sex, date rape scenes that would portray the perpetrator in a sympathetic way, and anything racist.

Today guns are glorified in many movies with lots of close-ups of guns. Product placement is still at work. Might there come a time when such scenes are no longer acceptable?

Thus, the issue is not whether there should be moral codes for movies, the issue is what moral values they should be based on, and how such codes should be enforced or not enforced.

And the final essential point to understand when looking at the controversies over the movies of this period was that children could see all movies, including those with adult content. Had the movie industry put age restrictions on certain films, the Code might not have been created. Today it seems obvious to rate movies, but it did not seem so back then.

Pre-Code Hollywood

Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the movies made in the late 1920s up until mid-1934 when the Production Code Administration was created to enforce the Hays Code, written by Daniel Lord and accepted by the industry in 1930. In this period movie makers often felt free to push social boundaries of what could be portrayed in movies. Often movies that did so became very popular films that made a lot of money.21

Many of these films were criticized for frequent sexual innuendos and depictions of promiscuity, infidelity, and prostitution. In films, such as Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and Scarface, the gangsters appeared to be heroes. Other viewers were bothered by improper language, violence, and illegal drug use. And some movies addressed what to many people were taboo subjects: abortion and homosexuality. Critics of these films argued that they showed examples of people doing bad things and then getting away with it.

Lord noted about Hollywood of his day:

It was a time when the films were running wild. Few films of adventure even in the windswept West failed to show a heroine cornered by a villain whose intent of rape was only too vividly displayed. The commonest thing in the films was for the innocent heroine, thinking herself totally alone (except for the director, cameraman, stage crew, other actors standing by, and a potential audience of several million), to pause at the brink of the sylvan lake, drop off all her clothes, and dive naked into the water. As Jack Warner [(1892-1978), head of Warner Bros. Studios] said to me much later and in a surprising burst of confidence: Whenever my directors are stuck for something to do, they make the heroine take off her clothes.22

Recalling the movies of the time Lord stated, It is hard to recall how rotten some of them were, how suggestive was the comedy, how frequent with nudity, how the plots had narrowed down to seduction and murder and rape and illegitimate children and immoral women and rapacious men.23

Setting the Stage for the Code

Four factors set the stage for the creation of the Code. The first was the industry’s fear of censorship. The filmmakers did not want censorship because it was costly to re-edit films. Worse, various local and state censorship boards would make different changes to the same film, adding more cost. The state boards in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio were particularly tough. The threat of federal censorship was even more frightening. As Lord stated, Across the country federal censorship rose like a threatening storm cloud!24 However, Lord noted: The pure-food law had outlawed the making and marketing of rotten tomatoes and embalmed beef and arsenic in the beans and peas; and no one saw any reason why similar laws might not protect innocent children and decent family people from corrupt and rotten entertainment.25

The second factor was the introduction of sound to movies. The 1927 movie The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson introduced synchronized sound for some parts of the movie. Much of the movie is a traditional silent film. Although the movie is often called the first talkie it was but one step on the way to creating fully integrated sound movies.

However, an even bigger change happened with the coming of sound to movies. Sound completely changed the financing and organization of the movie industry. Showing movies with sound required that theaters had the equipment for sound. This required money, which many local theaters did not have. Thus, the studios had to borrow lots of money to wire theaters across the country and in the process, took over control of many local independent theaters. Introducing sound led to a centralizing of control of the movie industry and indebtedness to the bankers.26

One related problem with the coming of sound was the sudden need for writers of dialogue. Hollywood turned to an obvious source: New York theater writers.27 However, the problem that Lord and others saw was that the tastes and mores of sophisticated New York theater audiences—made of mostly adults—might be totally inappropriate for general movie audiences across the country, especially when those audiences included children.

Lord had grown up in the glory days of Vaudeville and extensive live theater. Most of the shows in Lord’s day were appropriate for all ages. But over several decades Lord watched as much theater turned to crude and inappropriate humor and salacious subject matter to draw audiences. (Ironically, in part due to the new competition of movies.) Now those same writers who ruined decent live theater were doing the same to the movies.

So the transcontinental trains were packed with writers summoned to save the talking pictures with clever dialogue and brilliant conversation. But the men who came, along with the great dramatists and famous writers of good stories, were the very men whose smut drama, suggestive vaudeville skits, and blackouts for the musical shows had just slaughtered the legitimate drama of the United States. Outside New York the theater was totally dead. There had been a time when every small town had its opera house; now none remained. . . . They piled out to Hollywood by the Chief-full. . . . The movies had learned to talk and they would swiftly be taught to say mean, low, crude, and filthy things.28
Cardinal George Mundelein

The stock market crash of 1929 was the third factor. The studios were in debt to the bankers from whom they had borrowed so much money to wire the theaters across the country. The bankers now found themselves owning the studios and were often uncomfortable about the content of the movies. When certain bankers in Chicago started talking to Cardinal Mundelein (1872-1939) things started to happen.29

The figure of Martin J. Quigley (1890-1960), a graduate of Georgetown University, became the fourth factor. A Catholic, he was on the lay board of Loyola University in Chicago which had grown out of Lord’s Alma Mater, St. Ignatius College. Quigley published the Motion Picture Herald for movie theater owners and operators. It became a guidebook for the whole industry. But Quigley had to include the ads from Hollywood which Lord claimed were often starkly indecent.

Another trade journal was Harrison’s Reports written and published by P.S. Pete Harrison (1880-1966) in New York. This journal carried no ads and honestly described the movie plots. Although the movie industry did not like Harrison’s honesty, many of the theater owners and managers did.

Daniel Lord and his friend FitzGeorge Dinneen, S.J (1865-1944) read both journals, and when Lord was in Chicago, they read them together. Dinneen got to know both Quigley and Harrison.30

Developments in Chicago

Father Dinneen had objected to a film at the Granada Theater two blocks from his Chicago parish. He asked the management to not show the film and they told him to mind his own business. Dinneen took action: Considering the rotten film paraded in his parish very much his business, he denounced it from the pulpit, initiated a boycott of the theater, and soon brought the managers to their knees with the film chucked into the garbage can where it belonged.31 Dinneen then led boycotts of other movies.

At the time, movies were viewed by a board of censors connected with the Chicago Police Department. Although Lord admitted to frequent flounderings of the board, he thought it justified:

They felt it was a police duty to protect citizenry from men making money out of sex and crime in the films as it was to protect them against the sale of dope or the peddling of intoxicating drink to children. A lot of people disagreed with them then, as they disagree with them now. It is permitted to examine food to be sure that poisoned food is not sold in the groceries; it is not permitted to censor films to head off the corrupt who sell vicious sex on the screen. We are careful to safeguard the water supply; we think it an intrusion of freedom to stop the flow of rotten entertainment.32

Cardinal George Mundelein (1872-1939) of Chicago was also concerned about the problem. Dinneen came to his attention. When the police asked Mundelein for guidance, he suggested Dinneen, who began sitting in on the screening of films. Lord would later comment on the films of the time: If anyone, by the way, thinks that the code stopped artistry and sophisticated entertainment and adult films, he doesn’t realize that the plots were puerile, that the thought content was less than zero, and that the scenes of violence had all the sophistication of an axe murder or a seduction in an alley.33

Meanwhile, Daniel Lord found himself in New York at a meeting on movie content between movie officials and the general public which had been organized by Will Hays (1879-1954), President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). In Played by Ear Lord describes his confrontation with the representative of the movies.34 This brought Daniel Lord to the attention of Will Hays and the Hays Office in New York.

Lord later noted: Now in a combination of circumstances that is a little too pat for easy credulity, a lot of things congealed.35 In Chicago, Cardinal Mundelein had weekly lunches with officials of Halsey Stuart and Company, one of the largest financial firms in the country. Across the luncheon table the bankers told the cardinal how into their laps had been dumped the control of motion-picture companies. They were frankly shocked with what they now owned. They wanted no part of the crime and vice movies that were all too common from Hollywood.36

Meanwhile, Quigley and Dinneen had been meeting and discussing the issue. Several other codes had been drawn up such as one by Irving Thalberg (1899-1936) of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Will Hays already had a list of Do’s and Don’ts, but the points were not organized as a whole. On his next meeting with Cardinal Mundelein about the rising tide of evil films, Father Dinneen suggested to his eminence that the time might be ripe for the industry to do its own censoring. Would his eminence propose this to Halsey Stuart and Company? He promptly did, and the bankers, relieved at the possibility of cleaning up the dirtiest and most annoying of their financial babies, agreed to pressure the companies.37

Lord later noted other industries had created codes. Even Hollywood had already adopted a series of business codes to limiting such things as pirating of other studios stars and plots, and rules for working with labor.38

In the fall of 1929, Dinneen sent for Lord to come to his rectory in Chicago. Far into the night Dinneen, Lord, and Quigley talked about the Code. Lord described what happened next: Father Dinneen turned to me. Would I be willing to attempt to write such a code? It was a challenge. Here was a chance to tie the Ten Commandments in with the newest and most wide-spread form of entertainment. Here was an opportunity to read morality and decency into mass recreation. Here was an industry that might be persuaded to avoid the police by a sane and honorable policy.39

Lord returned to St. Louis and went to work on writing the Code. Meanwhile Martin Quigley, who was close to Will Hays, offered that Mundelein would send his personal representative to the movie industry, on invitation of the Hays office, to propose a moral code, and solve Hays’ biggest problem: the lack of a guide.

Pitching the Code to the Big Wigs

Lord next went to Hollywood to present the Code. So out I went with Father Dinneen’s blessing, with the official backing of Cardinal Mundelein, to arrangements made by Martin Quigley, and on the expressed invitation of Will Hays.40 In February 1930, Will Hays presided over several meetings with the movie industry executives. On February 10, Lord presented the Code and spoke for a half hour. Talking quickly, he emphasized the reasons for the Code and what he thought it could do for the industry. According to Played by Ear, Cecil B. DeMille made a short speech at the end of the meeting.41

The following day a subordinate committee met to create a condensed Code that was only four pages.42 Lord then went to the Hays office for a series of meetings with the staff.43

Sometime later, the industry leaders met and signed the Code. The Code was adopted on March 31, 1930. They planned to have a formal presentation of the Code and have it published in Quigley’s Motion Picture Herald. But someone leaked it to Variety who then published the entire document, spoiling the chance for a planned unveiling.

Lord would later describe his overall view of the process:

Always it must be remembered that every step of actual initiative was taken by the industry. The code was forced upon them by no moral agency or religious group. The bankers were disgusted with the product which the financial collapse of the early thirties had given to them over their protest. The industry knew that censorship had been frightfully expensive, that the women’s organizations of the country were rising in just wrath, that federal censorship might well be a possibility, and the growing state censorship was a fact they could not shrug off. Many of the decent men inside the industry were sick and tired of competing with the elements among them who fed the audiences red meat and then wondered that the pleasantly good pictures lost appeal.44

At the time Lord thought there was general enthusiasm for the Code across the country. However, the creation of the Code was a classic case of a rushed policy without time to think out and debate how it would actually work. Two key problems were left unaddressed. How would the Code be enforced? And the way it first played out the producers would be judging each other’s films and thus would be reluctant to make harsh judgements about them.45

The Code

Motion Picture Production Code

Lord’s original draft contained four sections: Reasons Supporting [the] Preamble of [the] Code, Reasons Supporting the General Principles, Reasons Underlying Particular Applications, and twelve particular applications: I. Crimes Against the Law, II. Sex, III. Vulgarity, IV. Obscenity, V. Profanity, VI. Costume, VII. Dances, VIII. Religion, IX. Locations, X. National Feeling, XI. Titles, and XII. Repellent Subjects.46

The final version of the Code accepted by the film industry started with General Principles. The Reasons Supporting the Preamble of the Code became an addendum. The General Principles stated:

1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin. 2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented. 3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

Later in the Code more detail is given, such as on the problem of lowering the moral standards of viewers:

This is done: 1. When evil is made to appear attractive and alluring, and good is made to appear unattractive. 2. When the sympathy of the audience is thrown on the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, sin. The same is true of a film that would throw sympathy against goodness, honor, innocence, purity or honesty.

As for the particular application I. Crimes Against the Law, the Code stated:

These shall never be presented in such a way as to throw sympathy with the crime as against law and justice or to inspire others with a desire for imitation. . . . The treatment of crimes against the law must not: 1. Teach methods of crime. 2. Inspire potential criminals with a desire for imitation. 3. Make criminals seem heroic and justified.

In other words, movies should not teach viewers how to commit crimes or encourage them to commit crimes.

One line in the Code states Revenge in modern times shall not be justified. How many films in more recent decades are all about revenge?

As for sex, the Code states The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing. The Code goes on to state Sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden.47

Other points in the Code state Illegal drug traffic must never be presented, and Nudity or semi-nudity used simply to put a ‘punch’ into a picture comes under the head of immoral actions.

One guideline taken from the earlier Do’s and Don’ts, would wind up in the later versions of Code but is not found in Lord’s original draft: Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races) is forbidden.48

Scholarship on the Code

In the past thirty years, a dozen books have been written on the Code which all mention Daniel Lord.49 However, most writers did not take the time to understand Daniel Lord’s background or his reasoning in writing the Code. For example, only two books mention that Lord wrote books and pamphlets. Also, in many of these books Lord gets pigeonholed into categories he does not fit.

Several writers give inaccurate information on Lord. One could argue that these are small errors, but they show that few have dug deeper into Lord’s background. Several sources describe Lord as a professor, or professor of dramatics at Saint Louis University.50 From 1917-1920, during his Regency—part of his Jesuit training—Lord taught English at the University. After that, Lord never again worked for the university. One writer calls Lord an accomplished pianist.51 Lord did not think so. He played piano by ear, hence the name of his autobiography.

Several writers mention that Lord was head of the Ladies Sodality: true but misleading. By the 1990s, the Ladies Sodality was the only surviving vestige of the Sodality movement. And where it survived it was often seen as a marginal group with no future. During Lord’s career the Sodality movement in the United States was one of larger youth organizations in the country. In 1930, some 10,000 Sodalities existed in the United States and Canada.

The most troubling mistake is the claim that The Queen’s Work magazine of the Sodality, which Lord edited, preached morality and ethics.52 The lively and engaging magazine The Queen’s Work rarely preached morality.53 Instead it had items on Sodality activities around the country; articles on professional careers for women; student interviews of Catholic movie stars, musicians, athletes; famous Catholic officers during World War II; and many clever cartoons. Lastly, when Lord did talk on moral issues, as in several of his pamphlets, he never wrote in a preachy style, rather he wrote to persuade by reasonable argument.

By Tom Pollard’s 2009 book, Lord had been promoted to Catholic professor of religious studies.54 Pollard also labels Lord a religious conservative.55 Although, Lord’s Catholicism was heavily rooted in Marian devotion, he was anything but a conservative. During his career, many Catholic religious conservatives hated him and his popular approach to religion. Late in his career Lord embraced the beginnings of the liturgical reform movement such as using the Missa recitata at Sodality conferences. He promoted a bigger role for Catholic sisters, such as treating them as equals in the vineyard, and called for giving these women greater control over their own lives and ministries. Lord also anticipated much of the mindset of Vatican II.

One author states about Lord: He further elucidated upon his loathing of birth control, abortion, the theory of evolution, the growth of communism and secular education . . .56 Lord did write four strident pamphlets against birth control—not his best pamphlets—but he rarely mentioned abortion in his writing. Lord wrote little on evolution and did not seem to oppose it. Lord was a huge booster for Catholic schools but never opposed secular education.57 Lord did write against communism in the 1930s but believed the way to fight communism was to take Catholic social teaching seriously in terms of removing economic injustice and opposing bigotry. Lord wrote two pamphlets What Catholicity and Communism Have in Common (1936) and Thanks to the Communists (1937) as wakeup calls to Catholics to pay attention to Catholic Social Teaching.58

Author Gregory Black seems to pigeonhole Lord as a political conservative. Lord was a progressive, particularly in the fight for the rights of African Americans, called at the time Interracial Justice. Lord believed in the importance of Catholic social teaching. For several years Lord ran the Jesuit Institute of Social Justice to promote Catholic social teaching, which is anything but conservative.

Part of the problem in understanding Lord is that the later application of the Code can be faulted for many reasons. Lord himself would later question why some films were censored. But one most avoid projecting the faults of the later Code implementation with values of Daniel Lord. Yet several authors seem to be doing just that by seeing in Lord all they see wrong with the Code and its later application. Daniel Lord, a unique figure who defies all categories, must be understood on his own terms and with his own words (in context).

A final point is that Daniel Lord did not think he was writing a Catholic document. He stated, The code must be so written that the follower of any religion, or any man of decent feeling and conviction, would read it and instantly agree. It must make morality attractive, in the sense of responsibility of the movies to its public clear and unmistakable.59 Lord makes an important point here. Although many of the key figures in creating the Code were Catholic, there was nothing specifically Catholic about the Code. The moral principles behind the Code were held by many Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and even by nonreligious people.

However, Black describes the Code : What emerged was a fascinating combination of Catholic theology, conservative politics, and pop psychology—an amalgam that would control the content of Hollywood films for three decades.60 Yet there is no theology—defined as a discussion of God, or of Jesus for Christians—in the Code. In the final version of the Code, several statements guide the treatment of religion, such as, No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith. But the words God, Lord, Jesus, and Christ are only mentioned in the list of profanity to be avoided, along with S.O.B and damn.

As one writer more accurately stated: Although constructed by Daniel Lord, there was nothing about it that would lead one to suspect it was written by a servant of the Pope. Rather, the code embodied ideals that had a long tradition in America.61

Lord’s Alternative Vision for the Movies

Lord not only wanted to keep things he thought bad out of the movies, but he had his own vision of what movies could be: I recall recommending such things as stories of business, great biographies, sports stories, skating pictures, stories of small towns rather than big cities or frontiers, stories directed toward women’s interests.62 For example, Lord proposed making a film on hockey starring Spencer Tracy.

Eventually so many of these types of films would be made that it is hard to imagine a time when Hollywood did not make them. Lord would later comment, It gave me some pleasure when the neglected categories I had listed, once the code became effective, began to be explored.63

As for adult material seriously dealing with questions about human existence, morality, and social problems; Lord in general supported such art. He simply thought that live theater should be the venue since children typically would not be in the audience. And Lord believed the movies could cover adult content, but these should be small theaters for adults. As Lord stated in the Code: Hence: If there should be created a special type of theatre, catering exclusively to an adult audience, for plays of this character (plays with problem themes, difficult discussions and maturer treatment) it would seem to afford an outlet, which does not now exist, for pictures unsuitable for general distribution but permissible for exhibitions to a restricted audience.

Lord wanted Hollywood to make better movies. He hoped the Code could guide the industry: To me it seemed to open possibilities for simply magnificent pictures that never would be done as long as the industry floundered and lazed about in gutters and dirt and crime.64

Authorship of the Code

As was described above, after meeting in Chicago with Dinneen and Quigley in Dinneen’s rectory, Lord returned to St. Louis and wrote a complete version of the Code. It was later tweaked, but Lord wrote it. In the 1940s, Martin Quigley began claiming that he wrote the Code. His claims have led to confusion and misinformation ever since. Below is a detailed examination of the evidence to prove Lord’s authorship, including early statements by Martin Quigley.

A thorough study of Lord’s career and writing show him to be a man of intense sincerity. There is no reason to think he was anything but honest in his telling of his story.65 Nor would he have had any motivation to not give Quigley credit had Quigley actually wrote or co-wrote the document.

According to Lord’s own account in Played by Ear, he wrote the Code. The first draft of that code is still in my files with the A.M.D.G., B.V.M.H. at the top of the paper and my penciled notations on the margins.66 Lord further stated, Silence about my authorship of the code I took for granted. In fact, I agreed to the policy. It surprised me, however, when of a sudden I began to notice that others were credited with the authorship. Some of the claimants should, it seemed to me, know better. I even wrote to one claimant and told him that if it gave him any satisfaction to claim to have written the code, I would certainly not contradict him.67 The person falsely taking credit for writing the Code was Martin Quigley.

The author Black, who is very critical of Lord, nonetheless, confirms Lord’s authorship by quoting Quigley: ‘I received this morning your final draft of our code,’ Quigley wrote Lord in November 1929.68 In 1936, Martin Quigley wrote to Pat Scanlon of the Brooklyn Tablet giving his account of the writing to the Code. Lord had also written his account. Although Quigley and Lord had different details on the sequence of events and who was where when, Quigley stated: Father Lord actually entered upon the writing of the Code following a conference in my home in Chicago, participated in by Father Lord, Father Dinneen and myself. Following this conference, Father Lord returned to St. Louis, from where he sent to me the original draft of the Code, which I now have.69 Here Quigley again confirms that Lord wrote the original draft.

In 1941, Lord wrote to Charles R. Metzger of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America:

I was appointed to actually draft the Code,… P.S. 1. I actually wrote the Code. 2. Mr. Quigley through Mr. Hays arranged two formal meetings; at the first I presented and explained the Code. At the second, a year later, I went over typical scenarios interpreting them in the light of the Code. The one [the Code] actually adopted was fresh from the ground up, and in its composition was my work.70

In 1946, Lord wrote in a letter to the editor of the Hollywood Reporter: Mr. Quigley who was a personal friend of mine invited me to draft such a Code.… Mr. Martin Quigley brought this Code to Mr. Will Hays who in turn called it to the attention of the heads of all the companies.… At the invitation of Mr. Hays and in company with Mr. Martin Quigley, I went to Hollywood, where I presented the Code.… I went simply as the author…71

However, by 1948, Martin Quigley was claiming that he had written the Code. The Detroit Free Press article, Film Code Author Disclosed, picking up an Associated Press story based on an interview with Quigley, stated: A few months later he [Quigley] worked over his draft with the Rev. Fr. Daniel A. Lord, a Jesuit priest of St. Louis, who always had been interested in theater.

Note that Quigley now claims he wrote the draft. He makes no reference to sharing notes that Lord used in writing it. Nor does Quigley claim co-authorship. Co-authorship by Lord and Quigley has become the default position for many writers on the Code who do not look closely at the evidence.72

Lord responded to the article in a letter in 1948: I was commissioned to write the code which I did. I wrote not only the code but another document which is seldom published, which gives the reasons back of the code. The entire work was mine. Lord goes on to state: I was amazed when I found out that Martin Quigley was making any claims to having written the document. That he had a great deal to do with making it possible with introducing it to the industry I will willingly of course concede. But he never wrote a line of the document, and I can’t for the life of me understand why he wants to claim what is not his.73 Lord did not want to make it a public fight.

In 1954, Lord wrote to Joe Breen who now believed Quigley’s version. Breen had spoken at a New York meeting of the IFCA, the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae. Lord wrote, I am just amazed to think that you would made a statement to the effect that ‘Martin Quigley is not only the co-Author of the Code, he is the sole author.’74

In the months after the death of Daniel Lord, Martin Quigley wrote the article The Motion-Picture Production Code, published in March 1956 for the Jesuit weekly America in which he stated, The original, definitive document prepared by this writer with the valued collaboration of the late Rev. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., and The Code originated by this writer in the autumn of 1929 was brought to Hollywood in January, 1930.75

In a follow up letter published in America three weeks later, Quigley wrote:

The distinguished and beloved Rev. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., whose friendship and collaboration I was privileged to enjoy, did—as existing documents attest—perform an invaluable service in responding to my request for theological scrutiny and revision of the preliminary draft of the Production Code which I had prepared in the summer of 1929. The Code, as a development for which I was responsible, was presented by me individually to the Hollywood producers in February 1930. Fr. Lord, at my telephone invitation, came to Hollywood from the Middle West to attend the third and final meeting with the producers.76

Note that this account does not jibe with Lord’s version that he, Lord, presented the Code at the meeting with the producers.

In April 1956, Paul J. Greenhalgh, the General Manager of the publication Motion Picture Exhibitor wrote to John B. Amberg, S.J. of Loyola University Press who was publishing Lord’s autobiography, Played by Ear and stated:

Should you ever need to defend Father Lord, you might refer to Page 733 of the 1948-49 Motion Picture Almanac, edited by Terry Ramsaye, and published by Martin Quigley, where under the heading THE ORIGIN OF THE PRODUCTION CODE, it is stated very plainly that: Reverend Daniel A. Lord, S. J., of St. Louis, a trained moralist with an interest in the theatre, was invited into conference and active collaboration. Father Lord prepared a draft to which Mr. Quigley applied various contributions and modifications. You can then refer to Page 838 of the 1952-53 Edition of this same volume where, under the same heading, you will find that the first sentence is intact, but the second sentence relating to Father Lord’s preparation of the draft has been deleted. It would seem that the Quigley authorship was born somewhere in that four-year interval, and this change may have initiated Father Lord’s obvious upset at credit grabbers.77

Hopefully, all the evidence provided above is sufficient to permanently discredit Quigley’s claims about the authorship of the Code. Ironically, in July 1950, Quigley received a papal commendation: Cardinal Spellman invested the insignia of the Order of St. Gregory the Great yesterday upon Martin Quigley, publisher of motion picture periodicals and author of the original Code for decency adopted by the motion-picture industry. The honor was recently conferred by Pope Pius XII.78

And there is yet one final twist to this story. In 1936, Daniel Lord went to Rome to write the papal encyclical Vigilanti Cura on the movies and Legion of Decency.79 Martin Quigley would also take credit for that document. It is unlikely that a lay person would be involved in writing such a document. The thank you letter of Cardinal Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) to Daniel Lord for writing the encyclical makes no mention of Quigley.80

Feeling Betrayed

A few years after writing the Code, Lord would view it as a failure and others agreed with him.81 In his frustration he wrote the 1934 pamphlet: The Motion Pictures Betray America, which among others things listed Code violations in specific movies.82 Lord then became involved in the creation of the Legion of Decency and the creation of the Catholic rating system for movies, and his The Queen’s Work magazine would publish the ratings.83

Also in 1934, Joseph Breen became head of the Production Code Administration, a department of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. He oversaw enforcement of the Code. Lord wrote:

I returned to Hollywood at times to work with Joe Breen and his associates. We had some modifications, very few, to make. We had to write in a section on suicide when sloppy and lazy directors started to solve their plots with the suicide of some uncomfortable character. As late as 1953 I sat in with the board of the Breen office to listen to scripts and to watch the formulae that grew out of the code applied to questionable situations. Joe Breen has told me that a situation seldom arises which the code does not cover.84

In time, Daniel Lord, with his wide range of interests, would find many other projects other than his concern for movies on which to use his effort and talent.

The Relevance of Daniel Lord

The first part of Lord’s draft of the Code, Reasons Supporting [the] Preamble of [the] Code, should be read anew today as part of a necessary debate on the role of movies and other media in society. Lord raises many profound questions such as on the nature of art and entertainment and the effect of films on society.

And important questions need to be discussed. Was having the Code good or bad? Or should a different Code have been written? Was the way the Code was enforced over the decades good or bad? Was the role of Catholic figures in the creation of the Code and then later Catholic pressure on the industry an inappropriate overreach of church influence?

In looking at Lord’s original version most will readily agree with Lord’s obvious view that material that might be appropriate for adult viewers should not be viewed by children. Current rating systems for movies have done much to solve this problem. (For many parents today a bigger struggle has been created by all the inappropriate material that children can access on the internet.)

Other important questions need more discussion. Do movies and media play a role in modeling irresponsible sexual behavior that leads to unwanted consequence for some viewers and for society? For decades, many action films have featured extensive shooting scenes with the use of sophisticated and deadly weapons. Is there a connection to the soaring number of gun sales and increased gun violence to what is viewed on the screen? How did we get to the place in America where mass shootings have become common place?

Can movies play a role in educating people on issues such as the history of racism in America? Actor Tom Hanks thinks they can.85 The question of the role of movies (and other media) and their effects on society needs more discussion. The thinking of Daniel Lord should not be relegated to historical footnotes.

Does media such as movies and television influence people? Advertisers who spend astronomical sums on product placement in movies and advertising on TV must think so. And why has cigarette smoking been removed from movies, even sometimes in movies of historical settings where the characters would have smoked, if not for the concern that movies set examples that could affect some viewers to take up smoking?

As the Code played out it turned out to be a very imperfect and clumsy attempt to solve the problem of media content and its effect on viewers. But over ninety years after Daniel Lord, S.J. wrote the Code, have we solved the problem?



NOTES

  

  

Copyright 2022 Stephen Werner