Hays Code Rules: The Full List of What Hollywood Banned (1930 to 1968)

The Hays Code rules decided what American movies could show. It ran from 1934 to 1968 and it was not written by the government. The studios wrote it themselves, then hired a man to enforce it against them.

Most articles summarise it. This one quotes it. Every one of the Hays Code rules below is taken from the text of the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, with the film it shaped next to it.

The full list of Hays Code rules

The Code had twelve sections of “Particular Applications.” Here is every one, in the Code’s own words, with a film it affected.

Section	What the Code said	A film it shaped
Crimes against the law	“The technique of murder must be presented in a way that will not inspire imitation.” Theft, safe-cracking and arson “should not be detailed in method.” “Illegal drug traffic must never be presented.”	Scarface (1932) was held for a year and given a new ending. The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) was refused a Seal for showing heroin addiction.
Sex	“Adultery… must not be explicitly treated, or justified, or presented attractively.” “Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown.” “Sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden.” “Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races) is forbidden.”	Casablanca (1942) could only imply Rick and Ilsa’s affair. Queer characters vanished from the screen for 30 years.
Vulgarity	“Low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects” must follow “the dictates of good taste.”	Psycho (1960) had to fight to show a flushing toilet.
Obscenity	“Obscenity in word, gesture, reference, song, joke, or by suggestion (even when likely to be understood only by part of the audience) is forbidden.”	Mae West’s entire career after 1934.
Profanity	“Pointed profanity (this includes the words, God, Lord, Jesus, Christ – unless used reverently – Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd)… is forbidden.”	Gone with the Wind (1939) needed a Code amendment to keep “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Costume	“Complete nudity is never permitted. This includes nudity in fact or in silhouette.” “Undressing scenes should be avoided.”	Tarzan and His Mate (1934) had its underwater scene cut from every print.
Dances	“Dances suggesting or representing sexual actions or indecent passions are forbidden.”	The “Dance of the Naked Moon” was cut from The Sign of the Cross on reissue.
Religion	“No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith.” “Ministers of religion… should not be used as comic characters or as villains.”	Villainous priests disappeared. Boys Town (1938) is what replaced them.
Locations	“The treatment of bedrooms must be governed by good taste and delicacy.”	Married couples slept in twin beds for two decades.
National feelings	“The use of the Flag shall be consistently respectful.” Other nations “shall be represented fairly.”	Studios softened anti-Nazi films until 1939 to protect the German market.
Titles	“Salacious, indecent, or obscene titles shall not be used.”	MGM would not use the title Ex-Wife for The Divorcee (1930).
Repellent subjects	Hangings, “third degree methods,” “brutality and possible gruesomeness,” cruelty to children or animals, “the sale of women,” and “surgical operations” must stay “within the careful limits of good taste.”	Freaks (1932) lost a third of its running time.

That table is the Code. Everything below is what it meant in practice.

What were the Code’s three general principles?

Before the specific rules, the Code laid down three principles. Every decision Breen’s office made came back to them.

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.”

Read the first one again. It does not ban crime or sin. It bans sympathy for them. That is the difference between a film that could not exist under the Code and a film that could exist if it ended the right way.

This is why Code-era gangsters die in the last reel. It is why film noir is full of adulterous couples who are caught. Breen’s office called it “compensating moral values”: you could show almost anything as long as the film punished it before the credits.

Here is where I land on it. The Code was bad law and, for about twenty years, strangely good for writing. Forcing Casablanca to end with Rick putting Ilsa on the plane gave us the best ending in Hollywood. Forcing a generation of queer characters into coded villainy did thirty years of damage that films are still repairing. You do not get to keep one without the other, and anyone who tells you the Code was “good for creativity” is only counting the first half.

What were the Hays Code rules on crime?

The Hays Code rules on crime banned detailed methods of murder, theft and arson, required every criminal to be punished, and forbade any depiction of illegal drug traffic. They were the rules the studios felt first, because gangster films had made Warner Bros. rich.

The rules were specific. “Brutal killings are not to be presented in detail.” “Revenge in modern times shall not be justified.” “The use of firearms should be restricted to the essentials.” Methods of “theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings” could not be shown in a way that taught the audience how.

Scarface is the test case. Howard Hughes fought the Hays Office for a year over it. The office wanted a moralising prologue, the subtitle “The Shame of a Nation,” and a new ending where Tony Camonte is tried and hanged instead of dying in a gunfight. Hughes shot the new ending with a double, then released the original where he could.

After 1934, the fight was over. Cagney and Bogart still played gangsters, but the films now had to make the audience want them caught. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) ends with Cagney pretending to be a coward on the way to the electric chair so the boys who admire him will stop. That scene exists because of the Code.

The drug rule was absolute. “Illegal drug traffic must never be presented.” Otto Preminger released The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) without a Seal because Frank Sinatra’s character was a heroin addict. It made money and earned Sinatra an Oscar nomination. The rule was rewritten the following year.

What were the Hays Code rules on sex?

The Hays Code rules on sex banned adultery shown attractively, “lustful” kissing, any hint of homosexuality and interracial relationships. This is the section most people mean when they say “Hays Code.”

Adultery could appear, “sometimes necessary plot material,” but “must not be explicitly treated, or justified, or presented attractively.” Seduction and rape “should never be more than suggested” and “are never the proper subject for comedy.” Sex hygiene and venereal disease “are not subjects for motion pictures.” Childbirth could not be shown “in fact or in silhouette.”

Two rules did the most damage.

“Sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden.” The Code never used the word homosexuality. It did not need to. Breen’s office read any queer character as perversion, and studios stopped writing them. The ones who survived were coded: the effeminate villain, the mannish spinster, the “confirmed bachelor.” When Warner Bros. adapted The Maltese Falcon in 1941, Joel Cairo’s sexuality had to be hinted through perfume and a lace handkerchief.

“Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races) is forbidden.” This rule was not about taste. It was about the Southern box office, and it kept Black actors out of romantic leads for a generation. It was removed in the 1956 revision. Island in the Sun, with Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine, came out the following year and was still banned in several Southern states.

Casablanca shows how the rest of it worked. Breen objected to any suggestion that Rick and Ilsa had slept together in Paris. The film keeps it, but in a dissolve and a line of dialogue. He also objected to Captain Renault trading exit visas for sex. The film keeps that too, in a joke. What the Code could not allow was the ending where Rick keeps a married woman. So Rick puts her on the plane, and the most famous ending in Hollywood is a censorship decision. Pre-Code and Code-era films leaned on reference and implication, the same tools behind these intertextuality examples in movies.

What were the Hays Code rules on profanity and obscenity?

The profanity rule listed its banned words: “God, Lord, Jesus, Christ – unless used reverently – Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd.” The obscenity rule went further. Anything obscene “by suggestion (even when likely to be understood only by part of the audience)” was out. That clause was written for Mae West, whose lines only worked if the audience heard the second meaning.

The famous case is “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The story usually told is that David O. Selznick paid a $5,000 fine to keep it. That is not what happened. Selznick lobbied Will Hays for months, arguing the word was “not an oath or a curse, but a vulgarism.” In November 1939, a month before the film opened, the Code was amended to allow “hell” and “damn” when “essential and required for portrayal, in proper historical context.” The line went out with a Seal.

The wall came down slowly. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) was told to cut “screw” and allowed to keep “hump the hostess.” It was released with a “Suggested for Mature Audiences” label, the first film to carry one.

What were the Hays Code rules on costume, dance and nudity?

“Complete nudity is never permitted. This includes nudity in fact or in silhouette, or any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture.” Undressing scenes were “to be avoided.” Dances “suggesting or representing sexual actions” were forbidden.

Tarzan and His Mate (1934) is the first film the new PCA reached back and cut. Its underwater swim, with Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim doubling nude for Maureen O’Sullivan, was removed from every print. Jane’s two-piece costume was replaced by a one-piece for the rest of the series.

The costume rule is also why the Code era looks the way it does. Necklines rose. Busby Berkeley’s dancers put on more clothes. The bathing suit in a 1950s musical is a Code artefact.

The first film with nudity to get a Seal was The Pawnbroker in 1964. The MPAA board voted 6 to 3 to approve it as an exception. The New York Times called it “an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent.” It set a precedent.

What were the Hays Code rules on religion?

“No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith.” Ministers “should not be used as comic characters or as villains.” Ceremonies must be “carefully and respectfully handled.”

The Code was written by a Jesuit priest, Father Daniel Lord, and a Catholic publisher, Martin Quigley. Breen was a Catholic layman. One historian described the arrangement as “a Jewish-owned business selling Roman Catholic theology to Protestant America.”

The practical effect was 30 years of saintly priests. Spencer Tracy in Boys Town (1938), Bing Crosby in Going My Way (1944), Karl Malden in On the Waterfront (1954). The corrupt clergyman, a stock figure in Pre-Code films, did not come back until the 1970s.

What were the Hays Code rules on repellent subjects?

The last section is a list of things that “must be treated within the careful limits of good taste”: legal hangings and electrocutions, “third degree methods,” “brutality and possible gruesomeness,” branding, cruelty to children or animals, “the sale of women, or a woman selling her virtue,” and “surgical operations.”

This is the section that hit horror. Freaks (1932) was cut from 90 minutes to 64 before the Code was enforced, and would not have been made at all after it. Universal’s monster films got tamer through the decade. The 1935 Bride of Frankenstein had its body count reduced from 21 to 10 before release.

It is also, oddly, the section that helped animals. The American Humane Association monitored film sets under authority borrowed from the Hays Office. When the office closed in 1966, that authority went with it. Animal deaths on set rose until the AHA got back on set in 1980.

Which famous Hays Code rules were never in the Code?

The three-second kiss, one foot on the floor and the $5,000 fine for “damn” were never in the Code. Ask anyone what the Hays Code banned and you will hear these three. None of them is in the text.

The three-second kiss. There was no time limit. The Code bans “excessive and lustful kissing,” nothing more precise. Jack Vizzard, who worked at the PCA for 24 years, said the studios invented the rule themselves, which is why the number varies from three seconds to thirty depending on who tells it. The PCA called it the “rail bird myth,” after racetrack timekeepers. Hitchcock’s two-and-a-half-minute kiss in Notorious (1946), broken up with dialogue, is usually described as a loophole. By the PCA’s own reading it broke the spirit of the rule and was passed anyway.

One foot on the floor. Not in the Code. The only line about bedrooms is that they “must be governed by good taste and delicacy.” The foot-on-the-floor convention, like twin beds for married couples, was a studio habit. Directors did it so Breen’s office would have nothing to object to.

The $5,000 fine for “damn.” See above. The Code was amended before Gone with the Wind opened. If a fee was paid, it was a face-saving gesture, not a penalty.

Why do these myths persist? Because they are easier to remember than the real rules. The real Code was vaguer and, for a filmmaker, worse. “Good taste” meant whatever Joseph Breen said it meant.

The three-second kiss is the question I get asked about most, and I have never found a single primary source for it. Not in the Code, not in the PCA correspondence that has been published, not in any interview with anyone who worked there. That is how you know a myth. The real rules were worse than the invented ones, because you could not measure them with a stopwatch.

How were the Hays Code rules enforced?

The Hays Code rules were enforced by the Production Code Administration, which read every script and screened every finished film from July 1934 and issued the Seal without which no major studio film could be released. It did not start that way. The Code was adopted in March 1930 and ignored for four years. The office meant to enforce it could suggest cuts but not require them. By 1931 a screenwriter told The Hollywood Reporter that the Code “is not even a joke any more; it’s just a memory.” The films of those four years are called Pre-Code Hollywood, and they are why the crackdown came.

In 1934 the Catholic Legion of Decency organised boycotts, and millions of Catholics signed pledges to avoid immoral films. The studios responded by creating the Production Code Administration on 13 June 1934, with Joseph Breen in charge. From July, no member studio could release a film without a PCA Seal.

Enforcement worked in three stages.

1. Script review. Every screenplay went to Breen’s office before shooting. The office sent back letters listing objections, sometimes dozens of pages long.
2. Print review. The finished film was screened for the PCA. More cuts could be ordered.
3. The Seal. An approved film received a certificate number, shown in its opening credits. Without one, member theatres would not book it. Studios that released without a Seal faced a reported $25,000 fine.

The PCA’s surviving records cover more than 5,000 films. They are held at the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library.

How did the Hays Code rules change?

The Hays Code rules were amended in 1939, rewritten in 1956 and replaced by ratings in 1968. Three revisions matter.

• November 1939. “Hell” and “damn” allowed in historical or literary context.
• 1956. The biggest rewrite. Drug addiction, prostitution, abortion, kidnapping and miscegenation could now be shown, with conditions. Blasphemy stayed banned.
• 1966. Jack Valenti took over the MPAA and introduced the “Suggested for Mature Audiences” label. The Code was quietly being replaced by classification.

Why did the Hays Code end?

The Hays Code ended on 1 November 1968 because the courts, television, foreign films, independent producers and finally the studios themselves stopped honouring it. Five things killed it.

The courts. In 1952 the Supreme Court’s Miracle decision ruled that films were protected by the First Amendment. The threat of government censorship, which was the whole reason the studios wrote the Code, was gone.

Television. By the mid-1950s the family audience was at home. Cinemas needed to offer what TV could not.

Foreign films. Bicycle Thieves, Summer with Monika, La Dolce Vita. None needed a Seal. All played in American art houses.

Producers who refused. Preminger released The Moon Is Blue (1953) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) without Seals. Billy Wilder released Some Like It Hot (1959) without one. All three made money. Once the Seal stopped mattering to the box office, it stopped mattering.

The studios themselves. In 1966 MGM released Blow-Up, a film it had produced, without a Seal, through a shell company called Premier Productions. When the members of a club start breaking its rules, the club is finished.

On 1 November 1968 the Code was replaced by four ratings: G, M, R and X. M became GP in 1970 and PG in 1972. PG-13 arrived in 1984 and NC-17 in 1990. That system, run by the Classification and Rating Administration, is what you see on a poster today.

One thing I would push back on. The ratings system is usually described as the Code’s replacement, and it was, but it was also a retreat to the Code’s original purpose. Hays was hired in 1922 to stop the government stepping in. Valenti’s ratings did the same job in 1968. The industry has never once been censored by law, and it has spent a century making sure of it.

FAQs about the Hays Code rules

The Final Cut on the Hays Code rules

The Hays Code rules are remembered as a list of bans. Read the text and it is something else: a set of instructions about who the audience should root for.

That is a harder rule to break than “no nudity.” You can cut a shot. You cannot cut a sympathy. So the best directors of the Code era learned to build it in sideways, and audiences learned to read it. Watch Casablanca or Double Indemnity or Rear Window and count how much you are being told without being shown.

Then watch a Pre-Code film and see what it looked like when nobody had to.