15 Movies That Broke the Hays Code and Got Away With It

The Hays Code told Hollywood what it could not show for 34 years. Then, one film at a time, Hollywood stopped listening.

Some of the movies that broke the Hays Code were released without the Code’s Seal of Approval and made money anyway. Some were approved after fights that changed the rules. One got the Code amended before it opened. Together they are the story of how censorship in American film died.

Ranked by how much damage each film did to the Code’s authority, counting down to the one that broke the system first.

A word on that ranking, because I know it will annoy people. I put The Moon Is Blue at number one over Some Like It Hot and Psycho, and better films broke bigger rules. But Preminger did not break a rule. He broke the system. Everything after him was possible because a major studio release without a Seal had already happened, in 1953, and the sky had not fallen.

15) Gone with the Wind (1939)

Gone with the Wind kept “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” because Selznick got the Code amended six weeks before the premiere.

• Release Date: 15 December 1939
• Director: Victor Fleming (with George Cukor and Sam Wood uncredited)
• Stars: Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland
• Box Office: The highest-grossing film of all time adjusted for inflation, at $3.44 billion
• Runtime: 221 minutes
• Awards: 10 Oscars from 13 nominations, including Best Picture
• Type of Code Violation: Profanity
• Fun Fact: Selznick’s search for Scarlett interviewed 1,400 unknowns and cost $100,000. None of them got the part.

Code-breaking example:

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The Code’s profanity clause banned “damn” by name. Selznick did not defy it. He wrote to Will Hays arguing the word was “not an oath or a curse, but a vulgarism” and that the film would be ridiculous without it.

On 1 November 1939, six weeks before the premiere, the Code was amended. “Hell” and “damn” were now allowed when “essential and required for portrayal, in proper historical context.” The line went out with a Seal. The story that Selznick paid a $5,000 fine for it is a myth.

Why It Matters: This is the first time a producer got the Code changed rather than his film. It set the pattern for the next 30 years: the rules bent for whoever had enough money and enough patience.

14) Notorious (1946)

Notorious contains a two-and-a-half-minute kiss that Hitchcock broke into short pieces to satisfy a three-second rule that was never in the Code.

• Release Date: 15 August 1946
• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Stars: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains
• Box Office: $7.15 million worldwide, a $1 million profit for RKO
• Runtime: 101 minutes
• Awards: Nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Rains) and Best Original Screenplay (Ben Hecht). National Film Registry (2006)
• Type of Code Violation: “Excessive and lustful kissing”
• Fun Fact: Hitchcock was followed by the FBI for months after asking a physicist about uranium for the plot.

Code-breaking example:

The kiss lasts two and a half minutes. Grant and Bergman nuzzle, talk, walk to the phone, kiss again, talk again. Hitchcock said he broke it up because the Code allowed three seconds of kissing at a time.

There was no three-second rule. It is not in the Code text. But the studios believed there was, and Hitchcock built the most famous kiss in Hollywood around a rule that did not exist. The PCA’s own view was that the scene’s “general flavor” broke the actual rule, the one against “excessive and lustful kissing.” It passed anyway.

The film also has Bergman play a woman with a sexual past who is sent to sleep with a Nazi for the American government. Breen’s office objected. Hecht kept it in by never saying it out loud.

Why It Matters: Notorious is the Code era’s masterclass in implication. It shows how a director could obey the letter of a rule, or a rule he imagined, and still put exactly what he wanted on screen.

13) Duel in the Sun (1946)

Duel in the Sun was the top-grossing film of 1946, refused a licence in several states, and condemned from Catholic pulpits.

• Release Date: 31 December 1946
• Director: King Vidor
• Stars: Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Joseph Cotten, Lillian Gish, Lionel Barrymore
• Box Office: $10 million in rentals, the top-grossing film of 1946, and it barely broke even
• Runtime: 144 minutes
• Awards: Nominated for Best Actress (Jones) and Best Supporting Actress (Gish)
• Type of Code Violation: Lust, adultery, a heroine who dies unrepentant
• Fun Fact: Martin Scorsese says it was the first film he ever saw.

Code-breaking example:

Selznick spent over $6 million on a western about a mixed-race woman torn between two brothers, one decent and one not. She chooses the bad one. They shoot each other dead on a mountainside and crawl through the rocks to die in each other’s arms.

The press called it “Lust in the Dust.” Breen demanded cuts. A seduction dance was removed before release. Several states, in the South and New England, refused to license it at all. Catholic bishops warned parishioners off it from the pulpit.

Selznick released it anyway, on a saturation booking across hundreds of theatres at once, a strategy that did not become standard for another 30 years. He needed the money back before the outrage could build.

Why It Matters: The Outlaw and Duel in the Sun made money without the Code’s blessing within a year of each other. In 1948 the PCA loosened its rules on rape and interracial romance. The link is direct.

12) Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Anatomy of a Murder got a Seal while saying “panties,” “contraceptive” and “rape” in open court, then beat a Chicago ban in federal court.

• Release Date: 2 July 1959
• Director: Otto Preminger
• Stars: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, George C. Scott
• Box Office: $8 million in worldwide rentals on a $2 million budget
• Runtime: 160 minutes
• Awards: 7 Oscar nominations including Best Picture. National Film Registry (2012)
• Type of Code Violation: Language: “rape,” “panties,” “contraceptive,” “sperm”
• Fun Fact: The judge is played by Joseph N. Welch, the real lawyer who asked Senator McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency?”

Code-breaking example:

A courtroom drama about a rape trial that used the vocabulary of a rape trial. Nobody had said “panties” in a studio film before. Nobody had said “contraceptive.” Stewart’s lawyer and Scott’s prosecutor argue over the words in open court, and the film lets the audience hear all of them.

Preminger got a Seal, which shows how far the PCA had moved by 1959. Chicago’s mayor banned it anyway. Preminger took the city to federal court and won.

Why It Matters: By 1959 the Code was arguing about words instead of subjects. Anatomy of a Murder showed that the right context could make almost any word sayable, and Preminger had a knack for finding the context.

11) Baby Doll (1956)

Baby Doll got a Seal from the Code and a condemnation from the Church in the same month, and cinemas pulled it under pressure.

• Release Date: 18 December 1956
• Director: Elia Kazan
• Stars: Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach
• Box Office: About $2.3 million in rentals, hurt by boycotts
• Runtime: 114 minutes
• Awards: 4 Oscar nominations. Golden Globe for Best Director
• Type of Code Violation: A 19-year-old child bride, a seduction played for two hours
• Fun Fact: Time magazine called it “just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited.”

Code-breaking example:

Tennessee Williams wrote it. Carroll Baker plays a teenage bride who sleeps in a cot and sucks her thumb, married to a man who has agreed to wait until she turns twenty. Eli Wallach plays the rival who spends an afternoon seducing her on a porch swing.

The PCA gave it a Seal. The Legion of Decency condemned it, and Cardinal Spellman stood in the pulpit of St Patrick’s Cathedral and told Catholics it was a sin to see it. Cinemas pulled it under pressure. A billboard in Times Square showing Baker in the cot was the most famous piece of film advertising of the decade.

Why It Matters: Baby Doll split the two censors. The Code said yes. The Church said no. For 20 years they had spoken with one voice. Once they disagreed, the Code was on its own.

10) Tarzan and His Mate (1934)

Tarzan and His Mate was the first major film the new Production Code Administration reached back and cut, three months after it opened.

• Release Date: 16 April 1934
• Director: Cedric Gibbons
• Stars: Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan
• Box Office: $2.2 million in worldwide rentals
• Runtime: 104 minutes
• Awards: National Film Registry (2003)
• Type of Code Violation: Full nudity
• Fun Fact: Nazi Germany banned it for showing “a Nordic man in brutal surroundings.”

Code-breaking example:

The underwater swim. Tarzan pulls Jane into a river, her dress comes off, and Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim, doubling for O’Sullivan, performs a long nude ballet. MGM shot three versions for different markets: clothed, topless, and fully nude.

The film opened three months before the Production Code Administration did. When Breen took over in July, his first act on a major film was to order the nude footage cut from every print. Jane wore a one-piece for the rest of the series. The uncut version sat in a vault until 1986.

Why It Matters: This is the film that marks where Pre-Code ends and the Code begins. Everything else on this list is a film that pushed the wall. This is the film the wall was built on. Our guide to Pre-Code Hollywood covers the four years before it.

9) Psycho (1960)

Psycho got a Seal with a flushing toilet, a woman in a bra at lunchtime and a shower murder, by wearing the censors down.

• Release Date: 16 June 1960
• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Stars: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles
• Box Office: $50 million worldwide on a budget of $807,000
• Runtime: 109 minutes
• Awards: 4 Oscar nominations including Best Director
• Type of Code Violation: A flushing toilet, a woman in a bra, a murder in a shower, a “transvestite”
• Fun Fact: Hitchcock financed it himself through his television company after Paramount refused.

Code-breaking example:

The opening scene shows Janet Leigh in a bra, in a hotel room, at lunchtime, with a man she is not married to. The Code’s bedroom rule said “good taste and delicacy.” Hitchcock said the scene was essential to the plot.

Then there is the toilet. No American studio film had shown one flushing. Hitchcock needed it for a plot point, a scrap of torn paper, and the PCA argued over it. Then the shower scene, 78 camera setups in 45 seconds, which censors insisted showed nudity and Hitchcock insisted did not. He sent them the same footage back unchanged and they passed it.

At the end a policeman calls Norman a “transvestite.” A psychiatrist corrects him. That correction is a Code negotiation in a single line.

Why It Matters: Psycho got a Seal. It got it by exhausting the censors. Hitchcock treated the PCA as one more audience to manipulate, and the film’s success told every studio that the fight was worth having.

8) Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Bonnie and Clyde is two hours of sympathy for bank robbers, released 15 months before the ratings system replaced the Code.

• Release Date: 13 August 1967
• Director: Arthur Penn
• Stars: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard
• Box Office: $70 million worldwide on a budget of $2.5 million
• Runtime: 111 minutes
• Awards: 2 Oscars (Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography) from 10 nominations
• Type of Code Violation: Glamorised crime, graphic violence
• Fun Fact: Jean-Luc Godard was offered it first and turned it down. Gene Wilder made his film debut as a hostage.

Code-breaking example:

The Code’s first principle was that sympathy must “never be thrown to the side of crime.” Bonnie and Clyde is two hours of sympathy for bank robbers, shot like a French New Wave romance, ending in a slow-motion ambush in which the two leads are hit by dozens of bullets.

Jack Warner hated it. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick” and wrote three separate attacks on it. The film was a hit with young audiences, Crowther lost his job, and the film got 10 Oscar nominations.

Clyde was originally written as bisexual. That was changed before shooting to avoid a Code fight. Even in 1967 there were limits.

Why It Matters: Bonnie and Clyde came out 15 months before the ratings system. It showed the audience had changed faster than the rules. The Code did not fall because filmmakers pushed it. It fell because the people buying tickets had stopped caring what it said.

7) Blow-Up (1966)

Blow-Up was released without a Seal by MGM itself, through a shell company, and made ten times its budget.

• Release Date: 18 December 1966
• Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
• Stars: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles
• Box Office: $20 million on a budget of $1.8 million
• Runtime: 111 minutes
• Awards: Palme d’Or. 2 Oscar nominations
• Type of Code Violation: Nudity, sex
• Fun Fact: Antonioni wanted The Who for the nightclub scene. He got The Yardbirds, and Jeff Beck smashed his guitar on camera instead.

Code-breaking example:

A fashion photographer in swinging London may or may not have photographed a murder. Along the way there is a scene with two teenage models, a lot of pubic hair, and Vanessa Redgrave topless. The PCA refused a Seal.

MGM released it anyway. It could not release a film without a Seal under MPAA rules, so it set up a shell company called Premier Productions and released it through that. The Legion of Decency condemned it. It made ten times its budget.

Why It Matters: Every earlier film on this list was released without a Seal by an outsider: Hughes, Preminger, an independent. Blow-Up was released without a Seal by MGM. When a founding member of the MPAA starts laundering its own films past its own rules, the rules are finished. The Code was gone within two years.

6) The Outlaw (1943)

The Outlaw lost its Seal over Jane Russell’s advertising, was banned in New York, and still grossed $20 million.

• Release Date: 5 February 1943 (San Francisco); general release 1946
• Director: Howard Hughes
• Stars: Jane Russell, Jack Buetel, Walter Huston, Thomas Mitchell
• Box Office: $20 million on a budget of $3.4 million
• Runtime: 121 minutes (115 in the 1946 cut)
• Awards: None
• Type of Code Violation: Jane Russell’s cleavage, and the advertising of it
• Fun Fact: Hughes designed a cantilevered underwire bra for Russell. She wore it once, called it ridiculous, and wore her own for the rest of the shoot. He never noticed.

Code-breaking example:

A western about Billy the Kid that nobody remembers as a western. Hughes cast an unknown, Jane Russell, and built the film and the marketing around her chest. The PCA ordered 40 feet of footage cut. Hughes cut it, got a Seal, then ran an advertising campaign so lurid that San Francisco police confiscated the posters.

The film opened in 1943, was pulled, and came back in 1946 for a general release. The MPAA revoked its Seal that September over the advertising. New York banned it. Hughes opened it in New York anyway, in 1947, and dared the city to stop him.

Why It Matters: The Outlaw proved that a film with no Seal, a condemned rating and a police record could gross $20 million. Every producer who defied the Code after 1946 had Hughes’s numbers in front of them.

5) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? kept “hump the hostess” and got the first “Suggested for Mature Audiences” label, the ratings system in embryo.

• Release Date: 21 June 1966
• Director: Mike Nichols
• Stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis
• Box Office: $14.5 million in rentals, the third-biggest film of 1966
• Runtime: 131 minutes
• Awards: 5 Oscars from 13 nominations. Nominated in every category it was eligible for
• Type of Code Violation: Profanity
• Fun Fact: Taylor gained 30 pounds to play “frumpy, fifty-ish Martha.” She won the Oscar.

Code-breaking example:

Edward Albee’s play is two couples destroying each other over one night, and the language is the weapon. “Goddamn.” “Son of a bitch.” “Hump the hostess.” Jack Warner bought it knowing every line broke the profanity clause.

Jack Valenti had run the MPAA for a month when the film landed on his desk. He negotiated. “Screw you” became “goddamn you” in the American cut. “Hump the hostess” stayed. Then Valenti did something new: he passed the film with a label, “Suggested for Mature Audiences,” and Warner Bros. made cinemas agree not to admit under-18s without a parent.

Why It Matters: That label is the ratings system in embryo. Instead of deciding what a film could contain, the MPAA decided who could see it. Two years later that idea replaced the Code entirely.

4) Some Like It Hot (1959)

Some Like It Hot was released without a Seal, ends on a joke about a man marrying a man, and became the biggest comedy of the decade.

• Release Date: 19 March 1959
• Director: Billy Wilder
• Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon
• Box Office: $25 million on a budget of $2.9 million
• Runtime: 121 minutes
• Awards: 1 Oscar (Costume Design) from 6 nominations. 3 Golden Globes
• Type of Code Violation: Cross-dressing, “sex perversion,” a heroine who drinks
• Fun Fact: “Nobody’s perfect” was a placeholder line Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond never got round to replacing. It is on Wilder’s gravestone.

Code-breaking example:

Two musicians witness the St Valentine’s Day Massacre and hide in an all-female band dressed as women. One falls for Marilyn Monroe. The other gets engaged to a millionaire, and when he finally takes off the wig and says “I’m a man,” the millionaire shrugs: “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

The Code banned “sex perversion or any inference to it.” The last line of the film is an inference to it, played as the punchline. United Artists released the film without a Seal. The Legion of Decency condemned it. It was the biggest comedy of the decade.

Why It Matters: By 1959 a film could ignore the Code and win six Oscar nominations. The Seal had stopped being a requirement and become an opinion.

3) The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

The Man with the Golden Arm showed heroin addiction in close-up, was refused a Seal, and forced the 1956 rewrite of the Code.

• Release Date: 15 December 1955
• Director: Otto Preminger
• Stars: Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak
• Box Office: $4.1 million in North America on a $1 million budget
• Runtime: 119 minutes
• Awards: 3 Oscar nominations including Best Actor (Sinatra)
• Type of Code Violation: Drug addiction
• Fun Fact: Sinatra visited rehabilitation clinics to prepare, and learned drums from jazz session player Shelly Manne.

Code-breaking example:

Sinatra plays a card dealer and heroin addict trying to stay clean. The Code said “illegal drug traffic must never be presented.” The film presents it in close-up: the works, the tie-off, the withdrawal in a locked room.

The PCA refused a Seal. United Artists released it anyway, then resigned from the MPAA rather than pay the fine. Sinatra was nominated for an Oscar. The following year the Code was rewritten to permit drug addiction, abortion, kidnapping and prostitution as subjects.

Why It Matters: This is the film that forced the 1956 revision, the biggest change to the Code in its history. Preminger did not just release a film without a Seal. He made the rule that stopped him look absurd, and the MPAA rewrote it.

2) The Pawnbroker (1964)

The Pawnbroker was the first film with nudity to receive a Production Code Seal, by a 6 to 3 vote that was supposed to set no precedent.

• Release Date: June 1964 (Berlin); 20 April 1965 (US)
• Director: Sidney Lumet
• Stars: Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Morgan Freeman in his film debut
• Box Office: About $9.5 million in North American rentals
• Runtime: 116 minutes
• Awards: Oscar nomination for Best Actor (Steiger). Silver Bear at Berlin
• Type of Code Violation: Nudity
• Fun Fact: Quincy Jones scored it. “Soul Bossa Nova” from the soundtrack became the Austin Powers theme 30 years later.

Code-breaking example:

A Holocaust survivor runs a pawnshop in Harlem. A young Black woman offers herself to him for money and bares her breasts. The shot cuts to his memory of his wife in a concentration camp, forced to do the same.

The PCA rejected the film. Producer Ely Landau appealed. The MPAA board voted 6 to 3 to grant an “exception,” on the grounds that the nudity was essential and the film was “a special and unique case.” The New York Times reported it as “an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent.”

It set the precedent. The Pawnbroker was the first film with nudity to receive a Production Code Seal.

Why It Matters: Once the Code had admitted that nudity could be justified, every subsequent argument was about whether a given film qualified, not whether nudity was allowed. The Code lasted three more years.

1) The Moon Is Blue (1953)

The Moon Is Blue was the first film from a major MPAA member released without a Seal, in 1953, and nobody in it so much as undresses.

• Release Date: 22 June 1953
• Director: Otto Preminger
• Stars: William Holden, David Niven, Maggie McNamara
• Box Office: $3.5 million on a budget of $373,000, the 15th biggest film of 1953
• Runtime: 99 minutes
• Awards: Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress (McNamara)
• Type of Code Violation: A “light and gay treatment of the subject of illicit sex and seduction”
• Fun Fact: Preminger shot a German-language version at the same time on the same sets with a different cast. It added eight days to the schedule.

Code-breaking example:

A young woman meets an architect on top of the Empire State Building, goes back to his flat, and spends the evening cheerfully telling him and his neighbour that she intends to stay a virgin. That is the whole film. Nobody undresses. Nobody sleeps with anybody.

The PCA rejected the script for its “light and gay treatment of the subject of illicit sex and seduction.” The legend says it was banned for the words “virgin,” “mistress” and “pregnant.” The PCA’s own letters do not single those out. The objection was to the tone. The film found sex funny.

United Artists released it without a Seal. It was the first film from a major MPAA member to do so. The Legion of Decency condemned it. Kansas, Maryland, Ohio and Jersey City banned it. In 1955 the Supreme Court struck down the Kansas ban.

Why It Matters: Every film above this one on the list broke a rule. The Moon Is Blue broke the system. Before 1953, a major studio releasing a film without a Seal was unthinkable. After it, the question was only who would do it next. Preminger did, twice.

What was the Hays Code?

The Motion Picture Production Code was a rulebook the Hollywood studios wrote for themselves in 1930 to keep the government out of censorship. It was nicknamed after Will Hays, the industry’s spokesman. For four years it was ignored. From July 1934, under Joseph Breen, it was enforced on every film a major studio released. No Seal, no release.

The rules banned nudity, profanity, drugs, “sex perversion,” interracial romance, ridicule of religion and any crime that went unpunished. The full text, quoted and explained, is in our guide to the Hays Code rules.

The Code was loosened in 1956 and replaced by the ratings system on 1 November 1968.

Why the movies that broke the Hays Code matter

The Code did not end because it was repealed. It ended because it stopped being obeyed, and the movies that broke the Hays Code are the ones that stopped obeying it.

There is a pattern. Until 1953 the challengers were rich outsiders, Hughes and Selznick, who could absorb a loss. From 1953 the challengers were independent producers, above all Preminger, who worked out that a condemned film with a good story made money. From 1964 the challengers were the studios themselves. By the time MGM released Blow-Up through a shell company, the Code had no defenders left.

The courts helped. In 1952 the Supreme Court gave films First Amendment protection. In 1955 it struck down a state ban on The Moon Is Blue. Every time a censor lost in court, the Code lost a reason to exist.

How filmmakers beat the Code

Four methods, in order of how often they worked.

Implication. Say it without saying it. Hitchcock’s kiss, Hecht’s “government-sponsored” seduction, Wilder’s last line. This was the standard method for 30 years and it produced some of the best films ever made.

Context. Argue the offending material was essential. Anatomy of a Murder could say “panties” because it was a rape trial. The Pawnbroker could show nudity because it was the Holocaust. Once the PCA accepted the principle, the definition of essential kept widening.

Refusal. Release without a Seal and take the loss. This only worked if the film made money, which is why Preminger’s three films mattered more than a hundred art-house imports.

Amendment. Get the rule changed. Selznick did it in 1939. Preminger did it in 1956. Valenti did it for everybody in 1966.

The instinct to hide meaning in plain sight outlived the Code. Our guide to foreshadowing in movies covers what directors did with it once they no longer had to.

FAQs about movies that broke the Hays Code

The Final Cut on movies that broke the Hays Code

Every year of the Hays Code’s 34-year run, someone was testing it. The movies that broke the Hays Code are the ones that won. What changed was not the filmmakers. It was what happened when they lost.

In 1934, losing meant your film did not come out. In 1953, it meant a condemned rating and a fight in the courts. In 1966, it meant a label on the poster and a bigger opening weekend. The Code did not get weaker. The cost of ignoring it did.

Many of these films nod to earlier pictures that got away with more. If that interests you, start with these intertextuality examples in movies.

Watch The Moon Is Blue and try to find what the fuss was about. Then watch Blow-Up and try to find what was left to fight over.