Hollywood Babylon

Before morality descended upon Hollywood in 1934, the movie capital looked a lot like Sodom and Gomorrah. Damien Chazelle's film Babylon evokes that wild era when the film industry was steeped in scandal, orgies, murders, mafia, drugs... nothing was off limits. The Roaring Twenties were unbridled: jazz, illegal alcohol, liberated women, and audacious films by the dozens. Hollywood was churning out up to 700 films a year, exploring without restraint adultery, homosexuality, corruption, and abortion. On screen, actresses appeared in transparent lingerie; behind the scenes, stars were entangled in sordid affairs like the Fatty Arbuckle scandal or the murder of William Desmond Taylor. Faced with such debauchery, puritan America reacted: churches, the press, and moral leagues united against the "dirty movies." To avoid federal censorship, studios established a "code of good conduct" led by William Hays. Yet even after these first attempts at moralization, the Great Depression pushed studios to double down on provocations to fill empty theaters. The flamboyant and sultry pre Code years came to an end in 1934 with the strict enforcement of the Hays Code. But Hollywood, true to its rebellious spirit, would continue to outsmart censorship, with wit and talent.