Pre-Code Hollywood explores the fascinating period in American motion picture history from 1930 to 1934 when the commandments of the Production Code Administration were violated with impunity in a series of wildly unconventional films -- a time when censorship was lax and Hollywood made the most of it. Though more unbridled, salacious, subversive, and just plain bizarre than what came afterwards, the films of the period do indeed have the look of Hollywood cinema -- but the moral terrain is so off-kilter that they seem imported from a parallel universe.

1. On the Cusp of Classical Hollywood CinemaPatrolling the DiegesisPre-Code Contexts2. Breadlines and Box Office Lines: Hollywood in the Nadir of the Great DepressionThe Lost MillionsA Synchronized Industry"Mike Fright"3. Preachment Yarns: The Politics of Mere EntertainmentTelegraphing IdeologyClass DistinctionsProfessional Malfeasance4. Dictators and Democrats: The Rage for OrderHankering for Supermen"The Barrymore of the Capital": The Newsreel Presidency of Franklin Delano RooseveltA New Deal in the Last ReelThe Mad Dog of Europe5. Vice Rewarded: The Wages of Cinematic SinPackaging ViceModels of ImmoralityFigurative LiteralnessQueer Flashes"Women Love Dirt"Working Girls6. Criminal Codes: Gangsters Unbound, Felons in CustodyRushing Toward Death: The Gangster FilmMen Behind Bars: The Prison Film7. Comic Timing: Cracking Wise and Wising UpCommentators on the ActionStory, Screenplay, and All Dialogue by Mae WestNewspaper PatterThe Blue Eagle and Duck Soup (1933)8. News on Screen: The Vividness of Mechanical ImmortalityLibrary StockThe Newsreel EthosCovering Up the Great Depression9. Remote Kinships: The Geography of the Expeditionary FilmPoints on the CompassFaking It: Phoney Expeditions and Real DeathsThe Dark Continent10. Primitive Mating Rituals: The Color Wheel of the Racial Adventure Film"He's White": Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) and Tarzan and His Mate (1934)Red Skin, Red Lips: Massacre (1934)East Mates West"The Ethiopian Trade"Nerve and Brains: Paul Robeson and The Emperor Jones (1933)Beauty and the Beast: King Kong (1933)11. Nightmare Pictures: The Quality of GruesomenessRugged Individualism: Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and Their ProgenyThe Lower Orders Rise Up: Island of Lost Souls (1933) and Freaks (1932)12. Classical Hollywood Cinema: The World According to Joseph I. Breen"The Storm of '34"Hollywood Under the CodePost-Code Hollywood Cinema