Eighty years ago the moral police really started to clamp down on Hollywood. The 1930 production code banned words like “damn” as well as other, more salacious words, images and subjects. But filmmakers largely ignored it until 1934. This four-year period known the Pre-Code Era was the last that mainstream moviegoers would see of good old American sex and violence for decades. To find out more we spoke with Matthew Hoffman, a film historian at the Park Ridge Public Library, where he’s currently screening Forbidden Cinema: The Pre-Code Hollywood Series.

Series:
Thursdays at 7 p.m. through end of May 
Park Ridge Public Library 
May 13: William Wellman’s Midnight Mary (1933)
May 20: Alfred E. Green’s Baby Face (1933)
May 27: Mitchell Leisen’s Murder at the Vanities (1934)