Speaker 1: This is later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast
Speaker 1: More what You Hear weekday Afternoons.
Speaker 2: On the Drive That Segeloff as a writer and producer
Speaker 2: and journalist. He is the author of fourteen published books,
Speaker 2: including books on the life and films of William Friedkin,
Speaker 2: Arthur Penn, John Houston, and many many more. His newest
Speaker 2: creation is something I have a lot of interest in.
Speaker 2: It's called The Naughty Bits What the censors wouldn't let
Speaker 2: you see in Hollywood's most famous movies. Welcome, That's good
Speaker 2: to have.
Speaker 3: You along, Thanks Lley. I'm looking forward to talking to
Speaker 3: you too.
Speaker 2: What brought you to this topic? I mean, we all
Speaker 2: know that there were certain amounts of censorship back in
Speaker 2: the early days of film. What brought your interest to it?
Speaker 3: When I was writing another book on Auto Premager, who
Speaker 3: pretty much broke the production code back in the nineteen
Speaker 3: fifties and sixties, the Emotion Picture Academy gave me access
Speaker 3: to thousands of letters from the Production Code office, and
Speaker 3: I just started going through them like a little kid
Speaker 3: reading World Book. I couldn't stop reading them and figure
Speaker 3: there was a book in here somewhere. And then at
Speaker 3: some point it occurred to me that the motion picture
Speaker 3: industry was the first woke organization in America. They were
Speaker 3: so concerned about offending anybody that they wound up offending
Speaker 3: no one. Things have changed, of course, WILK has a
Speaker 3: quite different meeting today. But I was fascinated with going
Speaker 3: through all these things and realizing what they had to
Speaker 3: cut out of movies which you couldn't imagine they would
Speaker 3: have had anything bad in.
Speaker 2: And this was all self imposed. Did not the government
Speaker 2: come to the movie industry at some point say, okay,
Speaker 2: start governing yourself, or we will.
Speaker 3: It was even worse than that. It wasn't the government,
Speaker 3: It was hundreds of governments. That was municipalities. You see
Speaker 3: a series of sex and drug scandals in the nineteen
Speaker 3: twenties in Hollywood brought down the wrath of all the
Speaker 3: local communities who wanted to sensor movies. And that was impractical,
Speaker 3: because how does a film company make twenty different versions
Speaker 3: of the same movie, depending whether you can show it
Speaker 3: in Oklahoma or Grand Rapids or San Diego or whatever.
Speaker 3: A industry got together informed what is now the Motion
Speaker 3: Picture Association, but back then was called the Motion Picture
Speaker 3: Producers and Distributors association. They appointed a man named will Hayes,
Speaker 3: who looked like he fell out of the grant Wood painting,
Speaker 3: to be the Czar of all the Rushes, as they
Speaker 3: called him. And they established a list of don'ts and
Speaker 3: be careful of things that would get you in trouble
Speaker 3: with local communities if you dared put them in your film.
Speaker 3: And I can't read that because it's one solid list
Speaker 3: of trigger warnings, but it's all in the book Naughty Bits.
Speaker 3: At that point the industry took over censoring itself and forestalled,
Speaker 3: if you will, having lots of local communities, do.
Speaker 2: It the naughty bits what the censors wouldn't let you see.
Speaker 2: And Hollywood's most famous movies that Segal office, the author.
Speaker 2: Let's start with some of those classic films like the
Speaker 2: Biggie Gone with the Wind, that.
Speaker 3: Of course is most famous for Frankly, my dear and
Speaker 3: I don't give a damn. But in fact there were
Speaker 3: also other elements of the film, in particular the birth
Speaker 3: of Melanie's child which might have been too explicitly shown,
Speaker 3: the portrayal of African Americans. They actually used the N
Speaker 3: word in the book, and they wouldn't let that in
Speaker 3: the movie, the producers consulted the NAACP about the treatment
Speaker 3: of black people in slavery, of course, And the thing
Speaker 3: that most people don't realize is after Scarlett is attacked
Speaker 3: going over the bridge, Rhet and the other man go
Speaker 3: out and try to roust all of the people who
Speaker 3: were living homeless in that encampment. Well, Rhet and Ashley,
Speaker 3: that's the gu Glux klan ah, and they cut that
Speaker 3: part out. They couldn't call them that. So there was
Speaker 3: quite a bit of changing done between the book Gone
Speaker 3: with the.
Speaker 2: Wind, one of my favorites, Casablanca.
Speaker 3: H that's great. Rick and Ilsa, of course, were involved
Speaker 3: in an illicit romance when she thought that Victor was dead,
Speaker 3: rather than finding out that he was in a concentration camp.
Speaker 3: And in fact it was she who abandoned Rick at
Speaker 3: the train station along with Sam when she found out
Speaker 3: that Victor was alive. But we really don't know if
Speaker 3: she took off her dress before the Germans left her below.
Speaker 2: Ah, so they weren't allowed to tell us if that
Speaker 2: was actually what happened.
Speaker 3: There are some indications that they may have done some
Speaker 3: hanky panky, but we really don't have any sense of
Speaker 3: that the film moves along so fast, I don't think
Speaker 3: anybody thinks about it.
Speaker 2: No no, and film naw was coming along then anyway,
Speaker 2: So a lot of the way you produced and wrote
Speaker 2: was changing.
Speaker 3: Everything was changing after World War Two. Of course, Casablanca
Speaker 3: was during the war, and it was geared to the
Speaker 3: war effort at a time when the Allies weren't doing
Speaker 3: very well. But you're right. After World War two, film
Speaker 3: noir came along, and that was much more of an
Speaker 3: adult genre, and in fact, audiences who had been hired
Speaker 3: by the war were not about to go back to
Speaker 3: the pablem they'd have to endure from the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: That caused a lot of pressure on the Production Code
Speaker 3: to change, and one of the reasons the Production Code
Speaker 3: was in trouble was it couldn't change. That led to
Speaker 3: its eventual dissolution in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: The Naughty Bits what the censors wouldn't let you see
Speaker 2: in Hollywood's most famous movies, and that segal Off is
Speaker 2: the author, and we're talking to him about some of
Speaker 2: the favorite movies where this happened. The Ten Commandments. We
Speaker 2: are talking the nineteen fifties version, not the original silent version.
Speaker 3: That's right. I had to put the Ten Commandments and
Speaker 3: the Sound of Music in just to show that the
Speaker 3: Production Code office looked at every movie, whether it was
Speaker 3: supposed to be scurrilous or not. Of course, sound of
Speaker 3: music coast to thrill with no problem. The Ten Commandments
Speaker 3: actually had a censored moment at the very beginning, when
Speaker 3: Pharaoh hears that there's going to be a deliverer born
Speaker 3: among the Hebrews. He orders the slaughter of all the
Speaker 3: firstborn male Hebrew children, and there's a shot where a
Speaker 3: soldier from the Pharaoh's army comes out and wipes blood
Speaker 3: off his broadsword as a mother is in tears on
Speaker 3: the side of the screen. Even today, that's a horrific moment,
Speaker 3: and that stayed in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yes it did. And I was about to say the
Speaker 2: only other thing I could think of was when Nephertieri
Speaker 2: was trying to seduce Moses. That got a little steamy.
Speaker 3: But I think we can trust Chuck Heston not to
Speaker 3: give into that start of temptation.
Speaker 2: Not at all. Lawrence of Arabia, that's a pretty benign
Speaker 2: film other than maybe violence.
Speaker 3: Well, it's long been argued that te Lawrence himself was homosexual,
Speaker 3: or at least was into s and m in some
Speaker 3: way of that. In the scene with Jose Ferrer at
Speaker 3: the Turkish Bay, when basically the Jose Ferrah hits on him,
Speaker 3: Lawrence knees the bay in the groin. The producers were
Speaker 3: cautioned not to show it actually happening, and of course
Speaker 3: David Lean did it offscreen because he's a tasteful man.
Speaker 3: But Peter O'Toole's daughter did tell me that they did
Speaker 3: add a lot of eyeliner to Peter Row' tool in
Speaker 3: certain scenes to try to suggest what his.
Speaker 2: Other life was, the naughty bits, what the sensors wouldn't
Speaker 2: let you see in Hollywood's most famous movies. And then
Speaker 2: there were times Nat segal Off I can even catch
Speaker 2: now where it seems like the writers went out of
Speaker 2: their way to suggest something rather sad actually or otherwise
Speaker 2: that only the adults in the room would pick up upon.
Speaker 3: That was the trick. Trick was to make it for
Speaker 3: all audiences. You see, when the production code was initiated
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty they didn't enforce it until nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 3: and so we had four years of what we now
Speaker 3: called incorrectly pre code films things like Night Nurse and
Speaker 3: the Story of Temple Drake and Babyface, which were really
Speaker 3: scurless and wonderfully vulgar. That was cleaned up after Joe
Speaker 3: Breen took over in nineteen thirty four, and the adults
Speaker 3: were able to pick up a lot of things after
Speaker 3: that which went over the hedge of the kid because remember,
Speaker 3: people went to the audience. People went to the movies
Speaker 3: as a full family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking of the naughty divorcee and go ahead,
Speaker 2: put your arms around them. You know that was okay, hug,
Speaker 2: Is that what you're talking about? Or what else are
Speaker 2: you talking about?
Speaker 3: So you couldn't show a kiss that was longer than
Speaker 3: three seconds, which, by the way, is the story of
Speaker 3: my life. You also couldn't show a toilet in the toilet.
Speaker 3: I mean, Psycho Jenny Lee is killed in the bathroom.
Speaker 3: Hitchcock couldn't show a toilet in the bathroom. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know where people went. They probably staved it and
Speaker 3: put it on top forty.
Speaker 2: There was a lot more great bits in the naughty bits.
Speaker 2: What the censors wouldn't let you see in Hollywood's most
Speaker 2: famous movies. If you love this behind the scenes stuff
Speaker 2: like I do. You'll love this for a summer read
Speaker 2: from Nat segel Off. And we thank you for joining
Speaker 2: us and for bringing us the book.
Speaker 3: Thank you Lee very much.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews the Lee
Speaker 1: Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
Speaker 1: weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation