“Forbidden Hollywood,” Warner Archive’s made-to-order DVD series featuring Pre-Code films, sounds like good, clean – well, dirty – fun. Pre-Code films, made from the late ’20s until 1934, when the ...

"That was the film that brought Mae West to the movies in a big way," said William Patrick Day, a professor of cinema studies and English at Oberlin College. "She had been a vaudeville and Broadway ...

They might seem tame by today’s standards, but there was a time in Hollywood when the men were bad and the women were badder. Today it’s known as the “pre-Code” era, and it’s coming to TV this month.

About 20 years ago I was in a kind of partnership with another film historian who told me that, no, there wasn’t a market for a book on pre-code movies. I can only wonder what he thinks today after ...

The most exciting time in Hollywood was arguably the ephemeral period before the stingy rules implemented by the industry. Before the adoption of the Hays Code, the guideline that major studios ...

Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely ...