de-andre-bush-eoohqHDVEP0-unsplash Hollywood sign
Previously Recorded by Phyllis Schlafly
The years 1933 through 1966 are sometimes called the Golden Age of Hollywood. The movie industry produced some of the greatest films ever. In the year 1939 alone, Hollywood gave us: Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Beau Geste, and Goodbye Mr. Chips.
What went before the Golden Age and what came after was very, very different. Prior to 1933, Hollywood produced a lot of sex, violence and immorality. It was so bad that the studios asked the churches to help them clean up their act. That was the start of the Hays Code, which called for decency, and banned sex and nudity. The Protestant Fihn Office and the Catholic Legion of Decency reviewed every script and kept out the bad stuff. The Golden Age of Hollywood was the result. And it was very good for business. More people saw movies in the 1940s than see them today.
Then what happened? Beginning in 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down 34 decisions that turned the law of obscenity upside down, reversing dozens of judges, juries, lower courts, and law enforcement officials. Those 34 reversals made laws against obscenity almost impossible to enforce, thereby drastically lowering community standards. Hollywood got the message, abolished the Hays Code and declared its new freedom. The Academy Awards show the result. In 1965, the Best Picture was The Sound of Music. By 1969 the Best Picture was Midnight Cowboy, an X-rated film about a homeless male hustler.
Judge Robert Bork said that "the suffocating vulgarity of popular culture is in large measure the work of the [Supreme] Court. The Court did not create vulgarity, but it defeated [our] attempts … to … minimize vulgarity." It's time for Americans to call a halt to the way activist judges have been imposing vulgarity on us in the name of free speech.
