Heather Babcock's Blog
July 18, 2017
Pre-Code Hollywood: No Damsels. No Knights in Shining Armor. Just Dames and Forgotten Men in Chains
I am currently working on a novel set during the Depression of the 1930′s. One of the joyful side effects of my research has been discovering the early “talkie� Hollywood films from 1930-1934, known as the “Pre-Code� period. For those not in the know, “Pre-Code� refers to films that were made and released before the amended Production Code “to govern the making of motion and talking pictures� (aka censorship) took effect on July 1st, 1934. The Code was enforced due, in no small part, to heavy-handed boycotting and mass protests led by the Catholic Legion of Decency. The Catholic Legion of Decency felt that Hollywood films had become a hotbed of sex and vice; they feared that common folk would be led down a rabbit hole of salacious sin and depravity by way of Jean Harlow’s nipples and James Cagney’s knuckles.
When we think of classic Hollywood movies today, we picture gee-whiz wholesomeness, Donna Reid and apple pie. This is certainly true for films made after the Code began to be enforced. Films released prior to the summer of 1934 however were as gritty as they were glamorous. Sexy secretaries, Prohibition-era gangsters, hookers with hearts of silver, heroin addicted and shell shocked WW1 vets, sassy showgirls and convicts on the run: the Pre-Code girls were bad and the boys just *had* it bad.
What impresses me even more than the snappy wise-cracks and sexual innuendo, is how pro-working class and anti-Establishment these films, particularly those released by the Warner Brothers studio, were. To an audience who was struggling with the worst economic downfall that North America has ever seen - a crushing failure of Capitalism which led to mass unemployment, starvation and suicide - these films asked the question: Who is the REAL criminal? Is it James Cagney’s bootlegger in "The Public Enemy" or Paul Muni’s war vet turned escaped convict in "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang"? Is it Marlene Dietrich turning tricks for her supper in "Blonde Venus" or Barbara Stanwyck literally sleeping her way up the corporate ladder in "Baby Face"? Or is it actually the Establishment who is the true criminal: the banks who robbed us, the coppers who beat us, the government who lied to us?
Now try to imagine a mainstream Hollywood film in 2017 poising that same question.
The Pre-Code talkies may be black&white but their message isn’t: when it comes to “right� vs. “wrong�, these films make room for plenty of grey.
- Written by Heather Babcock, 2017
When we think of classic Hollywood movies today, we picture gee-whiz wholesomeness, Donna Reid and apple pie. This is certainly true for films made after the Code began to be enforced. Films released prior to the summer of 1934 however were as gritty as they were glamorous. Sexy secretaries, Prohibition-era gangsters, hookers with hearts of silver, heroin addicted and shell shocked WW1 vets, sassy showgirls and convicts on the run: the Pre-Code girls were bad and the boys just *had* it bad.
What impresses me even more than the snappy wise-cracks and sexual innuendo, is how pro-working class and anti-Establishment these films, particularly those released by the Warner Brothers studio, were. To an audience who was struggling with the worst economic downfall that North America has ever seen - a crushing failure of Capitalism which led to mass unemployment, starvation and suicide - these films asked the question: Who is the REAL criminal? Is it James Cagney’s bootlegger in "The Public Enemy" or Paul Muni’s war vet turned escaped convict in "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang"? Is it Marlene Dietrich turning tricks for her supper in "Blonde Venus" or Barbara Stanwyck literally sleeping her way up the corporate ladder in "Baby Face"? Or is it actually the Establishment who is the true criminal: the banks who robbed us, the coppers who beat us, the government who lied to us?
Now try to imagine a mainstream Hollywood film in 2017 poising that same question.
The Pre-Code talkies may be black&white but their message isn’t: when it comes to “right� vs. “wrong�, these films make room for plenty of grey.
- Written by Heather Babcock, 2017
A Poem for my Father
A Poem for My Father by Heather Babcock
My father was born on Atlas Avenue
St. Clair and Dufferin
During the third year of the Great Depression.
My father loved animals
-his mother hated them-
His pet was a medium sized turtle who lived in his backyard.
One day my father came home from school to find that the turtle was gone.
“Ran away,� his mother said.
So my father ran away too -
A white lie about his birth date and he was a sailor
Spinning dials in the belly of a ship.
Older men hooked their medals and pretty girls pinned their dreams onto him
Until he got so thirsty and tired that the Navy doctor said
“You’ll lose an eye or a leg if you keep going.�
So my father traded his white bell bottomed uniform, a pet monkey and the sempiternal seas
For a collared shirt and tie, three quarrelsome women and syringes fat with insulin.
It was during the third year of the millennial financial crisis when the jelly bean shaped doctor with the jack-in-the-box voice said
“Your father is brain dead and he will never wake up.�
As I looked upon my father �
White cotton pads over his eyes,
A machine filling his body like a balloon �
I thought about the Navy, the turtle and the monkey
And I wondered about my father’s fears and what the music inside his head had sounded like
And I thought:
I’ll never know the name of the girl
My father first kissed.
(Written by Heather Babcock, 2015)
My father was born on Atlas Avenue
St. Clair and Dufferin
During the third year of the Great Depression.
My father loved animals
-his mother hated them-
His pet was a medium sized turtle who lived in his backyard.
One day my father came home from school to find that the turtle was gone.
“Ran away,� his mother said.
So my father ran away too -
A white lie about his birth date and he was a sailor
Spinning dials in the belly of a ship.
Older men hooked their medals and pretty girls pinned their dreams onto him
Until he got so thirsty and tired that the Navy doctor said
“You’ll lose an eye or a leg if you keep going.�
So my father traded his white bell bottomed uniform, a pet monkey and the sempiternal seas
For a collared shirt and tie, three quarrelsome women and syringes fat with insulin.
It was during the third year of the millennial financial crisis when the jelly bean shaped doctor with the jack-in-the-box voice said
“Your father is brain dead and he will never wake up.�
As I looked upon my father �
White cotton pads over his eyes,
A machine filling his body like a balloon �
I thought about the Navy, the turtle and the monkey
And I wondered about my father’s fears and what the music inside his head had sounded like
And I thought:
I’ll never know the name of the girl
My father first kissed.
(Written by Heather Babcock, 2015)
October 18, 2016
In Memory Of
I don’t need today
To remember
There were no clouds that summer
Only a blue sun
Breaking the necks of dandelions and
Scaring the grass white.
I don’t need a bouquet
Of the 1,827 calendar leaves
The petals are dry but
The thorns are still fresh.
I don’t need a moment of silence
To hear
The lonely screams
Of a telephone
Unanswered.
- Heather Babcock, copyright 2016
To remember
There were no clouds that summer
Only a blue sun
Breaking the necks of dandelions and
Scaring the grass white.
I don’t need a bouquet
Of the 1,827 calendar leaves
The petals are dry but
The thorns are still fresh.
I don’t need a moment of silence
To hear
The lonely screams
Of a telephone
Unanswered.
- Heather Babcock, copyright 2016
February 22, 2016
Life With More Cowbell reviews my chapbook
"There is beauty and poetry, grit and defiance, especially in the stories of family and loss." -
Thank you to Cate McKim for her wonderful review of my chapbook, Of Being Underground and Moving Backwards, on her arts & culture blog "Life with More Cowbell":
Thank you to Cate McKim for her wonderful review of my chapbook, Of Being Underground and Moving Backwards, on her arts & culture blog "Life with More Cowbell":
