Will H. Hays

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Will H. Hays bigraphy, stories - Generals

Will H. Hays : biography

November 5, 1879 – March 7, 1954

William Harrison Hays, Sr. (November 5, 1879 – March 7, 1954), namesake of the Hays Code for censorship of American films, was chairman of the Republican National Committee (1918–21) and U.S. Postmaster General (1921-22).

Hays was born in Sullivan, Indiana. He was the manager of Warren G. Harding’s successful campaign for the Presidency of the United States in the 1920 election and was subsequently appointed Postmaster General. After a year in office, he resigned to become the choice of the Hollywood movie studios to become the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) (1922-45). In the postwar period, this organization would be renamed the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Death

After his retirement, Will H. Hays returned to Sullivan, Indiana where he died on March 7, 1954.

Head of MPPDA

Hays resigned his cabinet position on January 14, 1922, to become President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) shortly after the organization’s founding."Hays to Be Mogul In Silver Screen Realm", San Antonio Express, January 15, 1922, p 4 He began his new job, at a $100,000 annual salary, on March 6 of that year."Will Hays, Who Is to Get $17 Hourly, to Make the Movies Behave Hereafter", Syracuse Herald, March 5, 1922, p33 The goal of the organization was to renovate the image of the movie industry in the wake of the scandal surrounding the alleged rape and murder of model and actress Virginia Rappe, for which film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was accused, and amid growing calls by religious groups for federal censorship of the movies. Hiring Hays to "clean up the pictures" was, at least in part, a public relations ploy and much was made of his conservative credentials, including his roles as a Presbyterian deacon and past chairman of the Republican Party.

Hays’ main roles were to persuade individual state censor boards not to ban specific films outright and to reduce the financial impact of the boards’ cuts and edits. At that time, the studios were required by state laws to pay the censor boards for each foot of film excised and for each title card edited; in addition, studios also had the expense of duplicating and distributing separate versions of each censored film for the state or states that adhered to a particular board’s decisions. 1922 [[editorial cartoon by Cy Hungerford illustrating the perception that Hays was coming to rescue the movie industry.]]

Hays attempted to reduce studio costs (and improve the industry’s image in general) by advising individual studios on how to produce movies to reduce the likelihood that the film would be cut. Each board kept its "standards" secret (if, indeed, they had any standardization at all), so Hays was forced to intuit what would or would not be permitted by each board. At first he applied what he called "The Formula" but it was not particularly successful; from that he developed a set of guidelines he called "The Don’ts and Be Carefuls". In general his efforts at pre-release self-censorship were unsuccessful in quieting calls for federal censorship.

Catholic bishops and lay people tended to be leery of federal censorship and favored the Hays approach of self-censorship; these included the outspoken Catholic layman Martin J. Quigley, publisher of Exhibitors Herald-World (a trade magazine for independent exhibitors). For several months in 1929, Martin Quigley, Joseph Breen, Father Daniel A. Lord S.J., Father FitzGeorge Dinneen S.J., and Father Wilfred Parsons (editor of Catholic publication America) discussed the desirability of a new and more stringent code of behavior for the movies. With the blessing of Cardinal George W. Mundelein of Chicago, Father Lord authored the code, which later became known as "The Production Code", "The Code", and "The Hays Code". It was presented to Will Hays in 1930 who said, "My eyes nearly popped out when I read it. This was the very thing I had been looking for".