HAYS, WILLIAM HARRISON
William Harrison Hays is mainly known for his establishment of the code through which
motion picture producers regulated themselves, thereby avoiding outside CENSORSHIP.
Hays was born in Sullivan, Indiana, on November 5, 1879, to John T. Hays and Mary
Cain Hays. He first gained attention through a series of increasingly important positions within the Indiana REPUBLICAN PARTY. In February 1918 his party career culminated in his appointment as chairman of the Republican National Committee. From that position he aided in the 1920 election of WARREN G. HARDING as president of the United States. As reward for his service, Harding appointed Hays U.S. postmaster
general in March 1921, after which Hays relinquished his position as Republican chairman.
At this time a widely reported series of sex
scandals contributed to a growing perception
that the movie industry was out of control and
out of step with U.S. society. With more than
thirty state legislatures considering bills to cen-
sor movies, producers intervened to repair their
image. In March 1922 they hired Hays, known as
a teetotaler and an elder in the Presbyterian
Church, to head the Motion Picture Producers
and Distributors of America (MPPDA) at
$100,000 a year. With his high political profile,
his personal moral characteristics, and his con-
nections with businesspeople, including Holly-
wood executives, Hays was seen as an outsider
who could restore public confidence in the
morality of the movie industry.
The effort to head off federal or local cen-
sorship through hiring Hays was successful. In
1930 the Hays Office, as it became commonly
known, coordinated the Production Code
among the producers of movies to provide rules
for the film industry’s self-regulation. The 1930
code had no enforcement mechanism. Still, the
hiring of Hays, the goodwill implied in the code,
and a lack of cooperation and agreement among
214 HAYS, WILLIAM HARRISON
WEST’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 2nd Edition
William Harrison Hays 1879–1954
?
1879 Born,
Sullivan, Ind.
?
1900
Graduated
from Wabash
College; admitted
to Indiana bar
1921–22 Served as U.S. postmaster general
1930 Developed and
coordinated the motion
picture Production Code
1918–20 Served as chairman of the Republican National Committee
1914–18
World War I
1954 Died,
Sullivan, Ind.
1914–18 Served as chairman of the
Indiana Republican state central committee
1939–45
World War II
1950–53
Korean War
¡ ¡
¡ ¡
1900 1900 1875 1875 1925 1925 1950 1950
?
1910–13
Served as city
attorney for
Sullivan,
Ind.
?
1922–45 Headed the Motion Picture
Producers and Distributors of America
?
1934 Issued the Production
Code of 1934, adding
enforcement power to the codereformers, mainly Protestant, dissipated any
danger of censorship in the early 1930s.
In 1934, with box office receipts down as the
Great Depression widened, Hays responded to a
renewed call for morality in the movies spear-
headed by the Catholic Church’s Legion of
Decency. Operating with support from parish
priests, from the church hierarchy, and from
Protestant and Jewish reform groups, the Legion
avoided efforts at government legislated censor-
ship. Rather, it threatened to call for boycotts of
films that failed to satisfy its requirements for
moral behavior. Hays issued the Production
Code of 1934, which added enforcement power
to his earlier code. Though the 1934 code pro-
vided for fines and suggested that scripts should
be preapproved by the Hays Office, its real
strength lay in requiring that a film receive the
Hays Code Purity Seal of Approval in order to be
shown in any movie theater owned by the stu-
dios. With the movie industry vertically inte-
grated, so that studios controlled both a large
segment of film production and the most suc-
cessful and profitable movie theaters nation-
wide, even foreign and nonstudio films were
submitted for code approval.
The Hays code went through refinements
and shifts in emphasis, both before and after the
addition of enforcement in 1934. In general, it
was designed to protect impressionable movie-
goers by clamping down on sex, language, and
violence on screen, with rules relating to sex
being particularly stringent. One overarching
rule was that sympathetic portrayals of sinners
or criminals were prohibited; transgressors had
to be punished appropriately for their sins by
the end of each film.
Hays maintained his partnership in Hays
and Hays, a law firm begun by his father,
throughout his tenure with the MPPDA. In 1945
he left his position as head of the MPPDA. He
