The coincidence in timing, among other factors, makes it not-so-easy to sort out. ![]() Typically, the blame for the Marx Brothers’ descent is laid at the feet of the studio, MGM, which is where the team started making movies in 1935 after parting ways with their previous studio, Paramount. But, I hadn’t really considered the Marx Brothers’s comedies in this light. Musicals with chorus girls could no longer show near-nudity. Melodramas, which were frequently about pre-marital sex and pregnancy out of wedlock, lost about 3/4 of the kinds of stories they could tell. Gangster movies became less crude and violent. There are many genres that were deeply affected when the Code started to be applied more severely. Thanks to TCM and the Film Forum, I became something of an aficionado of pre-Code films. ![]() the Hays Code, which began to be strictly enforced in 1934, was what damaged the team’s later films.) I had never looked at the question in quite that way before, and I think most people who think about it don’t. The origin of this post: A few days ago someone on social media asserted with enormous confidence, that “the Code hurt the Marx Brothers” (meaning, if you’re new to such things, that the Motion Picture Production Code, a.k.a. “I sure wish these bean counters would let us be funny again!”
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