Background
Joseph Ignatius Breen was born on October 14, 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Joseph Breen, an Irish immigrant whose chief bequests to him were ambition, "street" wisdom, and Catholic piety.
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Joseph Ignatius Breen
Edit ProfileEducation
Joseph Breen first took classes at the Gesu Parish School until the eighth grade. After that he went to Boys Catholic High School. Finally, he attended the St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia, from which he received the B. A.
Career
After working for several years as a journalist in Philadelphia and spending four years in the United States Consular Service, Breen joined the immigration bureau of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. In 1926 he directed publicity for the International Eucharistic Congress in Chicago.
Breen moved to Hollywood in 1930 to help implement a "production code" drafted by Martin Quigley, editor of the Motion Picture Herald, and Father Daniel Lord of St. Louis University.
As early as 1922 the leading Hollywood producers had appointed Will Hays, a former Harding cabinet member, to help the film industry, recently rocked by scandal and a sensationalist image, regulate itself. The "Hays Office" checked scripts and circulated a list of "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" that warned against profanity, nudity, drugs, perversion, miscegenation, blasphemy, and violence. The list was advisory only, and producers commonly disregarded it. The 1930 production code made the proscriptions more precise and looked to stricter enforcement.
The industry was responding partly to the self-regulatory model of professional baseball under Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, partly to a wave of local censorship, and especially to a drive by Roman Catholics for higher moral standards in movies. A papal representative called American movies an "incalculable" source of evil. Denis Cardinal Dougherty enjoined Philadelphia's Catholics from seeing any films. Other American Catholic leaders organized the Legion of Decency, with authority to rate films for Catholic viewing.
In 1934 Breen, a friend of both Hays and Dougherty, became head of the Production Code Administration.
Some of Breen's influence came from his city-bred capacity to match studio heads expletive for expletive and from the assertiveness of his young staff of fellow Catholics. All scripts had to receive a Breen "Purity Seal. " Producers releasing a movie without the seal could be fined $25, 000 and prevented from distributing it through studio-owned theater chains. The fine was inconsequential, but access to the theaters in that monopolistic era was crucial. By 1940 over 95 percent of American theaters showed only "seal" movies. Sometimes Breen could even persuade bankers to refuse to finance productions he deemed inappropriate. Most important, he worked closely with the Legion of Decency, whose ratings usually matched those of the Breen office.
Except for a stint as general manager of RKO Pictures in 1941-1942, Breen exercised authority in Hollywood for twenty years. Toward the end, however, his troubles mounted. Foreign films appeared that treated sex more candidly and played without the Purity Seal. Rebel Hollywood directors such as Howard Hughes and Otto Preminger refused to censor material from The Outlaw and The Moon Is Blue, and the films were box office hits without the seal. Public opinion was growing more tolerant in sexual matters.
Moreover, since the studios no longer controlled the theaters and thus had less direct influence over what was shown, they could not enforce the code as strictly as before. With the rise of television as the main form of American family entertainment, movie producers competed for a more "adult" audience by producing more "adult" films with more and more sex and violence.
Breen retired in 1954, ostensibly for reasons of health.
After his retirement, Breen moved to Phoenix, Arizona with his wife Mary. He suffered from poor health in his later years and eventually lost the use of his legs. He died at the age of 77 on December 5, 1965, at the Brentwood Convalescent Home in Los Angeles and was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City.
Achievements
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Joseph Breen had an enormous impact on the American film making industry after he had become a head of the Production Code Administration. For example, he reduced the tide of Depression-era gangster movies, with their violence and disrespect for law and order. He eliminated the screen sexuality made famous by Jean Harlow and Mae West, and excised what he considered excessively "crude" or "suggestive" dialogue. His influence was so strong that it led to a monopolistic era that forced all movie scripts to receive a Breen "Purity Seal. " Consequently, by 1940 over 95 percent of American theaters showed only "seal" movies. Breen was able to exercise his authority in Hollywood for almost twenty years. Although he had called his a "controversial and thankless" job for which he was "too fat and too genial, " he nonetheless received a special Oscar from the Motion Picture Academy in 1953.
Religion
Breen was raised in a strict Roman Catholic home. Later in life he was a journalist and an "influential layperson" in the Catholic community. In retirement he devoted himself as a member of the Orders of St. Stephen and St. Gregory and a regent of Loyola University, to church affairs.
Politics
Breen claimed that plans to make anti-Hitler pictures were being coordinated through the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, which he claimed was "conducted and financed almost entirely by Jews". As a result of Breen's anticommunist views, the censorship board pressured Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to drop plans to film Sinclair Lewis's anti-fascist novel, It Can't Happen Here.
Views
It is under Breen's influence and an advice Louis B. Mayer (an American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) eliminated the word "floozy" from a picture, to avoid having the heroine kissed "savagely, " and even not to allow her to apply perfume "behind her ears. " In scripts dealing with crime or extramarital sex, the wrongdoer had to suffer in the end. Nudity was forbidden.
To a lesser extent Breen watched out for religioethnic stereotyping. Jews hardly appeared at all in American movies; Catholics invariably appeared in a favorable light.
Blacks fared less well, although they could not be brutalized; Breen forbade brutality if not racism. The Production Code Administration also censored some political material, warning Samuel Goldwyn to be "less emphatic" in contrasting "the poor in tenements and the rich in apartment houses, " and telling Jack Warner to delete "Robin Hood kicking the sheriff in the stomach. " But the code's enforcers concerned themselves mainly with sex and obscenity. "I don't interpret the code, " said Breen, "I make it. "
Screenwriters found Breen's influence on American movies rather stultifying.
Producers, although grateful for the seal, were irked by having to cover women's navels, make them not give a "darn, " and change (as David Selznick had in Gone with the Wind) "Lawd" to "Lawsy. "
Actually, Breen approved some films that included antilabor violence, bank villainy, and the "seamy side" of life. For Breen himself the record was clear. He freed the screen of its "whorehouse crap" so that "decent people could enjoy themselves in a theater without blushing. "
Quotations:
"I spent most of my time, " said one, "pulling punches. "
He specifically warned Hollywood producers to avoid the topic altogether, saying that "[t]here is a strong pro-German and anti-Semitic feeling in this country . .. and while those who are likely to approve of an anti-Hitler picture may think well of such an enterprise, they should keep in mind that millions of Americans might think otherwise. "
Membership
Breen was a member of the Orders of St. Stephen and St. Gregory.
Connections
Joseph Breen married Mary Derin in February 1914, a childhood playmate; they had six children. Their son Joseph Breen, Jr. was a writer and director. One of their other children, Thomas, whose right leg was amputated due to a combat injury on Guam during World War II, was cast in a feature role in Jean Renoir's 1950 film The River, playing a wounded war veteran.
References
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Born
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Died
February 7, 1965 (aged 75) -
Nationality
American -
Religion
Roman Catholic -
Political Party
anticommunist