Otto Preminger defied the code again with The Man with the Golden Arm, based on Nelson Algren’s bleak novel about heroin addicts in Chicago. The movie contradicted the code’s ban on drug use. It once again proved that the majority of filmgoers did not give a shit about film code restrictions. “Hollywood’s Production Code may be losing a serious amount of its influence,” reported Variety in December 1955. “Apparently there hasn’t been an instance of reluctance among the nation’s top circuits to play the film.”
