Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934): When Sin Ruled the Movies

by Mark A. Vieira

A film that had cost $23,000 grossed $1.2 million. Never mind that the critics dismissed it. It talked. From then on, if a mediocre film had only one reel with sound in it, it did better than the best silent film.

Some things never change.

After Breen took over the SRC, he received a worried report from counsel Vincent Hart that Wonder Bar contained “one item which the audience did not seem to relish, the ballroom scene where a man and a woman are shown dancing. Into the scene comes an effeminate-looking youth who taps the dancing man on the shoulder and asks, ‘May I cut in?’ whereupon the man dancing with the girl smiles, leaves her, and the two men dance off together.”

It is very telling that no one raised alarms about Wonder Bar's other famous scene: a lengthy musical sequence featuring performers in blackface and engaging in racist stereotypes.