In 1930, America’s Movie Producers and Distributors announced the adoption of the “Movie Code,” which was designed to clean up the movie business. The Code prohibited the use of words like virgin, seduce, pregnant, scathing, wide, and even words as innocuous as curse and hell. In 1934, the Catholic Church announced the formation of “The Legion of Decency” and promised to boycott films it deemed offensive. Each week, churches gave parishioners a copy of what was commonly called “List X,” which prohibited Catholics from watching movies that were on it.

One movie on this list was “The Moon is Blue,” made in 1953, starring William Holden and Maggie McNamara. This movie was banned because the heroine told her date that she was still a virgin. So intimate revelations were not allowed then; after all, every single woman was supposed to be a virgin, so there was no need to verbalize it. This was also the first film to use the words “virgin”, “seduce” and “mistress”, after a long battle with censorship.

The 1940s and 1950s were so puritanical that even married people couldn’t be shown in bed together in movies, they had to be side by side on two single beds, usually with a nightstand separating them. And they could never kiss in bed, unless they were dying and it was obvious they weren’t going to have sex.

DRESS CODE

A woman had to wear a full slip in a movie, she could never appear in a half slip and bra. A bare stomach was shocking! Modesty in dress began to erode in 1946 when the bikini swimsuit was introduced, with loud cries of “obscene.” Many parents forbid their daughters to wear such a scant appeal on the beach. Another blow to modesty occurred in 1964 when the miniskirt became fashionable. This was followed by the “hot pants” and then the micro-mini, but nothing surprised many people’s sensibilities as much as the “thong” swimsuit. Once again, loud shouts of “obscene” and “should be banned as immoral” were heard. Some thought it was the end of civilization as we knew it, and it was, compared to previous decades.

FULL FRONT NUDE

Playboy magazine, whose trademark was photographs of nude and semi-nude women, was first published in 1952, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover and photos of her naked inside. There were strident objections that it was immoral and contributed to the demise of refined society.

In the 1960s, Elvis’s display of rolling hips as he sang elicited the same reaction.

LIVING IN SIN

Couples did not live together openly before the so-called “hippie revolution” of the 1960s. This arrangement was called “living in sin” or “living together,” and it was considered immoral and shameful, and was generally hidden from people.

Lovers who wanted to spend the night together had to get a hotel room, pretending to be married. This usually involved getting a dime wedding ring and packing a suitcase or two with books or newspapers so as not to arouse the suspicions of the clerk of record.

There were few apartment buildings before the late 1950s, and most single people who didn’t live at home rented a room or flat in someone’s home. They were never allowed to have visitors of the opposite sex overnight, so those who planned to circumvent the rules had to make sure their partner left before the owner woke up in the morning. Being caught meant being evicted.

SINGLE MOTHERS

Pregnant women who were not married were not called “single mothers” but “single mothers”, and their babies were described as “illegitimate”, or even the crudest denomination: “bastards”. In the 1960s, so-called “shotgun weddings” became ridiculous relics of the past. Parents no longer demanded that the man who had impregnated their daughter marry her and assume financial responsibility for the baby. The father often wandered away and the mother received welfare, often supported by tax dollars. But, during the 1960s, single motherhood came out of the closet, was embraced, and became an epidemic, even on high school campuses.

The flower children of the 1960s made dramatic changes in what was considered permissible behavior. As world events affected people’s status and roles, these ideas were accompanied by changes in their concepts of morality.