About 20 years ago I was in a kind of partnership with another film historian who told me that, no, there wasn’t a market for a book on pre-code movies. I can only wonder what he thinks today after ...

Despite only lasting four short years from 1930 to 1934, the pre-code era of Hollywood’s Golden Age produced films that pushed the boundaries of cinema and storytelling, even by today’s standards.

“The dictator craze,” they called it. In the worst of the Great Depression, a time of 25% unemployment, some called for an American-style dictatorship. Democracy wasn’t working very well, time for a ...