Samuel Goldwyn's film "Dead End"
- Artist/Author/Producer: Samuel Goldwyn, Producer
- Confronting Bodies: Production Code Administration
- Dates of action: 1936
- Location: Hollywood, CA
- Description of the Art Work
- "Dead End," a film about kids in the slums of New York.
- Description of incident
- Samuel Goldwyn was warned by Production Code Administration Director,
Joseph Ignatius Breen, not to depict "filth, or smelly garbage cans, or
garbage floating in the river," in Goldwyn's upcoming film "Dead End."
Goldwyn adhered to the PDA demand by implementing his own form of
self-censorship.
"Goldwyn was shocked when he saw that William Wyler had made the
slum and the East River "dirty." Producer and director fought, then
compromised: for a scene in which the Kids swam through the mess, the
refuse would be "clean." One "Dead End" news release celebrated the
property man who halved the fresh grapefruit, washed the carrot greens
and scrubbed the assorted debris that kids shared the water with."
- Results of incident
- Goldwyn himself supported the Production Code, thus explaining the ease
with which he self-censored. Furthermore, "Goldwyn had not laundered the
trash to charm Production Code associates; the genteel poverty of Dead
End mirrored Goldwyn--and Hollywood--aesthetic of realism edged with
guilt."
Source: American Film, L. Leff and J. Simmons, December 1989