What: "Tuesday Afternoon at the Bijou"
When: 1 p.m. Tuesdays
Where: Clark County Library Theater, 1401 E. Flamingo Road
Admission: Free, 507-3450
Schedule: "Ann Vickers" (1933, Irene Dunn), Tuesday
"She Done Him Wrong" (1933, Mae West), July 10
"Queen Christina" (1933, Greta Garbo), July 17
"Baby Face" (1933, Barbara Stanwyck), July 24
"Tarzan and His Mate" (1934, Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O'Sullivan), July 31
There is a reason why the jacket cover for Thomas Doherty's "Pre-Code Hollywood" shows a haughty blonde with a gun in her hand, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and a slinky nightgown draping her body. His book details Hollywood's wild years - a brief stint during the Golden Age - when members of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America promised to clean up the movies, but ignored their own vow.
Films dabbled in drugs, gambling and promiscuity. Women were not only outspoken and comfortable with their sexuality, they were in complete control of it.
When the 1934 Production Code went into effect, a new level of silver screen morality ensued. Unrepented crime and pre-marital sex were not to be glorified.
"The women no longer wanted to have a career. They didn't enjoy sex and were kind of stripped of their sexuality," says Suzanne Scott, Clark County Library's Performing Arts Center coordinator. Scott arranged this summer's film series, "Tuesday Afternoon at the Bijou: Pre-Code Hollywood" at Clark County Library.
As a classic movie fan who grew up in Las Vegas and watched MGM classic films at the old MGM Grand (now Bally's), she was intrigued by the pre-code films.
"It's such a different viewpoint of what you always thought," she says. "There is no absolute that it was all picket fences."
Indeed, the series, which continues through July, has Irene Dunn sleeping around, Mae West delivering her saucy one-liners, Greta Garbo playing a 17th century Swedish crossdresser and Miriam Hopkins having an affair with two men in "Design For Living" that leads to humorous menage a trois challenges.
"Design for Living," which also starred Gary Cooper, was a flick that 83-year-old David Stearns would not have been able to see as a child in his Wisconsin.
His wife, Mary Stearns, says her grandmother was on a town commission in Wisconsin to determine if movies were suitable. She would have opposed "Design for Living."
But the 1934 coding solved that problem. Established by Catholic priests Daniel Lord and Martin Quigley, it was enforced by Will H. Hays, former U.S. Postmaster General, who became head of Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association. Also known as the Hays Code, it mainstreamed all movies until 1968, when the rating system came into place.
Surprisingly, about 50 audience members attend each week's series. More are likely to show for the uncut version of "Baby Face" starring Barbara Stanwyck.
The Stearnses, who are regulars at "Tuesday Afternoon at the Bijou" come for the nostalgia, the hairstyles, cars and dress. The ongoing summer series shows films between 1930 and 1950. This year's pre-code series has been a kick for audiences dazzled by the preposterous storylines. Or as Doherty says in his book, "... they look like Hollywood cinema but the moral terrain is so off-kilter they seem imported from a parallel universe."
Dorothy, a North Las Vegas retiree who declined to give her last name and age, spends 90 minutes on three buses to get to the Tuesday movies.
"They made good movies in the Depression era because people didn't have money so they had to work extra hard to lure them in," she says. "This is the only place that shows them."
Designed to appeal to seniors and mimic a revival house, Scott says there is something wonderfully communal about watching old Hollywood stars film on a large screen.
"They were larger than life."
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