Ruth Chatterton

A look at the forces that shaped Pre-Code Hollywood and brought about the strict enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934.

Looks at the stereotype-breaking films of the period from 1929, when movies entered the sound era, until 1934 when the Hays Code virtually neutered film content. No longer portrayed as virgins or vamps, the liberated female of the pre-code films had dimensions. Good girls had lovers and babies and held down jobs, while the bad girls were cast in a sympathetic light. And they did it all without apology.

The love affair between the French Emperor Napoleon and the lady Josephine leads through Napoleon's rise to power and their eventual divorce.

Jean Boucheron the cat burglar is the darling of the Montmartre whores--and catches the eye of slumming socialite Zelia de Chaumont, who decides to "reform" him. A complication is his lovely young ward Odile... murder and a grand courtoom scene ensue.

A retired auto manufacturer and his wife take a long-planned European vacation only to find that they want very different things from life.

When a busybody teacher in a girls' finishing school finds a love letter from a student to an unknown man, a minor scandal erupts.

Because of a very unhappy affair she had earlier in her life, a woman shuts herself off from the rest of the world.

A woman murders her husband's mistress and someone else gets accused of the crime.

Jenny is carrying the child of a young man who dies in the San Francisco earthquake (1906). After giving birth, she decides to place her child in the custody of a wealthy married couple. Years later, thanks to the protection of a corrupt politician, she becomes the main "madame" of San Francisco, in addition to participating in various illegal activities.

Alison Drake, the tough-minded executive of an automobile factory, succeeds in the man's world of business until she meets an independent design engineer.