CHAPTER FIVE
JOSEPH I. BREEN AND THE CODE

Joseph I. Breen and the Jesuits

Significantly, as we have seen, the top five key figures in the development of the Code were Roman Catholics with connections to the archdiocese of Chicago: ¹²⁹ Martin Quigley; the Jesuits Daniel Lord and Fitz-George Dinneen; George Mundelein, the cardinal; and a Roman Catholic “layman” named Joseph I. Breen. We must now turn our attention to Breen, for he was very, very important in the history of Rome’s involvement in Hollywood.

In 1933 Breen was appointed to ensure that the Code was applied to Hollywood scripts. He was a staunch Irish-American Roman Catholic. ¹³⁰ Trained as a journalist, politically conservative, a deeply committed Papist and ardent admirer of the Jesuits, whose brother Francis became a Jesuit priest and served on the influential Jesuit weekly, America (for which Joseph himself wrote a series of articles on the threat of Communism), he was strongly opposed to the public discussion of things like divorce, birth control, and abortion – especially in movies, because he believed that average moviegoers were in the 16-26 age- group, and that most of them were “nit-wits, dolts and imbeciles.” ¹³¹ He was educated at St. Joseph’s College, Philadelphia, a Jesuit university, and maintained strong ties to it ever afterwards. “According to [the university’s] official historian, ‘a militant Catholicism, often typical of the Jesuits, was evident during the college’s earlier decades, when Catholics found themselves a somewhat spumed minority in an overwhelmingly Protestant nation.’” ¹³²

Even Roman Catholics of that time knew of the immense power and influence of the Jesuits (though not always of their evils), as shown by Breen’s biographer when he wrote: “The Jesuits, or ‘Jebbies’ to their familiars, were the shock troops of the Catholic clergy, an exclusive fraternity within an exclusive fraternity, priests with a special devotion to higher education, the Virgin Mary, and the propagation of the faith. As an honorific, the initials S.J. (Society of Jesus) were harder to earn and, among Catholics, more revered than a Ph.D.” ¹³³ And Joe Breen was a man who was: “Nursed on the Baltimore Catechism, shaped by parochial schools, and guided to maturity by the Jesuits”. ¹³⁴ Before taking up the job to which he would dedicate his life, that of Hollywood censor, Breen received excellent preparation. Not only was he Jesuit-educated and well-connected to the Jesuit Order via his brother, but he also formed close connections and at times friendships with various Jesuits and other prominent Papists – priests, politicians, businessmen. Even those who were not Jesuits themselves were usually Jesuit-educated and had close Jesuit connections. In particular, he was mentored by the Jesuit priest Wilfred Parsons, whom we have met before, the editor of the influential Jesuit magazine, America, and a Romish monsignor named W.D. O’Brien, editor of the Roman Catholic monthly Extension Magazine. Breen wrote for both magazines throughout the 1920s.

This man, who was to play such an immense part in controlling Hollywood during its “Golden Age”, remained under the Jesuits’ spell for the rest of his life. Hollywood during that time, it can therefore be safely said, was to a huge extent under the control of the Jesuits via their man, Joseph Breen.

His biographer wrote of him: “Joe Breen, the consummate insider, backstage operator, and go-to guy. For twenty years, from 1934 until 1954, he reigned over the Production Code Administration, the agency charged with censoring the Hollywood screen, an in-house surgical procedure officially deemed ‘self-regulation.’ Though little known outside the ranks of studio system players, this bureaucratic functionary was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. His job – really, his vocation – was to monitor the moral temperature of American cinema.” ¹³⁵ Yes, it was – and to see to it that Hollywood reflected Roman Catholic morality. In 1936 Liberty magazine wrote that Breen “probably has more influence in standardizing world thinking than Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin. And, if we should accept the valuation of this man’s own business, possibly more than the Pope.” ¹³⁶ Such was the immense power of Hollywood that this statement was all too true – except that Breen, being a faithful servant of the pope of Rome, carried out Rome’s wishes. He had even formed a friendship with the future pope of Rome, Pius XI, when the latter was still a monsignor and the papal attache in Warsaw and Breen was a foreign correspondent there.

How Breen’s Career Got Started

How did Breen’s career as “Hollywood’s censor” get started?

In 1925 he was appointed as publicity director for the 28th International Eucharistic Congress, a worldwide gathering of Roman Catholics to be held in Chicago in 1926. This was the first such event held in the United States, and in a very Roman Catholic city. The reason for this was that the previous year, some 50 000 members of the Ku Klux Klan had marched through Washington, DC, and Romish cardinal, George Mundelein, believed that a Eucharistic Congress on a vast scale would present a bold face to anti-Roman Catholic organisations.

Joe Breen was in his element and this event launched his life’s work. The Congress, the Romish Brooklyn Tablet gushed, was: “The most impressive religious spectacle the world has witnessed, perhaps since the Savior was put to death on Calvary.” Even the secular press was full of praise, with the Chicago Tribune describing it as “the most colossal prayer meeting and song service in the authentic annals of Christendom.” It was a public relations dream-come-true for the Roman Catholic institution in America. It was, in a very real sense, the coming of age of American Roman Catholicism. And Breen was at the centre of it. His career was made.

Coverage of the Congress was given to International Newsreel and the Fox Film Corporation; and Fox not only paid for a feature-length documentary of the Congress but also donated exclusive copyright and all profits from the film to the Roman Catholic institution! This was because, whereas almost all Hollywood studios were run by Jews at this time, Fox was now run by Winifred “Winnie” Sheehan, an Irish-American Papist. Only one other major studio was run by another Irish-American Papist, and that was FBO, under Joseph P. Kennedy. Of course, this generous action on Fox’s part was not without an eye to the long-term investment of a partnership between Fox and the Papacy, but naturally Sheehan was also serving his “Church”.

And it was Martin Quigley who brokered the deal between Fox and the “Church”. He and Breen worked together to bring the project to fruition. These two devout Papists viewed it as a missionary project to spread Roman Catholicism to the ends of the earth. The film (called Eucharistic Congress for short) was described as “the screen’s greatest man-made spectacle.” The film did very well in Roman Catholic cities, with standing-room-only crowds in theatres, but not well in the Protestant heartland of the country – a fact which Breen attributed to the “anti-Catholic bigotry in certain parts of this country”. ¹³⁷ The truth is, America at that time was still far more Protestant than Roman Catholic.

But this film did something else. It showed the moviemakers in Hollywood that there was money to be made by pandering to Roman Catholics – a lot of money. In the words of Variety magazine, the Fox-Papist collaboration on this film “certainly tied up the picture business for all time with the churches. ” ¹³⁸ The “Church” of Rome was to dominate Hollywood for a very long time to come.

Breen: Rome’s Man for the Times

By the end of 1932, the calls for government regulation of Hollywood were becoming much louder, from both religious and educational institutions. Then in 1933, the Payne Fund financed a series of twelve studies on the effect the movies had on children. These studies were then condensed into a book by Henry James Forman, entitled Our Movie-Made Children, which pulled no punches: movies, it said, were having a terrible effect on the morals of the young. Will Hays called a meeting of the board of directors of the MPPDA and told them that unless the Code was adhered to, government regulation of the industry would become inevitable. The result was that the directors signed an agreement which re-affirmed the Code. ¹³⁹

Will Hays attempted to act tougher via the Studio Relations Committee. The Jesuit Daniel Lord was invited by Hays to assist James Wingate in 1933, but Lord said no. He was utterly disillusioned with Hollywood, convinced that movies were actually worse now under the Code than they had been prior to its adoption, and he maintained that this was primarily Wingate’s fault. He wanted nothing more to do with the Hays Office.

Things were not going well for the Roman Catholic creators of the Code. They needed someone to take a very firm stand and clean up Hollywood’s mess. Wingate was not that man and Hays could not be trusted. Hays came under heavy criticism from America s priest Gerard Donnelly. Jesuit priest Parsons and Martin Quigley now became inclined towards the idea of government censorship as the only, albeit very flawed, solution to Hollywood’s slide.

Lord was asked by his friend Cecil B. DeMille to act as consultant on the latter’s latest religious epic, The Sign of the Cross, and he agreed. As we have seen, DeMille was known for hiding behind his religious epics to introduce sex into his films, and this film was no exception. It supposedly made Roman Catholics into the heroes – at least, that was what DeMille himself always claimed (he was claiming that the first-century Christians were in fact Roman Catholics, which of course they were not). But this was not true and DeMille played up the debauchery of the Romans. For him, depicting their sensual pleasures was far more important than what was happening to the “Catholic” martyrs. As always, he simply used certain historical facts with a religious slant to sell his film, which was more devoted to pagan debauchery than Roman Catholic doctrine. Exciting the viewer’s lust was more important to him than any “Christian” theme. The pagan women were scantily clad, the “Catholics” were modestly attired, the emphasis was always on the pleasures of the flesh. Even lesbianism was implied in one scene.

The actual Roman Catholicism in the film was very wishy-washy and ambiguous, with the emphasis being more on romantic love between a “Catholic” woman and a pagan man than on even proper conversion to the “Catholic” faith. Lord complained that the pagan orgies and banquets in the film made sin seem fascinating, and the “Christians’” virtuous behaviour dull by comparison. Wingate initially had some complaints, but DeMille managed to satisfy him by making some cuts. Lord himself did not preview the film, and when it was released he was shocked, with its scenes of seduction, sensuous dancing, and implied homosexuality and lesbianism . ¹⁴⁰ Lord suggested cuts. The Roman Catholic press blasted the film, especially the dance scene, and Joseph Schrembs, bishop of Cleveland, denounced it in a sermon. DeMille appeared taken aback by all the negative criticism, and wrote to Roman Catholic critics in an attempt to defend his movie, but essentially to no avail. Readers of Romish papers were urged to boycott the film.

Roman Catholic pressure on Hollywood mounted, and Will Hays met with DeMille to see what could be done. But DeMille was adamant: he was not going to change anything in the film. Ironically, then, a film which its maker purported to be about “Catholic” heroes and martyrs actually played an important part in the formation of the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, aimed at seeing to it that films did not portray Romanism unfavourably! ¹⁴¹

The Papist criticism of Hollywood increased tremendously in 1933. Priests and people felt that the time had come to act decisively. The Papist press issued calls for something to be done. The Papist creators of the Code and their allies knew that this was the moment of truth: the Code they had come up with needed to be properly enforced, and this was their opportunity to do so.

In Joseph Breen they found the man they needed.

Breen was first brought to Hollywood in 1931 by Will Hays, president of the MPPDA, who wanted “a well-connected and media-savvy Roman Catholic layman” as his assistant. ¹⁴² His duty, as “assistant to the president” (of the MPPDA), was to maintain friendly relations with the Roman Catholics who were always up in arms over something or other emanating from Hollywood, and to smooth their ruffled feathers. As a fellow-Papist who understood his people, Breen was ideally placed for the job. But it was a two-way street: Breen reported to Hays on the Papist mood, but simultaneously Breen was approached by Papists to put pressure on Hays. Breen cleverly worked things so well that he became the indispensable middle man. His own position was thus a very secure one. And always, first and foremost, he was a Roman Catholic. His biographer wrote: “The MPPDA only provided his day job; the Church of Rome held his immortal soul. He would render unto Hays due service, but his true mission was to convert Hollywood.” ¹⁴³ This was the reason why he had taken the job, the purpose to which he devoted pretty much the rest of his days. He wanted a Roman Catholic Hollywood, and he lived and breathed to achieve that objective.

Breen was the man who really had the power. For it was Breen, not Hays, who literally read through and commented on every single movie script of that era. He became known as the “Hitler of Hollywood”. He believed that films should promote high morals (Papist morals, that is).

Breen was ambitious. Hays had given him a job, but he wanted more. He wanted to be in charge of it all. Not even a year after getting the job, he wrote a long letter to Hays, saying the industry needed “the best man in America” to control publicity, and ended by saying, “Don’t you see what an opportunity such a job offers?” Although he did not go so far as to state that he believed he himself was the perfect candidate, he did hint that the right man might already be working in a department in Hays’ office. And it was not that long afterwards when Hays appointed him as head of public relations for the West Coast. ¹⁴⁴

When Breen began to assist James Wingate with the reviewing of scripts and films, it was learned that Universal was going to make a movie of a novel called The Seed, and it was believed that this film would promote contraception, which in all forms was anathema to Roman Catholics. Breen put pressure on Universal to re-write the script, and he was able to write triumphantly to the cardinal Mundelein that the studio had accepted “our Catholic viewpoint against the sneers of the opposition.” ¹⁴⁵

It soon became clear to Will Hays that Breen was a far better man than Wingate for Wingate’s job. And just as importantly as Breen’s toughness was his devout Romanism. Breen, however, distrusted Hays and believed he was afraid of taking a stand and preferred to compromise. He also spoke his mind about what he thought of Hollywood’s movers and shakers (most of whom were Jews): “most are a foul bunch,” he wrote to Jesuit priest Fitz-George Dinneen, “crazed with sex, dirty-minded and ignorant in all matters having to do with sound morals. I don’t suppose five percent have a shred of religion.” ¹⁴⁶

In early 1934 Breen was formally appointed as the head of the Studio Relations Committee, the body tasked with enforcing screen morality, to represent Will Hays and the MPPDA on matters pertaining to the Production Code. In this way the Studio Relations Committee was being re-created as a new agency under the MPPDA, not the AMPP. A few months later he took control of the Production Code Administration (PCA), which replaced the Studio Relations Committee. The PCA was popularly referred to as the “Hays Office”, but in truth it was Breen who became the real power within it, and he ruled it with a very firm hand, having the final say over the contents of literally hundreds of movies every year. Breen’s work was to approve – or disapprove – of scripts and films. He made it clear that he saw his job as carrying out some “real Catholic action”, “to lessen, at least, the flow of filth”. ¹⁴⁷

Once Breen came into this position, “Roman Catholics exerted a virtual veto power over the visible universe of Hollywood’s Golden Age – and the man wielding the gavel was no lackadaisical Midnight- Mass-at-Christmas Catholic but a self-described soldier in ‘the Church Militant.’” ¹⁴⁸

The New York Times put it like this: “[Breen] finds himself not advising but actually writing portions of the script. There is a sizable and embarrassing list of successful films for which he has written whole sequences: there is at least one in which he outlined the entire treatment.” ¹⁴⁹

Some would argue that Breen, as head of the PCA, was not a censor in the strict sense; for the State did not enforce his censoring of freedom of expression. He was in fact employed by a group of private companies. As one producer, Arthur Homblow, Jr., put it, “It is a mistake to think of the Production Code Administration as a form of censorship, a sort of policeman patrolling a beat. We are responsible members of a responsible profession, and the Code is the articulate enunciation of the ethical standard we have set up for ourselves.” ¹⁵⁰ He compared the Code with the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath. However, Breen was a censor for all practical purposes, and there is no getting around it.

Breen’s Interpretation and Enforcement of the Code

Breen himself left no doubt of what he sought to do in Hollywood by enforcing the Code. He told Jesuit Dinneen in 1934 that his purpose was to establish “an overall authority which would function on a platform of Catholic understanding and interpretation of moral values.” ¹⁵¹ Clear enough!

Breen went to his task with a will, fighting with film producers and enforcing the Code. He maintained that every movie had to have “sufficient good” in it to compensate for any evil it contained, and that every movie had to have a good moral character in it, making it clear to the bad guys in the movie that they were wrong. He lost no time in waging war against such things as prostitution, narcotics, sex and rough language that were common in many movies already, even in those days. If scripts did not live up to the standard, deletions and changes had to be made. Movie themes were not to be depressing. Middle- class social standards were not to be disparaged. The top-billed “star” in the movies was expected to respect all lawful authorities and to speak out for good morals. Divorce was expected to be portrayed as sinful. Adultery was to be portrayed as sinful and shown to be punished. Marriage was to be upheld as sacred. Heterosexual monogamy alone was to be portrayed as normal, with all other sexual behaviour to be removed from the movies. The naked human body was not to be shown, and nor was a clothed human body to be shown in a revealing or sexually provocative way. Kissing on-screen was permitted, but passionate, prolonged or lustful kissing was not. Although they were so obviously immoral as not even to be mentioned in the Code, Breen made it clear that sadism, homosexuality, incest, etc., were not permitted to be even hinted at in films.

Of course, clever Hollywood directors could always find ways around many of the restrictions – not by actually showing sex scenes, but certainly by hinting at them, by their use of lighting, fading out the pictures, etc. Audiences simply had to read the signs, looking for the hinted messages of what was being suggested behind what was actually shown.

Anything which he deemed to be “subversive of the fundamental law of the land” was forbidden. Any Communistic propaganda was banned. Insurrections against priests, pastors, police or politicians were strictly forbidden. Although individual policemen might be shown to be corrupt, the police force as a whole had to be always shown as honest, a force for good. Such things as drinking, jazz music, and married women going out to work were to be portrayed in a bad light. Inter-racial romance was not permitted. Clothing was to be modest. Swimming or sleeping naked was forbidden. Even married couples could not be shown to be sharing a double bed.

Women were to be portrayed as virtuous, and treated in a way bordering on reverence – influenced no doubt by Breen’s Popish veneration of Mary as much as by his respect for women. Indeed, in many films of the “Breen period”, “the backlit halos and divine close- ups of the female face in Hollywood’s frame bespeak a kind of religious adoration…. The reverence flowed… from the Victorian regard for the idealized female that Breen enforced under the Code. Roughing up women, even a slang term for a young girl, was intolerable under the Breen Office in its prime.” In addition, the Code forbade: “Pointed profanity (this includes the words, God, Lord, Jesus, Christ – unless used reverently – Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd), or every other profane or vulgar expression however used.” ¹⁵²

And yet hypocritically, “the man who fumigated screen dialogue was known to be foul-mouthed in his own conversation.” J.P. McEvoy, a screenwriter and friend of Breen’s, once wrote, “I can’t give you a verbatim report of one of Joe’s sulphurous speeches explaining how he won’t stand for sulphurous speeches.” And Variety magazine declared that Breen’s language “would make a Billingsgate fishmonger blush”, but then added, “It may sound paradoxical, but Hollywood is turning out cleaner pictures because of Joe Breen’s profanity.” For Breen would curse and swear at the movie moguls to get his way – and get it he did. One who kn ew him well said of him, “He figured… that when you got a script with coarse episodes in it, the best way to discuss the coarseness of the script was by using coarse language.” ₁₅₃ A physically big man, he was also known to threaten other men with bodily injury at times; and his profanity and tough guy image gave him the reputation of being a “man’s man” who would take no nonsense.

“Bathroom humour” (also known as “toilet humour”) of any kind was forbidden – in fact, bathrooms themselves were not to be seen at all. And no reference was ever to be made to the “call of nature” in any form. Anything considered vulgar was forbidden – even runny noses. ¹⁵⁴ This was often taken to ridiculous extremes. The Breen Office “blushed at the most innocuous exposures. A cameo appearance and product placement by Elsie the Borden milk cow in RKO’s Little Men (1940) confirmed that breast oversight was not restricted to homo sapiens…. ‘At no time should there be any shots of actual milking, and there cannot be any showing of the udders of the cow; they should be suggested rather than shown’ [said Breen].” ¹⁵⁵

Today people would laugh at such restrictions. Certainly many of them (such as the “no bathrooms” and “no runny noses” rules) were utterly ridiculous, while others (such as the prohibition on inter-racial romance) were just wrong. But as can be seen from the above, there were other things forbidden by the Code which every true Christian would of course agree were sinful (even though, as we have seen, knowing that something is sinful and should not therefore be viewed is not the same thing as supporting media censorship by a religious or political body, which is never a good thing). Even Rome gets some aspects of morality right, and no Christian would deny that movies which attack morality, and lower moral standards, are harmful. However, that is not the issue here: what is at issue is that this Code was drawn up by a Jesuit priest, and then enforced by another faithful Roman Catholic. Papists were now the regulators of the movie industry. They were now the ones who decided what movies people could see. It was a triumph for the Roman Catholic institution in its bid to control every aspect of the movie industry for its own purposes.

And far more sinister than Roman Catholic regulation of movie morals, was Roman Catholic regulation of how Roman Catholicism itself was portrayed in movies. This is what the Production Code had to say about religion in the movies: “No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith. Ministers of religion in their characters as ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains. Ceremonies of any definite religion should be carefully and respectfully handled.” ¹⁵⁶ And Breen saw to it that priests, nuns, and Romish rituals and objects were portrayed in such a way that they did not offend Romanists. They also had to be accurately portrayed. For example, when Romish director, Alfred Hitchcock, made the movie / Confess in 1953, he had to ensure that it not only met the Production Code’s standards, but also that it met the rubrics set out for priests administering the Romish “sacrament of penance.” To make sure of this, Breen and a Romish priest/advisor checked the script. ¹⁵⁷ The same kind of strict control was exercised over the making of The Song of Bernadette in 1943, even though it was a pro-Papist film. Lines in the script which merely appeared to be critical of the Roman Catholic “Church” were recommended for deletion; the priest’s contempt for Bernadette was toned down; and priests and nuns were on the set often and contributed advice on the proper method of carrying out Romish rituals, in obedience to Breen who had recommended to Henry King, the film’s Roman Catholic director, that he “secure the services of a very competent Catholic priest, who will serve as a technical advisor on this picture. We think it is enormously important that you have a very competent priest read the script thoroughly in order to check much of the dialogue and action.” A Romish priest named John J. Devlin, the executive secretary of the Legion of Decency, was the priest who was watchdog over many movies coming out of Hollywood in those years. ¹⁵⁸

Although the Production Code prohibited movies from portraying any religious leader as a villain or in a comic manner, the fact is that Breen paid more attention to Roman Catholic matters than to Protestant ones. This was not surprising, given that Breen was a Papist, but it definitely shows up the impossibility of a member of one religion treating all religions equally or fairly. Naturally one will pay particular attention to one’s own religion, and Breen did just that. ¹⁵⁹ The Production Code was in Rome’s hands, and Rome was going to milk it for all it was worth.

A real contradiction in the Code was the way in which it dealt with black Americans. On the one hand, the Code stated categorically: “Miscegenation (sexual relationship between the white and black races) is forbidden” in movies; yet on the other hand, it stated: “The history, institutions, prominent people and citizenry of other nations shall be represented fairly.” Blacks, like all others, were to be treated fairly in movies, as long as no miscegenation was allowed.

The miscegenation clause had been added to the Code’s third draft in 1930 with an eye to the bottom line: if films were to make money in the American South, there could be no miscegenation shown. Both Quigley and Lord were dead against this clause in the Code, however. But there it was and there it stayed, for many years. Only after World War Two was it seriously challenged.

Breen’s censorship meant that movies based on popular novels often ended up bearing almost no resemblance to the novel at all. The situation, then, was that immoral novels were not censored, but immoral movies of those novels were. To many this may sound like a good thing, a kind of halfway victory for better morals: “Well, the novel might be filled with sex and crime, but at least the movie isn’t.” But in truth it is not a good thing at all. This “halfway” censorship would mean many would think the book is as “clean” as the movie, and would thus read the book after seeing the movie, thereby defeating the “halfway” censorship in the first place; but on the other hand, if full censorship is applied, to books as well as movies, such censorship is entirely up to the whims and fancies of whoever is doing the censoring – and inevitably this leads to censorship of Christian materials and can even lead to persecution of Christians in the long run. The censorship of immoral books or movies simply cannot be entrusted to unregenerate men. It is up to individuals to simply refuse to read immoral books or watch immoral movies. This is the correct kind of censorship. If a book or movie is bad, it should just be shunned. It is not the place of a government to tell us what can or cannot be considered “moral”, and also, when such power is placed in the hands of one religion, this is a very dangerous thing. A Nanny State turns its citizens into babies needing to be spoon-fed by the supposedly “all-wise” authorities, and a “Nanny Religion” means, in effect, that all the country’s citizens are under that religion’s power.

Breen’s Staunch Anti-Protestantism

Breen, with his Jesuit university education, was a militant Papist who described those who viewed Romanism as a religio-political system seeking the destruction of Americanism as “stupid and ill-informed”. ¹⁶⁰ Of course, this was his “official” position; but being the well-educated son of the Jesuits that he was, he must have known that this was precisely what the Papacy was plotting to do – and heartily approved of it. Passionate about America and the American way of life he may well have been, but he wanted a Papist America all the same. As he himself said in 1922 when he worked for the National Catholic Welfare Conference: “We stand for the preservation of the faith among our Catholic foreign bom who come here among us. We stand for loyalty and devotion to America, its government, its institutions, its ideals.” ¹⁶¹ In truth, the Jesuits have never stood for the government, institutions, and ideals of America, and as they indoctrinated their servant Joe Breen, he would have been well versed in the Jesuit tactic of saying one thing but meaning another. Perhaps he, personally, would stand for America – but only as long as America could be slowly transformed into a Roman Catholic nation. As his biographer put it: “He assailed the Ku Klux Klan, Bolshevism, the British Empire, and any other menace, foreign or domestic, to the Catholic Church.” ¹⁶²

He was strongly anti-Protestant. When he edited the official monthly magazine of the NCWC from May 1923 to March 1924, he would deride any “anti-Catholic bigot who has the misfortune to be at the same time brainless”, as he put it. Hating America’s Prohibition era, he referred to Protestant teetotalling women and ministers as a “horde of female fanatics” and “Protestant ‘gentlemen of the cloth’” who “seem to be ever-ready to poke their noses into the other fellow’s business”. ¹⁶³ Yet he failed to see the irony of the fact that, although condemning Protestants for forcing their morality on everyone else via Prohibition, as Hollywood’s censor he himself was always ready to poke his nose into “the other fellow’s business” and insist on forcing his own Papist morality on Hollywood!

Breen’s Hatred of the Hollywood Jews

As we have seen, in its very early years the Code was almost ignored by the film studios. From Los Angeles in 1932 Joseph Breen complained that “nobody out here cares… for the Code or any of its provisions.” Writing to Wilfrid Parsons, Breen said that Hays may have thought “these lousy Jews out here would abide by the Code’s provisions but if he did he should be censured for his lack of proper knowledge of the breed.” He added that the Code would fail in Hollywood because the Jews, who controlled the studios, were “dirty lice” and “the scum of the earth.” Moreover, he said that the whole American nation was being “debauched by the Jews” and the movies they made. ¹⁶⁴

Breen believed it was his purpose in life to force the immoral Jewish film-makers to make moral films in accordance with the Roman Catholic religion, via pressure at the box office. Martin Quigley took a somewhat different approach: he too believed in box office pressure to force Hollywood to clean up its act, but instead of blaming the Jewish owners, producers and writers solely, he also blamed the “Church” of Rome itself for not keeping up the pressure on Hollywood to force the studios to stick to the Code.

Breen hated Jews and this comes out clearly in his words. In this he was no different from a great many Roman Catholics of his time, for Rome has hated the Jews for centuries, and in a few short years Hitler, a Roman Catholic himself, would embark on a diabolical plot to eradicate Jews en masse, and would receive immense support from Romanists in Germany and other parts of the world. The Roman pope, Pius XII, would give tacit support to Hitler in his treatment of the Jews (recent Roman Catholic attempts to whitewash him notwithstanding). ¹⁶⁵ Breen, like his papal master, viewed Jews as untrustworthy and greedy. In 1932 he wrote to Martin Quigley, “The fact is that these … Jews are a dirty, filthy lot. Their only standard is the standard of the box- office. To attempt to talk ethical value to them is time worse than wasted.” ¹⁶⁶ To priest Parsons Breen wrote: “These Jews seem to think of nothing but money making and sexual indulgence. People whose daily morals would not be tolerated in the toilet of a pest house hold the good jobs out here and wax fat on it. The vilest kind of sin is a common indulgence hereabouts and the men and women who engage in this sort of business are the men and women who decide what the film fare of the nation is to be. You can’t escape it. They, and they alone, make the decision. Ninety-five per cent of these folks are Jews of an Eastern European lineage. They are, probably, the scum of the scum of the earth.” ¹⁶⁷

Moreover, he held it was ludicrous to believe that “these dirty lice would entertain, even for an instant, any such procedure as that suggested by a Code of Ethics”. He also turned his guns on Wall Street bankers, who watched as America was “debauched by the Jews. Some bankers may – some of the Jew Ba nk ers. But you can’t make me believe that our American bankers, as a general thing, have fallen so low that they will permit their money to be used to paganize this nation.” ¹⁶⁸

Breen called on Roman Catholics “to get after the Jews in this business”. He called a Warner Brothers district manager “a kike Jew of the very lowest type.”

The irony was that Breen, while bitterly complaining about what the Jews were seeking to do to America, was serving the interests of a monolithic religious power (Roman Catholicism) that was seeking to destroy America – the very thing he accused the Jews of seeking to do!

It is beyond dispute that in the United States of America, Jews, though a tiny percentage of the population at the time, had risen to prominence in all kinds of fields: politics, entertainment, sports, arts, science, business – and especially in Hollywood! “The names of William Fox, Louis Mayer, Adolph Zukor, Marcus Loew, Samuel Goldwyn, the Warner brothers, Carl Laemmle, etc., are so permanently identified with the movie industry that the Jewish trademark on the movies is virtually indelible,” declared the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle in 1934. “The Jewish angle is not being dragged into the movie issue; it exists, whether you like it or not.” ¹⁶⁹

And this total dominance of Hollywood by Jews was of deep concern to Roman Catholic – and Protestant – America. In Columbia, the official magazine of the Romish Knights of Columbus, Karl K. Kitchen wrote in 1922: “Pants pressers, delicatessen dealers, furriers, and penny showmen started in the picture business when it was in infancy and they are now the type of ‘magnates’ who preside over its destinies today. If the Jews who shaped its policies were cultured gentlemen of taste and refinement there would be no occasion to find fault with them. But the men who control the motion picture industry are foreign bom Jews of the lowest type.” ¹⁷⁰ The Catholic Standard and Times called Hollywood a “school of vice” and said the men in charge of the studios were “by race and conviction, alien to the ideals of Christendom.” In the Ecclesiastical Review in 1934, Romish bishop John J. Cantwell of Los Angeles gave his name to a piece in which was found the following: “Jewish executives are the responsible men in ninety per cent of all the Hollywood studios. If these Jewish executives had any desire to keep the screen free from offensiveness, they could do so. It is not too much to expect that Hollywood should clean house, and that the great race which was the first custodian of the Ten Commandments should be conscious of its religious traditions.” It turned out that Joseph I. Breen had actually ghostwritten Cantwell’s piece! ¹⁷¹

Breen was right, of course: if the Jewish studio owners wanted to clean up Hollywood, they could have done so. But they did not want to. They were using Hollywood to lower western morality. But these were not Jews who loved their religion and believed in the Ten Commandments. These were men who were Jews, not by religion but by descent, and who were opposed to morality, Christianity, and even common decency, serving (often without knowing it) the Marxist cause. And they could be just as foul-mouthed as Breen. “Whether in Yiddish or English, the Jewish moguls matched the Catholic censor in linguistic crudeness. In moments of anger, the foul-mouthed Harry Cohn [a Jew], head of Columbia Pictures, did not refer to Frank Capra [an Italian], his ace director, as a vertically impaired gentleman of Sicilian heritage…. According to Pete Harrison, Joseph M. Schenck – Loews Theater tycoon, founder of Twentieth Century Pictures, and Russian-born Jew – spat out an expression at the Roman Catholic Church ‘so foul that it cannot be printed’ when the prominent Catholic lawyer Joseph Scott and the financier Dr. A.H. Giannini met with the Association of Motion Picture Producers in 1933 to warn about the storm brewing among the Catholics…. the Hollywood moguls were not delicate flowers cringing before a clerical Gestapo.” ¹⁷²

It was war: war between two powerful sides, both fighting for dominance over the dream factory called Hollywood. And no quarter was given.

Such anti-Jewish sentiments were not unique to Breen at that time. Prior to World War Two, when Hitler’s elimination of millions of Jews shocked the world and changed its attitude towards them, people all over the western world had little liking for the Jewish people. And this attitude towards them was very much encouraged by the fact that so many Jews were committed Communists and were using their wealth to advance the international Communist cause. Hollywood became a major weapon in the Communist arsenal. In addition, the Papal institution itself had been rabidly anti-Jewish for centuries, had persecuted Jews, and stirred up its millions of members to hate Jews. Breen, faithful Papist that he was, was merely spouting the anti-Jewish hatred so prevalent within his “Church” at the time – ironically, his accusations often based on truth about what Jewish Communists were doing. After World War Two, when the Roman Catholic Adolf Hitler was defeated and with his defeat the plans of the Papacy to use Nazism to advance Romanism across the world, and also with the dawn of the ecumenical and interfaith movements, Rome started to sing a different tune and to smile upon and speak well of the Jews; but it was, and is, all a front. It is a change of tactics, that is all. Rome still hates the Jews.

Breen, however, despite his strong dislike of the Jewish moguls controlling Hollywood, was, at other times, far milder in his statements about Jews than in the quotations given above, even at times speaking admiringly of them and praising them. This seems to be a contradiction, and indeed it may be that, like most people, Breen was sometimes in favour of what at other times he was against. People frequently change in their attitudes, sometimes swinging back and forth, depending on all kinds of factors. They can at one time admire something in a person of a different race, and even wish that person well, whereas at another time they may speak disparagingly of every member of that race. One frequently sees this in the attitude of whites to blacks, and vice versa. But more than just a contradiction within himself, one can also perceive, in his attitude to Jews, the dichotomy of so many American Roman Catholics. On the one hand, being Americans, they are raised from childhood in the American ideals of equality, “one nation under God”, the “melting pot” concept, where all men deserve the opportunity to find their place in the sun and should be treated with respect. On the other hand, they are raised from childhood in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic religion, an autocratic, top-down hierarchical system which allows no dissent, and which makes it abundantly plain that Roman Catholics are above all others, and that Romanism must be advanced by all faithful Papists throughout the world. Romanism has never sat easily alongside Americanism. ¹⁷³ In fact, Romanism is decidedly anti-American and always has been – must be, by its very nature. It seeks to conquer America, but the difficulty it has always faced is that Americans are raised with ideals far removed from that of Roman Catholicism. This is why, far more so than, say, in Europe, so many American Roman Catholics end up either leaving their religion outright, or at least seriously questioning, and even rebelling against, many of its teachings.

Joseph Breen was a rabid Romanist, but he was also an American. And this fact well explains his sometimes contradictory statements about Jews. Sometimes his Americanism overcame his Romanism. And sometimes not. Especially when he was fighting daily with immoral Jewish moguls in Hollywood.

Breen’s Later Apparent About-Face Regarding the Jews

Then, too, there was something else which actually made him far less anti-Jewish as the decade of the 1930s ended and World War Two began, and eventually led to an about-turn on his part: Nazism. Although his “Church” was enthusiastically backing Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, Breen, as an American, was extremely anti-Nazi. Most American Roman Catholics were blissfully unaware of the Vatican’s pro-Nazi stance, or of what it hoped to gain from a Nazi victory in Europe. There most certainly were pro-Nazi Roman Catholics in America, and they did their best to swing American Roman Catholics to Hitler’s side; but it was an uphill struggle. American Papists, raised in the ideals of Americanism, could see nothing good in Hitler. And nor could Breen. And, because he was anti-Nazi, his sympathies towards the Jews, suffering such terrible atrocities at the hands of the Nazis, increased.

Breen joined with many other Hollywood top dogs, including Irish Papist actors, screenwriters, directors and producers, Jewish producers, and agnostics, in seeking to promote anti-Nazism through the movies. Considering the dominance of Jews in Hollywood, it is not surprising that Hollywood was so anti-Nazi at this time. An organisation called the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy was at the forefront of this campaign. But this organisation was in fact a Popular Front for international Communism: an alliance of liberals, leftists and Communists, guided from Moscow. Unfortunately, Communism advanced on a wave of anti-Nazism. And many who hated Nazism did not realise that they were being used, as pawns, to advance an ideology just as evil as Nazism.

Breen was anti-Nazi, but he was also fervently anti-Communist, as most Roman Catholics were at this time. It was only after World War Two, and after the Vatican had realised that with the defeat of Nazism, Communism would become the dominant ideology of the age, and after the anti-Communist pope of Rome, Pius XII, was succeeded by the pro-Communist John XXIII – it was only after all these things that the Vatican would do a complete about-face and begin to promote Communism worldwide. ¹⁷⁴ Breen, therefore, was cautious about how far he could support this Popular Front because of its Communist ties. Nevertheless, he continued to lend his name to it, doubtless because he thought that as it was an alliance of forces against Nazism, and Nazism was the more immediate evil, it was worth supporting.

And then, when certain Roman Catholic ecclesiastics in America sought to oppose anti-Semitism in pamphlets (even though their “Church” was actively encouraging Hitler), these appeared to have a profound effect on Breen. One was written by the Code’s author, the Jesuit Daniel Lord, in 1938, entitled Why Are Jews Persecuted? and another was written by a priest named Joseph N. Moody and entitled Dare We Hate Jews? Breen saw to it that 25000 copies of Moody’s pamphlet were distributed, and he distributed over a thousand of them himself. ¹⁷⁵

It would thus appear that Breen had a change of heart at this time towards the Jews. He was no longer the rabid Jew-hater of a few years previously. And when a leaflet was distributed in Los Angeles in 1938 calling on Gentiles to boycott the movies because “Hollywood is the Sodom and Gomorrha where International Jewry controls Vice – Dope – Gambling, where young Gentile girls are raped by Jewish producers, directors, casting directors who go unpunished”, and where “The Jewish Hollywood Anti-Nazi League controls Communism in the motion picture industry”, Joseph Breen sent a letter to Box Office, a trade weekly, in which he wrote: “I have myself received copies of this vicious and salacious leaflet…. The whole business is so revolting, and so thoroughly un-American, that I want to be the first, if possible, to lodge my protest against it.” ¹⁷⁶

Yes, Breen appeared to have had a huge change of heart with regards to the Jews. If so, it is not that his Americanism triumphed over his Romanism, but rather that he had found his Americanism and his Romanism could gel on this matter. Previously he had thought that as a good Papist he had to be anti-Jewish; now, thanks to the writings of priests Lord and Moody, he felt that this did not have to be the case. And yet, ironically, the very “Church” which he loved so much was, at that very time, throwing its massive weight behind Nazism and seeking to annihilate the Jews.

Doubtless he still disliked the “filthy Jews” who controlled the studios, but Breen was no longer against Jews in general.

Besides, before the pro-Nazi pope of Rome, Pius XII, came on the scene, his predecessor, Pius XI, had made such statements as, “it is not possible for Christians to take part in anti-Semitism.” Such statements, from the man he fervently believed to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, would doubtless have made a profound impression on Breen. In 1939 he gave his support to an organisation called the Committee of Catholics to Fight Anti-Semitism. So did Daniel Lord and Martin J. Quigley. The latter asked Breen to sign a pamphlet setting out the Romish “Church”s” supposed opposition to racism, and to get prominent Roman Catholics in Hollywood to sign it too. Breen also issued a statement, which was reprinted in the organ of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, which said: “It is my judgment that there is nothing more important for us Catholics to do at the present moment [July 1939] than to use our energies in stemming the tide of racial bigotry and hostility.” ¹⁷⁷

Besides, Breen was well aware that the Nazis were persecuting not just Jews, but Roman Catholics as well. One may wonder how, if Hitler was Papist himself and being supported by Rome, the Nazis could persecute Papists. But this just shows the complex nature of Roman Catholic politics. Roman Catholics who were anti-Nazi were expendable, as far as Rome was concerned. Those Romanists who suffered at the hands of the Nazis were invariably those who hated Nazism. The average Roman Catholic in America simply had no idea that his “Church” was sacrificing fellow-Roman Catholics so as to advance Nazism, which Rome viewed as necessary to advance Romanism itself!

On November 18, 1938, Breen and many other prominent Hollywood personnel – actors and actresses, directors, etc. – signed a telegram to President Roosevelt, which read as follows:

“The Nazi outrages against Jews and Catholics have shocked the world. Coming on the heels of the Munich pact, they prove that the capitulation to Hitler means barbarism and terror…. We in Hollywood urge you to use your presidential authority to express further the horror and indignation of the American people.”

For Breen, Nazism was about more than the persecution of Jews. He was convinced that it was also about the persecution of Roman Catholics, and that was of even greater concern to this devout Romanist.