Recommended reading - Pre-Code Essentials: Must-See Cinema from Hollywood’s Untamed Era, 1930-1934

Pre-Code Essentials:
Must-See Cinema from Hollywood’s Untamed Era, 1930-1934

by Kim Luperi & Danny Reid.

Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
Published by Running Press Adult.
Published 2025.

ASIN: B0DVSLC2TK
ISBN-13: 979-8894140551

Description:

From Turner Classic Movies and the creators of @precodedotcom, this is the essential film-by-film guide to must-see cinema from the pre-Code era – a wild and wonderful time in Hollywood history before strict enforcement of a censorship code that ruled moviemaking for decades.

With unparalleled freedom in the Golden Age of Hollywood, movies produced during the “pre-Code” era between 1930 and 1934 boldly confronted a wide range of provocative subjects, including sexual freedom, the glorification of outlaws, racial taboos, and class consciousness. Films of the period include beloved classics like Grand Hotel (1932) and King Kong (1933) but also lesser-known gems like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) and Ann Vickers (1933). These films, produced at the height of the Great Depression, pushed the limits of contemporary social norms at a time when Hollywood studios were desperate to attract audiences – by any means necessary. Pre-Code Essentials invites modern readers to engage with that history while diving deep into movies that remain, as they were then, adventurous and uncompromising.

In their incisive text, film historians Kim Luperi and Danny Reid cover fifty films that take readers through the pre-Code era’s evolution. Perfect for both pre-Code novices and film aficionados alike, the book is packed with detailed production and censorship histories, recommendations, and trivia. Famous names like Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, and Ernst Lubitsch get their due, while sidebars spotlight treasures of the period like Ann Dvorak, Joan Blondell, Paul Robeson, Nina Mae McKinney, Dorothy Arzner, Warren William, and Dolores De Rio. Post-Epilogue features discuss availability of the listed films and include the text of the 1930 Production Code. Illustrated by more than 200 photos, Production Code Administration records detailing correspondence between studios and censors, and more, Pre-Code Essentials is both a gorgeous guide and an indispensable resource of Hollywood history.

Among the films profiled: The Divorcee, All Quiet on the Western Front, Safe in Hell, Frankenstein, Shanghai Express, Freaks, Merrily We Go to Hell, Downstairs, Love Me Tonight, Trouble in Paradise, Three on a Match, The Sign of the Cross, Gabriel Over the White House, The Story of Temple Drake, The Emperor Jones, The Sin of Nora Moran, I Am Suzanne!, The Black Cat, Smarty, Murder at the Vanities, and many more.

On this day in television history - Turner Classic Movies (TCM) (1994)

Turner Classic Movies (TCM)

founded by Ted Turner,

debuted in the United States on April 14, 1994.

The first movie screened on TCM was Gone with the Wind (1939).

Recommended reading - TCM Underground

 

TCM Underground

50 Must-See Films from the World of Classic Cult and Late-Night Cinema

by Millie De Chirico & Quatoyiah Murry.

Foreword by Patton Oswalt.

Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
 
Published by Running Press Adult.
Published 2022.
Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0762480009
ISBN-13: 978-0762480005

Description:

With knowledge, humor and an appropriately twisted perspective, [the authors] give readers a fuller realization of what late-night cinema offers. With a foreword by Patton Oswalt, this celebration of strangeness is well worth exploring. – Pop Culture Classics.

Based on the Turner Classic Movies series, TCM Underground is the movie-lover's guide to 50 of the most campy, kitschy, shocking, and weirdly wonderful cult films you need to see.

In the pages of this book, you'll explore this unique order of films – primarily from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s – with insightful reviews, behind-the-scenes stories, subgenre sidebars, and full-color and black-and-white photography throughout. Go along for the ride with new takes on crime films, including The Honeymoon Killers and The Harder They Come. Witness one-of-a-kind horror in Bill Gunn's landmark vampire film Ganja and Hess and Nobuhiko Obayashi’s infamous and indescribable Hausu. Absorb the boundary-pushing documentary-style trilogy The Decline of Western Civilization, which throws you into indelible moments in the punk and metal music scenes. And marvel at pure '80s oddities like Mac and Me and The Garbage Pail Kids.

 

From Possession to Polyester and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to Xanadu, no two films are alike in this compendium. Just sit back and prepare to be surprised, amused, and entertained by this celebration of the stars, filmmakers, and stories behind fifty of the most beguiling and unforgettable movies ever to hit the screen.

Recommended reading - Into the Dark

 

Into the Dark
The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950

by Mark A. Vieira.
 
Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
 
Published by Running Press Adult.
Illustrated edition.
Published 2016.
Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 0762455233
ISBN-13: 978-0762455232
 
Description:
 

Bursting with glossy stills and archival material, film historian and photographer Mark A. Vieira's Into The Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950 offers an unprecedented portal into Hollywood's golden era of cynicism. A systematic study of noir, this gorgeous coffee table tome fills a significant gap in scholarship on the genre.” – MovieMaker.

 

You know film noir when you see it: the shadowed setting; the cynical detective; the femme fatale; and the twist of fate. Into the Dark captures this alluring genre with a cavalcade of compelling photographs and a guide to 82 of its best films.

 

Into the Dark is the first book to tell the story of film noir in its own voice. Author Mark A. Vieira quotes the artists who made these movies and the journalists and critics who wrote about them, taking readers on a year-by-year tour of the exciting nights when movies like Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Sunset Boulevard were sprung on an unsuspecting public. For the first time, we hear the voices of film noir artists speak from the sets and offices of the studios, explaining the dark genre, even before it had a name. Those voices tell how the genre was born and how it thrived in an industry devoted to sweetness and light.

 

Into the Dark is a ticket to a smoky, glamorous world. You enter a story conference with Raymond Chandler, visit the set of Laura, and watch Detour with a Midwest audience. This volume recreates the environment that spawned film noir. It also displays the wit and warmth of the genre's artists. Hedda Hopper reports on Citizen Kane, calling Orson Welles "Little Orson Annie." Lauren Bacall says she enjoys playing a bad girl in To Have and Have Not. Bosley Crowther calls Joan Crawford in Possessed a "ghost wailing for a demon lover beneath a waning moon." An Indiana exhibitor rates the classic Murder, My Sweet a "passable program picture." Illustrated by hundreds of rare still photographs, Into the Dark conveys the mystery, glamour, and irony that make film noir surpassingly popular.

 

About TCM:
 

Turner Classic Movies is the definitive resource for the greatest movies of all time. We entertain and enlighten to show how the entire spectrum of classic movies, movie history, and movie-making touches us all and influences how we think and live today.