ABSTRACT
Although the USA trumpets freedom of speech very loudly, in reality the first amendment to the constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech, religion, conscience and opinion, has been seriously compromised at every stage of its existence. Will H. Hays, one of the first US censors, linked entertainment, morality and race. He is reputed to have said: ‘Correct entertainment raises the whole standard of a nation. Wrong entertainment lowers the whole living conditions and moral ideas of a race.’ His thoughts on these things were enshrined in The Production Code of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. Even though it contravened the first amendment to the US Constitution, this code dominated the US motion picture industry throughout the 1930s.
