The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF HOLLYWOOD vocation, and they have ways of doing it which even the most imaginative censor could not have foreseen and forestalled. The result is that sex in American films is embodied in a person rather than explicit in a scene. The Breen Office would clamp down on any girl on the screen who invited a man to indulge in "illicit sex". But you cannot censor the invitation in Jane Russell's eyes or in Miss Monroe's walk. Because sex is something that may not be talked about, Hollywood has had to find a series of sex-queens who can get their message across without words and with only the minimum of permissible action. As they must not indulge in "excessive and lustful kissing" (which the Code condemns), nor in "undue exposure" (which the Code condemns also), they have to convey what they have to convey with a glance and a "fade out". Naturally, a girl who can effortlessly suggest voluptuousness has to be rather special. It is not enough for her to exhibit passion, at the requisite moments, on the screen. Any competent actress can do that much: to graduate into the exclusive hierarchy of sex-royalty she must, to a large extent, become identified with her roles. Just as the comic is expected to be funny twenty-four hours of the day, the sex-queen is expected to be sexy twenty-four hours of the day. She must never be seen doing anything out of character, except when she is already so famous that the idea of her (let us say) reading philosophical tomes can be relied upon to arouse disbelieving sniggers. To maintain the illusion, she must learn whenever a photographer approaches to switch on her most provocative look and let her lips open moistly: she must always be an innuendo in evening dress and an incitement in a sweater. If for "dramatic" purposes she is obliged to wear "falsies" on the screen she must never, through 148