10 More Insane Rules Movies Weren't Allowed To Break
6. No Scenes Of "Excess Passion" - It Happened One Night
1934's iconic romantic comedy It Happened One Night was released a few short months before the MPPDA began strictly enforcing the Hays Code - a set of self-censorship guidelines in an attempt to cut down on "objectionable" content in Hollywood movies.
Though It Happened One Night was produced and released before the Code came into effect, director Frank Capra nevertheless appreciated that adhering to its rulings would allow his film to be far more commercially successful, and so he did.
The Code had specific guidelines about filmmakers avoiding depictions of sexuality and, as they put it, "excess passion," yet with Capra's movie revolving around the charged romance between Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert's characters, he found himself in something of a bind.
As the two leads spend much of the film in isolation together, Capra came up with a clever compromise.
When they sleep in the same room for the first time, Gable's protagonist Peter hangs a blanket over a clothesline, creating a barrier between him and Colbert's Ellie.
At film's end this blanket falls to the floor, emphatically implying that the sexual union between the two finally happens even while showing nothing that could be considered even remotely racy, adhering to the Code's rules in the process.