Joe Breen and the Movies

Born in Philadelphia and educated by the Jesuits, Joseph Ignatius Breen (1888-1965) was a journalist turned publicist. His successful marketing of a film documentary showing Catholic multitudes at the 1926 Eucharistic Congress in Chicago catapulted his career. He worked with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America to enforce the Hays Code in film production. From 1934 to 1954, Breen was head of Hollywood’s Production Code Administration. With powerful backers in his corner, Breen tightened the screws: “I am hopeful of doing something, to lessen, at least, the flow of filth.” He ruled with an iron fist, altering scripts and deleting footage until Otto Preminger cracked the Code in 1953 with The Moon Is Blue. For eight months in 1941 he was head of RKO Pictures before returning to the PCA. In 1954, on the occasion of his retirement, he was presented with an honorary Academy Award, for “his conscientious, open-minded and dignified management of the Motion Picture Production Code.”
(From Wikipedia)