Top 10 Things in Old Hollywood Movies That Wouldn't Work Today

We’ve come a long way from the days of cigarettes and cigars being commonplace in public spaces. In many Old Hollywood movies, not only was smoking acceptable, it was actually very chic. What was a Hollywood glamor girl without a chrome-plated cigarette case or a long, elegant cigarette holder? Who was James Bond without the cigarette dangling casually from his mouth? Since those days, the health hazards of smoking have made it less common for big stars to smoke on screen. If they do, it’s usually not romanticized like it was in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

#9: Massive Age Gaps

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Romantic relationships between people of different generations are not inherently wrong provided both parties are above the age of consent. However, it was almost a trend of its own in classic Hollywood movies. While movies usually shied away from commenting explicitly on the age gap between the romantic leads, it’s not necessarily difficult to see how much older and grayer Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn’s male co-stars usually were. Make no mistake, it was almost always the women who were younger and, in many cases, infantilized by the movies they were in. Although it’s still a common practice in today’s Hollywood, it’s not nearly as noticeable with modern advancements in medicine.

Back in the day, divorce wasn’t just frowned upon. It was also much harder to get one. If you wanted out of a marriage with as little trouble as possible, you disappeared to Nevada for a few weeks. Reno became a symbolic location in Old Hollywood, the place where people went when they needed out of a marriage fast. It’s generally used to comic effect in movies like “The Women” or “Libeled Lady,” where a divorce always came in clutch to make a love story pop. Reno divorces made for some great drama, but with more relaxed legal procedures, it’s become completely outdated.

It’s no secret that Old Hollywood was very white. Monochrome casting refers to ensembles that are the same race, at least visibly. It’s essentially a form of screen segregation. Real-life segregation laws and Production Code rules against miscegenation led to a fear that too many people of color in a cast would jeopardize box office earnings. The major African-American stars of the era made most of their careers playing subservient domestics or, on rare occasions, in movies that featured all-Black casts. While monochrome casting still exists in some ways, it’s especially rare that it goes by without commentary or criticism, particularly when people of color are conspicuously absent.

Sexism in old movies, you say? Why, the scandal! No matter how big the female stars of the era got, they were still on screen competing for men, being treated like dirt by men, and being subservient to men. If they weren’t being seduced, they were being infantilized or downright brutalized. That’s not to say there weren’t some incredible deviations from the norm, even in the 1930s. Many classic movies use violence against women for comedic effect, although the line between traditional slapstick humor and glamorizing violence is often pretty blurry. Like most things in pop culture, casual misogyny didn’t die, it just changed form.

Hollywood movies really are the great maker of American myths, and nothing says American myth like stories about white people manifesting their destiny from sea to shining sea. For years, Hollywood pumped out period pieces about John Wayne protecting stagecoaches from Apache raiders and historical tales of frontier families taming the land and also fighting off Native Americans. Conveniently, the movies hardly ever say why the Native Americans would be so angry. Admittedly, the decline of this kind of movie probably had more to do with diminishing box office returns and the advent of TV than political correctness. To make a Western now requires a bit more context and a bit more empathy for the indigenous people who used to be inhuman hordes.

It’s a myth that gay characters weren’t included in classic Hollywood films. Of course, their sexuality was hidden in subtext to appease the censors. Even before the Production Code, when homosexuality was allowed to be more visible, it was often used as a punchline. When queerness became more visible later on, though, any sign of homosexuality or cross-dressing was treated as a joke at best, and something hopeless, depraved, and violent at worst. Queer characters have been given more dignity on screen, and there’s still a long way to go, but it’s miles better than where movies were.

If studios made Westerns because they were cheap, they made southern-set period dramas because they were prestigious. “Gone With the Wind,” “Song of the South,” and “Jezebel” all paint a nostalgic and sumptuous picture of the past. That’s not all these movies have in common, though. They also severely underplay the lived conditions of enslaved people. As depicted, the slaves in these movies always seem fairly happy to be a white man’s property or figure of entertainment. The reality is, even if some forward-thinking director wanted to craft a realistic portrayal of slavery, it would probably run afoul of the Production Code’s most basic rules. As knowledge about this shameful institution becomes more complex, so do the portrayals of its victims.

While the American screen was no stranger to virulent and blatant racism, such as in the racist propaganda epic, “Birth of a Nation,” it also took on subtler forms in classic Hollywood. Subtler, at least, to white audiences. The people of color who did make it into early movies were often subject to insensitive remarks, even from characters we’re meant to like. Foreign characters were often treated with either suspicion or exoticism that disrespectfully flattens cultures into something one-note and digestible or inherently ridiculous. Although things have gotten better, this trope was still in use well into the 1980s. It’s not just the racism that shocks a modern audience, it’s the callous and completely brazen way these movies throw it at us.

Actors playing characters of different races and ethnicities is bad enough. However, movie stars being made up to adopt the skin color and features of different races was actually commonplace in old Hollywood. Born from the stage tradition of racist minstrelsy, blackface was featured in the first all-talking motion picture starring Al Jolson. Luise Rainer won an Oscar for playing an East Asian woman in “The Good Earth.” Even the holiday classic, “Holiday Inn,” has a prominent blackface number. Variations of this have occurred all over classic Hollywood in big and small ways. If a movie star were to do this today, it would be a disaster. Modern audiences are more in tune with the harmful, racist histories of these makeups.