Where Have You Gone Joseph Breen? Our Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To You!

In the mid-1960s, the American movie industry’s original production code since the 1930s was replaced by the G/PG/R ratings system that a generation of movie viewers have taken for granted.

More or less concurrently (and not at all coincidentally, Michael Medved has argued), the lights went out on Hollywood’s studio system, and by the end of the 1960s, most of the conservative and FDR-era liberal studio heads had retired or gone on to the great screening room in the sky. In their place came the new left (read: far left) actors, directors, agents and studio chiefs.

The original studio chiefs, and most of the biggest actors who worked for them, were staunchly pro-American, and the nation was very lucky to have had their services during World War II.

What are the principles and beliefs of their replacements? It seems safe to say that average movie actor’s philosphy is more or less “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”, the motto of the drug-addled author William Burroughs. But perhaps we can focus things a bit by looking at who Hollywood’s movie stars and power players have publicly defended over the years: