Risque Business

Pre-Haye's Code nostalgia couldn't be shown on the big screen back in the day, but now it gets the royal treatment at a Los Angeles art gallery.

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Though it seems anything goes in the movies nowadays, onscreen sin never really looked more enticing than it did in black and white more than half a century ago. If you doubt that, just check out photographer and film historian Mark A. Vieira's collection of 40 photographs from the "pre-Code" Hollywood years (1930 to 1934) on display at the Apex Fine Art gallery in Los Angeles from September 8 through October 2. The show, "Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood," coincides with the publication of Vieira's new book of the same title and features dazzling Universal Archives photographs culled from the era when Hollywood moviemakers provoked outrage from censorship advocates by frankly depicting illicit drug use, miscegenation, violence, dirty dancing, heavy petting and what was then referred to as "sex perversion" (homosexuality).

Interest in "pre-Code" films is booming, as witnessed by sold-out showings of early sin cinema at Manhattan's Film Forum and the "Forbidden Hollywood" series of pre-Code films available on home video. Apex Fine Art, which is selling the fine prints at $600 to $800, aims to attract such aficionados and collectors of classic Hollywood photography as Sharon Stone and Madonna, and is likely to do so. The exhibition not only offers provocative insights into the essence of screen sin, but also lets us ogle the sensually seductive wonders of Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Mae West, as well as those naked, chained male galley slaves in the 1926 version of Ben-Hur.

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Stephen Rebello