The Naughty Bits: What the Censors Wouldn’t Let You See in Hollywood’s Most Famous Movies

Between 1934 and 1968, no Hollywood studio could make a movie without the permission of and a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration. The Production Code was Hollywood’s official censor. Screenplays, books, plays, costumes and even story ideas and songs had to be okayed by the Code before they could be filmed, and the Code monitored every stage of the production process to ensure compliance. The correspondence between the Code and the studios was confidential, and the memos within the Code office itself were even more so.

Well, not any more. The Naughty Bits pores through those files to show how the censors did their job. What was the world prevented from seeing in some of the greatest movies ever made, including Stagecoach, Some Like It Hot, Convention City, Psycho, His Girl Friday and even The Ten Commandments? Here is the sometimes funny, sometimes outrageous, always riveting history of movie censorship on a nitty-gritty level.

Nat Segaloff is a writer, broadcaster, teacher, film historian, and raconteur with a varied background in motion picture publicity, journalism, producing, and covering up other people’s mistakes. His many books include Big Bad John: The John Milius Interviews, A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison and Arthur Penn: American Director.

^{The Naughty Bits: What the Censors Wouldn’t Let You See in Hollywood’s Most Famous Movies (2024)
Paperback ISBN 978-1-942782-65-0 240pp 6×9 inches
Hardback ISBN 978-1-942782-64-3 240pp 6×9 inches}