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Answer: bad guys are triumphant

Since 'Wings' won the first Academy Award for Best Picture, it is clear that the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were not constrained by the requirements for tastefulness that were becoming widespread in the film industry. A growing sense in the community that movies were posing a risk of damaging young minds led to growing censorship laws, and a perception that federal laws to impose them might be in the offing. To prevent this, the movie studios came up with a voluntary code named after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, who was the primary leader in its development. A film that had not been classified under the Code could only find limited cinematic release.

The Hays Code has often been described as a list of '"Don'ts" and "Be Carefuls"', which were already being formulated when 'Wings' was produced. The "Don'ts" mostly focused on sex and profanity, although illegal traffic in drugs and ridicule of the clergy also appeared. They included a ban on "obscenity in word, gesture, reference, song, or by suggestion" - a pretty wide ranging guideline, since obscenity was left to individual interpretation. You will note that the wording now rules out the 'Wings' approach of using noise to mask what the characters were saying.

The tasteful male nudity (as the men were undergoing a physical on entry into the army, they could be seen from the back in an adjacent room) and the female character's breast being exposed when she was interrupted while changing into her nurse's uniform after placing a drunken pilot to bed to sleep it off might both have passed the Code, as it prohibited "licentious or suggestive nudity". Since alcohol was not an illegal drug, it was not covered by the "Be Careful" approach to drug use, and the extenuating circumstance of being a soldier in wartime reduced the moral outrage associated with drunkenness.

Answer: Cheeta

Johnny Weissmuller's loincloth satisfied the regulations about covering genitalia (just), and they accepted his bare-chested torso even when he was in proximity to Jane (frequently played by Maureen O'Hara). There were occasions when Jane's similarly skimpy clothing caused controversy - not only was there a fair bit of exposure, she was sometimes seen sleeping in the nude (even though she and Tarzan did not appear to have been married), but those were circumvented with body stockings so that there was no actual nudity.

However, the ban on exposing genitalia did not only apply to humans, so Cheeta and the other chimpanzees had to wear body stockings in scenes where the camera could not avoid including their nether regions in the shot.

Answer: Fred Astaire

The Code had a list of specific words that were not allowed, just to clarify the general rule against profanity: "Pointed profanity... includes the words God, Lord, Jesus, Christ (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd, and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled". The reference to spelling was because this applied to written as well as spoken material, so such words needed to be alluded to rather than used.

When Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are discussing a racehorse that he has just purchased, they discuss its pedigree. The sire was Man O' War; when she asks him who the dam was, he responds, "Oh, I don't know, Miss, he didn't give a ...". This break in the middle of the sentence to avoid finishing the familiar phrase "he didn't give a damn" to indicate indifference managed to get past the office, despite the fact that it was clearly an "obscene reference" in the meaning of the code.

Answer: adultery

While all four of these were either barred or required careful treatment, only adultery features (briefly) in this film about an elderly couple forced to depend on their children after he has lost his job. The mother (played by Beulah Bondi) is staying with one of their daughters, Rhoda, while things are being sorted (spoiler: it does not end well, and she ends up in a home while he goes to live with another daughter in California) when she receives a phone call (which we do not hear, but whose contents we can work out from subsequent events). This call is from a woman who threatens to reveal the fact that Rhoda has had an affair with her husband. If the audience were to hear the complete contents of the call, it would have violated the requirement that adultery, like other sexual transgressions, "must not be explicitly treated or justified or presented attractively". This is implicit, not explicit, so just makes it under the radar.

The next year, the director (Leo McCarey) received an Academy Award for directing 'The Awful Truth', a comedy starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne that provided many examples of how to circumvent the Code by carefully not quite showing what the audience would clearly understand to be going on to create the comedy.

Answer: Mae West

As was the case for many of her films, Mae West not only starred in but also co-wrote this comedy about con artist Peaches O'Day. She was expert at writing lines that would attract the attention of the Hays Office as they checked the script, only to replace them with something that might have originally raised objections, but which was clearly less risque than the material that had been replaced.

It was in this film that Mae West delivered the line, "I always say, keep a diary and someday it'll keep you." She did not originate this clever line (it has been attributed to several other earlier sources), but she used it effectively to suggest that this girl had been involved in activities that were less than virtuous, without actually saying so. And the concept of a con artist who sells the Brooklyn Bridge before arranging to have the chief of police kidnapped in a publicity stunt to help him get elected as mayor so she can marry him and be free from prosecution somehow dodged the ban on evoking sympathy for criminals.

Answer: "If you had a mother, she would bark."

Billy Wilder, one of the screenwriters, has discussed the creativity required to get around the Code's restrictions. This included making it clear that the married couple (Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert) may have engaged in some physical altercations, but lovingly; that she only pretended to be unfaithful to make him jealous; and that the divorce was just a pretext to make it clear that she really did love him, and was not just after the alimony. (Don't ask, it's a comedy so it doesn't all have to make sense.) They also used euphemisms to avoid using banned words - since a female dog is called a bitch, suggesting that someone's mother would bark is clearly a familiar (if relatively mild) bit of profanity in other words.

Answer: Frankly, my dear, you're making a scene.

The famous line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", was flagged as problematic, so David O. Selznik actually filmed an alternative scene, in case he couldn't convince the Hays Office to let it through. In discussions with the Office, he didn't disclose that this alternative take was actually available, but argued that it was acceptable in the best-selling book, so ought to be viable in the film. At the time, 'damn' was on the list of words that absolutely could not be used.

Selznik was able to effect a change in the Production Code that allowed his film to be classified. At least in part, this involved making it clear how unsatisfactory alternatives such as those in this question were. The Code was amended to read that 'hell' and 'damn' were banned unless the term was "essential and required for portrayal, in proper historical context, of any scene or dialogue based upon historical fact or folklore... or a quotation from a literary work, provided that no such use shall be permitted which is intrinsically objectionable or offends good taste".

Frankly, a 21st century perspective of the film sees far more offensive matter allowed through, including the romanticisation of the antebellum plantation lifestyle, and the scene of what might be described as marital rape when Rhett and Scarlet reconcile.

Answer: Cary Grant

Joseph Cotten was the actor that producer David O. Selznik wanted to play the part of US government agent TR Devlin, but Hitchcock insisted on keeping his choice, Cary Grant. Selznik won the tussle over casting the other male lead, with his choice of Claude Rains portraying Nazi businessman Alex Sebastian instead of Clifton Webb. Ingrid Bergman, as Alicia Huberman, is the love interest of both men. The famous kiss scene takes place in a cellar, when Devlin and Alicia have just discovered that Sebastian has a supply of uranium ore in the wine bottles of his cellar.

The Code banned "scenes of passion" that involved "excessive and lustful kissing", and two-and-a half minutes of locking lips as the two wander around the cellar arm in arm certainly would have qualified, but Hitchcock produced the effect in a series of three-second takes. Some careful editing produced an impression of passionate commitment, but he was able to argue that these breaks turned to scene into a series of shorter, therefore more sedate and acceptable, romantic moments.

Answer: Jayne Mansfield

The Code came down hard on nudity, with "complete nudity" prohibited, even "in silhouette", along with "any lecherous or licentious notice [of total nudity] by other characters in the pictures." Cleavage, however, was fine with the Hays Office, as long as there were no nipples exposed. In 'The Girl Can't Help It', Jerri Jordan's boyfriend wants to make her a big star, giving Jayne Mansfield plenty of opportunity for relatively scanty clothing as she performs. And between performances.

This film is perhaps most notable for the cameo appearances of a number of rock-and-roll performers, including Little Richard (whose song provides the film's title), Eddie Cochrane, Fats Domino and Gene Vincent. In the 1995 television documentary series 'The Beatles Anthology', Paul McCartney recounted that he had performed one of the songs from the movie in a manner as close as possible to the original, to establish his credentials with John Lennon when the two first met as teenagers.

Answer: Strangers on a Train

This 1951 film also walked a thin line as regards the edict that crime should never be rewarded. Hitchcock modified the story from which the film was adapted so that Bruno (Robert Walker), the instigator of the plan to swap murders, dies in a spectacular accident at the amusement park that was the scene of the murder he committed; Guy, however, did not reciprocate the favor and kill Bruno's father after his wife had been conveniently killed. As Bruno attacks Guy's wife, her glasses fall off, and we see her being strangled as a distorted reflection in the lens of the fallen glasses. The argument to get this accepted, of course, is that is is an artistic portrayal, not a realistic one. Still violent.

Perhaps Hitchcock's most famous violent death scene, when Janet Leigh is stabbed to death in the shower scene of 'Psycho', may be one of the scariest death scenes on film, but careful filming means we never actually see anything explicit. There is a lot of flashing knife, a few glimpses of flesh, and the scene is edited into a multitude of short jerky segments, which tends to disorientate the viewer, and suck them into the tension of the moment.

The deaths in 'Rear Window' and 'Vertigo' are off-camera, but the films nevertheless create a sense of impending danger, with violence very much in the offing.