ed, and "X" has been widely purloined by smut-peddlers ("X, Y or Z," 1990: 87).
             Pornography has been restricted in practice by local zoning laws, refusal to issue licenses and permits to movie houses showing X-rated films, and "self-censorship" by whole communities, in the form of anti-pornography action groups and peer pressure on those wishing to see such films.
             The practice of a self-imposed censorship by the industry was not a development of the 1960s, however, for the public relations problem of Hollywood morality dates back to the early days of the movies. In the 1920s, following the Fatty Arbuckle sex scandal and the death of matinee idol Wallace Reid from a drug overdose, threats of censorship from Congress and religious leaders led the film industry in Hollywood to form the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, a precursor to the MPAA, in 1922. Informally known as the Hays Office because it was headed by former Republican Postmaster General and Presbyterian elder Will Hays, the MPPDA used much the same kind of coercive influence for self-censorship as the rating system was to formalize half-a-century later:
             Rather than taking concrete censorship action, the Hays Office sought to counter bad publicity with good, to keep the press from magnifying its tales of Hollywood debauches, to regularize business procedures, and to encourage producers to submit their films voluntarily for prerelease examination (Mast, 1976: 125).
             This loose, informal system of self-censorship was unable to impede the likes of Mae West from bringing "lubricious" sexuality to the screen, however, and by the 1930s the MPPDA brought in Joseph Breen, the candidate of the Catholic Legion of Decency, to impose a more rigorous form of morality. The "Breen Code" was a "formal moral code to keep the films from being objectionable," notes Mast:
             Movies were to avoid brutali...