8. Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) – The Bathroom Scene
Admittedly, this one is not about Hitchcock sneaking sex into a film but rather just him pushing against something the PCA hated: toilets. The PCA did not feel that bathrooms or people using the bathroom were considered entertainment. For that reason, they usually asked for scenes in bathrooms to be set in other locations or omitted all together. They especially didn’t like the sound of a toilet flushing. In fact,Psycho, which was released twenty years after this film, is often credited as the first Hollywood film to show a flushing toilet. In Mr. and Mrs. Smith, three characters have a private conversation in an office bathroom. Not only does the conversation take place in a bathroom but Hitchcock also had it scripted so that the conversation would be repeatedly interrupted by the sound of the toilet one floor above flushing. This never even made it to the PCA office, as the production company urged Hitchcock to change the sound of the flushing toilet, noting that the PCA would undoubtedly object. Hitchcock changed the the sound of the toilet above flushing to the sound of knocking pipes from above, losing this battle against The Hayes Code.
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