Hermosa Beach’s Tara McNamara and Turner Classic Movie’s Dave Karger will co-host a look at pre-code films in a series that debuts on Monday, July 1, on the classic movie channel. The ‘The Hays Gaze’ series will run every Monday throughout July. Tara McNamara’s career path as an entertainment journalist, reviewer and movie historian started with watching Turner Classic Movies with her son in the early 2000’s.
Now, 20 years later, McNamara, a Hermosa Beach resident, will be making her TCM debut in July co-hosting the limited series “The Hays Gaze” with veteran TCM host Dave Karger.The show will air each Monday night in July and look at what McNamara calls “tawdry topics” and how they were depicted before the Motion Picture Production Code began in the early 1930s, and the decades following.
The production code, also known as the Hays Code after Will Hayes, a former Postmaster General and the first Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America chairman, was the first attempt to censor films in the U.S. It was enforced from around 1934 to the 1960s. The Hays Code dictated restrictions portraying nudity, scenes of childbirth, profanity or drug trafficking in televised shows and films.
“I think women are often targets, and sexuality is often the targets of the Hays Code, so we started off with prostitution,” McNamara said. McNamara has worked at Fandango, Variety, Entertainment Tonight, Inside Edition, CNN, Reelz Channel and reviews films with a parent’s perspective for Common Sense Media, as well as other outlets.
Around 2019, McNamara pitched Charlie Tabesh, senior vice president of programming and content strategy at Turner Classic Movies, the idea looking at the impact on the Hays Code, while at the festival.LA City Council delays vote to give historic designation to Marilyn Monroe home