MovieChat Forums > Rebecca (1940) Discussion > How did the 'C' word get passed in 1940?

How did the 'C' word get passed in 1940?

posted 10 years ago by boirin
5 replies | jump to latest

One of the things I find extraordinary about this film is that it came right out and said the word 'cancer' - more than once.

I haven't seen this in any other film of the 1930s, 1940s or any decade up to at least the 1970s. In film, as in life, cancer was the unmentionable disease and a source of shame, not only for the sufferer but also their relatives.

Given the stringent policies of the Hays Code and other professional/medical/media guidelines, which forbade mention of the word 'cancer' (by not using the word at all or substituting euphemisms like 'a long illness'), I'm intrigued that Hitchcock was able to do so.

[–] rrb 10 years ago

How did the 'C' word get passed in 1940?

Oh, I thought you meant when Joan Fontaine called Mrs. Van Hopper a kunt.

[–] hka-3 10 years ago

Mrs. Van Hopper deserved it!

Mag, Darling, you're being a bore.

[–] strntz 10 years ago

Oh, I thought you meant when Joan Fontaine called Mrs. Van Hopper a kunt.

Hey yo, that's the "K" word...

It is bad to drink Jobus rum. Very bad.

[–] louiseculmer 8 years ago

cancer was less common as a cause of death in the 1930s than it is now, because there were more things to die of. TB for instance, a lot of people got that, and pneumonia, tetanus, polio, diptheria etc. so cancer did not loom as large in the public iamgination as it does now. A lot of other things might get to you before the cancer did. I mean, the lack of cancer in films could be simply because there were so many other possibilities if you wanted to kill someone off.

[–] dlynch843 8 years ago

Hitchcock got away with other words and phrases---the word 'transvestite' in 'Psycho' was considered risky to use at the time. He had to argue to leave the word in.