ANNALS : Over the Edge

1904--A city ordinance prohibits liquor sales except by prescription.

19l0--Movie houses banned.

1917--A woman appears nude in a leading role in a mainstream film.

1922--The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America is founded, with former U.S. Postmaster General Will Hays serving as president. The Hays Office, five years later, releases lists of Don’ts (including “any licentious or suggestive nudity, ridicule of the clergy, inference of sexual perversion and illegal traffic of drugs”) and Be Carefuls (including “brutality and possible gruesomeness, sale of women or a woman selling her virtue”).

1939--David O. Selznick is fined $5,000 for allowing a four-letter word to be used in his film “Gone With the Wind.” The word is damn , as in “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The word is not heard again in a movie until 1954, in “On the Waterfront.”

1940--The longest kiss in screen history appears in “You’re in the Army Now”; the kiss lasts 185 seconds.

1943--Howard Hughes directs the notorious “sex Western,” “The Outlaw,” starring a buxom Jane Russell.

1947--The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) investigates the loyalty of 19 actors, directors and writers. Ten are found guilty of contempt and sent to jail.

1954--Otto Preminger violates the Hays Code by distributing “The Moon Is Blue,” a comedy about virginity, without approval.

1968--Brian De Palma’s “Greetings” receives the first X rating under Motion Picture Assn. of America standards.

1970--FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover has a fake letter sent to a Hollywood columnist alleging that Jane Fonda threatened to kill President Richard Nixon.

1973--Bernardo Bertolucci’s sexually explicit “Last Tango in Paris” sets box office records and makes the cover of both Time and Newsweek magazines.

1976--A federal court jury declares “Deep Throat” to be obscene and convicts 12 men connected with it of conspiring to distribute an obscene film.

1984--”Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” rated PG, is denounced by the National Coalition on Television Violence, which claims that the film contains 215 explicit acts of violence.