<P> At the forefront of contesting the Code was director Otto Preminger, whose films violated the Code repeatedly in the 1950s . His 1953 film The Moon Is Blue, about a young woman who tries to play two suitors off against each other by claiming that she plans to keep her virginity until marriage, was released without a certificate of approval . He later made The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), which portrayed the prohibited subject of drug abuse, and Anatomy of a Murder (1959), which dealt with murder and rape . Like Some Like It Hot, Preminger's films were direct assaults on the authority of the Production Code, and their success hastened its abandonment . In the early 1960s, films began to deal with adult subjects and sexual matters that had not been seen in Hollywood films since the early 1930s . The MPAA reluctantly granted the seal of approval for these films, although again not until certain cuts were made . </P> <P> In 1964, the Holocaust film The Pawnbroker, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Rod Steiger, was initially rejected because of two scenes in which the actresses Linda Geiser and Thelma Oliver fully expose their breasts, as well as due to a sex scene between Oliver and Jaime Sánchez described as "unacceptably sex suggestive and lustful". Despite the rejection, the film's producers arranged for Allied Artists to release the film without the Production Code seal, with the New York censors licensing the film without the cuts demanded by Code administrators . The producers appealed the rejection to the Motion Picture Association of America . On a 6 - 3 vote, the MPAA granted the film an exception, conditional on "reduction in the length of the scenes which the Production Code Administration found unapprovable". The requested reductions of nudity were minimal; the outcome was viewed in the media as a victory for the film's producers . </P> <P> The Pawnbroker was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval . The exception to the code was granted as a "special and unique case" and was described by The New York Times at the time as "an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent". In Pictures at a Revolution, a 2008 study of films during that era, Mark Harris wrote that the MPAA approval was "the first of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years". </P> <P> In 1966, Warner Bros. released Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the first film to feature the "Suggested for Mature Audiences" (SMA) label . When Jack Valenti became President of the MPAA in 1966, he was faced with censoring the film's explicit language . Valenti negotiated a compromise: the word "screw" was removed, but other language remained, including the phrase "hump the hostess". The film received Production Code approval despite the previously prohibited language . </P>

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