Preston Sturges was known as a director of comedies, but he was very serious about the social commentary he included in these films. He directed the majority of his films in the 1940s, and at that time he had to work under the strictures of the Motion Picture Code which determined what could and could not be included as subject matter for films and how certain subjects could and could not be treated. Sturges showed the ability to skirt the edges of this code in his comedies, and indeed it can be argued that the creativity he showed in on the one hand following the Code sufficiently to get his films passed while at the same time challenging many of its basic assumptions in the subject matter and details of his films made his films more interesting, more creative, and more lasting than if he had been given free rein. Of course, this cannot be demonstrated for sure because we do not know what he would have done if he had had free rein, but we can see how he skirted the strictures of the Code and produced comedies with strong social content as a result.
The Motion Picture Production Code was first developed in 1930 in response to audience concerns about sex and violence in the movies, the two complaints that continue in some form to this day. Originally, the code was part of the Hays Office, which passed on films in a rather haphazard manner, though the Code was enforced more rigorously after 1934. In that year, Joseph Breen was named the new head of Hollywood's Production Code Administration (PCA), and he would hold this post for 20 years. The PCA had the power to grant or deny a seal of approval to films based on whether or not they complied with the Production Code; the studios promised that they would not distribute or exhibit films without a seal:
Since seventy percent of the nation's first-run theaters were at that time owned by the five major studios, there was little problem in securing the cooperation of exhibitors....