The portrayal of animals in photographs blended into the portrayal of animals in film. Wildlife photographers at the end of the 19th Century stressed patience and care when trying to take pictures of animals in their natural settings. The first studies of animal movement, such as Muybridge’s work on equine locomotion, were focused on scientific inquiry. Similarly, the majority of early animal films were surprisingly ordinary. One might film a city street, a zoo, or a horse race. However, cinema transitioned from films simply featuring animals to films that could incite controversy. This larger transition is best encapsulated by the shift from the “feeding film” to the “hunting film,” or a transition from plotless film where the animal was a visual device to a narrative-driven film where the animal was a plot device. More broadly, critics and activists began to divide over whether animals were devices for education or entertainment. And the public debate around the purpose of animals in film led to its regulation in the same ways that sexuality, blasphemy, and criminality were regulated.

British film censorship on the basis of cruelty to animals dates to 1913, with the creation of the British Board of Film Censors -- now the British Board of Film Classification. Cruelty to animals was one of many grounds on which a film could be completely rejected. However, the BBFC’s justification for banning films on the basis of animal cruelty was less out of concern for animals than for the breaking of social taboo. The 1932 American film Island of the Lost Souls was rejected by the BBFC three times: in 1933, 1934, and 1951. The Board only accepted the film in 1958, but went on record as calling the film absolutely repulsive: Two of the themes of the film are vivisection and the hybridization of humans and animals. Britain did, however, pass early legal measures to protect animals on screen. The Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act of 1937 stated:

No person shall exhibit to the public, or supply to any person for public exhibition (whether by him or by another person), any cinematograph film (whether produced in Great Britain or elsewhere) if in connection with the production of the film any scene represented in the film was organised or directed in such a way as to involve the cruel infliction of pain or terror on any animal or the cruel goading of any animal to fury.

However, the Act was panned by animal rights activists as ineffectual. One activist, E. Keith Robertson, wrote in the British film journal Sight and Sound in 1939 that:

Despite the passage of the Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act in July, 1937, no prosecution has yet been undertaken. It is manifestly impossible to prove cruelty without witnessing cruelty, and...the film studios would be able to exclude witnesses, undesirable in their opinion, of any acts of cruelty….The training of animals for public performance usually involves a great deal of cruelty….To train animals by kindness, particularly in the case of wild animals...would require months and even years to gain the trust of a free-born creature. No trainer can possibly afford, if he is to make money out of his animal, to devote so much of his time, with the change, and a most likely chance, of it never being effective as a performing animal. These then, are the animals that are being used in films of the nature I have been describing….A human also can, if he so desires, give up all together. This is not possible for an animal. Film producers...have informed me that after half-an-hour on the set, the animal is completely exhausted and suffering terribly from thirst and lassitude.

Similar discussions about the treatment of animals in film were also taking place in the United States. In 1925, the American Humane Association began to investigate how animals were trained for film. Indeed, animal training for cinema attracted the type of person who was willing to kill an animal to get the footage the director needed. During the same year that the AHA was investigating animal cruelty on film sets, 150 horses were killed in the filming of the chariot race in Ben Hur.

The AHA’s impetus to oversee animals used in film would not be provided until 1939, when a horse was killed after being driven off of a cliff during the filming of Jesse James. The AHA was summarily given the right by the Hays Office, the organization that regulated the morals of the American film industry, to review scripts and supervise the filming of animals. The organization opened a Hollywood office, and in 1951 created their first stamp of approval for films that were committed to humane practices. The familiar line “No animals were harmed” at the end of films and television shows was first issued by the AHA in 1972 at the end of The Doberman Gang.

While the closure of the Hays Office by the Supreme Court in 1966 liberalized American cinema, it also kneecapped the AHA’s power to protect animals. Movie studios banned the AHA from sets, and situations that put animals at risk, such as using wires to trip horses, became more common. The AHA would not regain supervisory powers until 1980, because of public outcry over the western Heaven’s Gate. During the course of filming, five horses were killed, with one allegedly dying from an explosion:

The film’s stunt rider said: “The charge blew the saddle clean off and we both went up in the air. The Horse died soon afterwards.”

The AHA organized a boycott of the film, and the response led to the Screen Actors Guild reinstating the AHA’s authority to protect animals on set.

The AHA continues to oversee animals on film, television, and commercial sets, albeit not without controversy. But despite this recent controversy, the strides made in on-screen animal safety over the course of the 20th Century were driven by the work of the AHA and similar organizations, and their activists.

Sources

American Humane. History. https://www.americanhumane.org/about-us/history/

British Board of Film Censors. Annual Report For Year Ending December 31st, 1914. https://bbfc.co.uk/sites/default/files/attachments/BBFC%20From%20The%20Archive%20Annual%20Reports.pdf

Burt, Jonathan. Animals in Film

Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act 1937. Section 1. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Edw8and1Geo6/1/59/section/1

Reed, Chris. “‘Cruelty’ of Boycott on Film.” The Guardian. May 5, 1981

Robinson, E. Keith. “Wild Animals and the Films.” Sight and Sound. Spring, 1939.