SEX in the Movies.

I quote from a book I found.

The movie was born in a laboratory and reared in the counting-house.
Filthy hands taught it to walk.


Sex in film - Wikipedia

 

Fatima's Coochie-Coochie Dance (1896) (aka Fatima, Muscle Dancer)

That got censored.

 

Le Coucher de la Marie (1896, Fr.) (aka Bedtime for the Bride, or The Bridegroom's Dilemma)

"Blue movie" pornographer Eugene Pirou reportedly pioneered the risque film with the premiere of this film in Paris. He was responsible for producing this film (and other similar "smoking concert" or stag party films).

The short film (only 2 minutes of which survives today of the original 7 minutes) was directed by Léar (real name Albert Kirchner).

In this one, cabaret performer Louise Willy recreated a striptease from her cabaret act - the first striptease onscreen, although she was undressing behind a screen shielding her from the eyes of a gentleman (who was waiting and pretending to read a newspaper). In the surviving portion of the film, she was only down to her petticoat when the excerpt ended.

 

Après Le Bal (1897, Fr.) (After the Ball, Bath)

Pioneering filmmaker Georges Melies directed this short, B/W silent film, which contained one of the earliest nude scenes in film history.

In the scene, a fully-dressed person was helped to undress by a maid for a bath.

 

Annabelle (Whitford) Moore's Dance Routines (mid-1890s)

Many of the earliest nickelodeon films featured the dancing of vaudeville performer Annabelle Whitford (known as Peerless Annabelle), whose routines were filmed at Edison's studio in NJ:

• Annabelle Butterfly Dance (1894)
• Annabelle Sun Dance (1894)
• Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)
• Serpentine Dance by Annabelle (1896)
• Annabelle in Flag Dance (1896)
• Skirt Dance by Annabelle (1896)
• Tambourine Dance by Annabelle (1896)
• Sun Dance - Annabelle (1897)

Male audiences were enthralled watching these early depictions of a clothed female dancer (sometimes color-tinted) on a Kinetoscope (an early peep-show device for projecting short films).

 

The Birth of the Pearl (1901)

Proprietors of the arcade parlors and nickelodeons with hand-cranked kinetoscopes, designed to provide cheap entertainment for poor, lower-class immigrants in the cities, realized that sex (or erotica) sold.

One example was this short provocative American Mutoscope & Biograph film about the 'birth of a pearl' in an art tableau. When the curtains were drawn to the side by two clothed chorus girls, a large oyster or clam shell was revealed in front of a painted backdrop of the ocean.

As the shell opened, a sleeping or slumbering long-haired young model (wearing a flesh-colored body stocking) was curled up, but then slowly awakened from slumber and stood up.

 

ooh la la

 

From Show Girl to Burlesque Queen (1903)

This titillating short film (one-minute in length) from American Mutoscope & Biograph was designed to stimulate its audience.

It presented a view of a woman in her dressing room mischievously undressing and smiling at the camera - but after removing clothing and standing in a long white undergarment (and slipping the strap of her garment off one shoulder), she ducked behind a screen to her right.

There, she continued to undress and furtively reach for other clothes. She then appeared costumed in another outfit.

 

Peeping Tom in the Dressing Room (1905)

This voyeuristic short was sexually enticing to early male audiences. A similar earlier title (not to be confused with) was Biograph's Peeping Tom (1897), in which a man spied through a keyhole on a busty female trying on a corset.

In the 1905 short, a man was in an adjoining dressing room when through the thin wall, he heard two other females in a nearby dressing room. He watched in amazement as one of the females adjusted her garter under her long skirt. The man was caught spying by two other men who entered the dressing room and saw that he was 'peeping' through the wall.

The humiliated 'peeper' was brought into the women's dressing room, where one of the two chorus girls beat him with powder puffs in the face.

 

A L'Ecu d'Or ou la Bonne Auberge (1908, Fr.)

This French film has been widely regarded as the oldest-surviving hard-core pornographic film. Early pornographic films were frequently displayed at brothels, and seized (and thereafter destroyed) when police raided the illegal establishments.

The film's action was straightforward - a woman was seen pleasuring herself with a dildo, then another man and woman joined her for a threesome, involving lots of oral sex before intercourse.

No I am not posting the video

 

Traffic in Souls (1913)

Carl Laemmle's newly-formed Independent Motion Picture Company's (IMP) first feature-length film release was the six-reel melodrama (and faux documentary) Traffic in Souls (1913) (aka While New York Sleeps). It was the most expensive feature film of its time at $57,000, although its record earnings were $450,000 during its first run.

It was the first American feature-length sex film. This was one of the first films to understand that 'sex sells,' although its producers worried that a 'feature-length' film on any subject wouldn't be successful.

It was a "photo-drama" expose of white slavery (entrapment and stalking of two young emigrant women into prostitution at brothels, called "dens of iniquity") at the turn of the century in NYC, although the film exploitatively promised steamy sex in its advertisements.

 

Oooh it’s getting warm in this armor!

 

Lots more tomorrow

 

Damaged Goods (1914)

This early, dramatic sex-hygiene (venereal disease) educational film (now presumed lost) was typical of an early exploitation film with sensational content told with an educational slant. It was advertised as:

Filmdom's Most Sensational Feature

It was a smash-hit at the box-office when re-released in 1915 by the Mutual Film Corporation, with $2 million box-office revenue, and it caused a wave of similar exploitational films about the scourge of venereal disease for the rest of the decade.

[Note: Other films in this sub-genre included The Spreading Evil (1918), The Scarlet Trail (1918), Open Your Eyes (1919), The Solitary Sin (1919), and Wild Oats (1919).]

There were three remakes:

• Damaged Goods (1919, UK), also a silent film, directed by Alexander Butler
• Damaged Goods (1937), director Phil Goldstone, with the tagline: "Don't Let Ignorance and Prudery Endanger Your Happiness! The Greatest Moral Story Ever Produced"
• Damaged Goods (1961) (aka V.D.), writer/director H. Haile Chace, a sex hygiene scare film about STDs

In the original 1914 film, the plot was about how young lawyer George Dupont (Richard Bennett), a law school graduate, contracted syphilis from a prostitute or Girl of the Streets (Adrienne Morrison, Mrs. Bennett in real-life). Dupont contemplated drinking poison, but was dissuaded by the prostitute.

Dupont was advised to seek VD treatment by specialist Dr. Clifford (Louis Bennison) and to not marry his fiancee Henriette Locke (Olive Templeton), the daughter of Senator Locke (John Steppling). He went against the doctor's advice, went to a quack doctor (William Bertram) for a quick cure, married Henriette, and then had a child that was diagnosed with syphilis.

By film's end, Dupont committed suicide by drowning himself - walking into the sea (although in the re-release in 1915, the suicide was toned down to just the act of contemplating suicide).

 

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

D.W. Griffith's Civil War epic The Birth of a Nation (1915) was controversial for many reasons, one of which was its racist and "vicious" portrayal of blacks and its proclamation of miscegenation (racial mixing), according to the NAACP. For that reason, it was the subject of bans for inciting "race hatred and race riots."

In one long suspenseful scene, an emancipated former house servant/slave - an inflamed, lusty Negro "renegade" named Gus (Walter Long), chased after young Flora Cameron (Mae Marsh). Although he reassured her: "Wait, missie, I won't hurt yeh," she fell from a cliff after repeatedly threatening him -- "Stay away or I'll jump."

The scene has often been misinterpreted as a rape scene, although it wasn't. However, it could be interpreted that her threatened state symbolized the emasculation and 'rape' of whites in the South by a rampant black population suddenly emancipated - and destructive of the racial order.

In another controversial scene, lecherous mulatto leader Silas Lynch (George Siegmann, a white actor dressed as black and acting monstrously) attacked Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish), representing innocence, purity and virtue. He attempted to force marriage upon her.

 

The Cheat (1915)

Director Cecil B. DeMille's sensational melodrama combined elements of sexuality with sadomasochism, luring large audiences to theatres to watch it. It was an early example of DeMille's predilection for sensationalism and boldness in pushing the censors to the limit.

The masterfully-filmed story was about an indebted married, spendthrift woman named Edith Hardy (Fannie Ward in her debut film) who turned to a benefactor, a wealthy Japanese/Burmese ivory merchant/dealer named Hishuru Tori/Haka Arakau (Sessue Hayakawa). When she was wanting to repay a loan of $10,000, he demanded her as repayment.

[Note: The film was accused of racial prejudice against the Japanese, causing Paramount Pictures to change the name and nationality of the character.]

When she refused (in a 'rape' scene), the sexually-predatory, sadistic Asian man grabbed her by the hair, and branded her with a red-hot iron on her bare left shoulder, making her his property or possession.

 

A Fool There Was (1915)

The full-bosomed Theda Bara became an overnight sensation after her appearance in this melodrama. She was dubbed the "Vamp," and became the screen's first femme fatale (the first dangerous female in the movies) and first movie sex goddess or sex symbol.

[Note: Bara was a Hollywood creation who mixed ruthlessness and dark erotic sexiness into her numerous roles - she would often appear in risque transparent costumes, in her over 40 films created from 1914 to 1919. The Vamp character was repeated in Bara's melodramatic The Devil's Daughter (1915) in the role of La Gioconda, and also in the lost film The Vixen (1916) (aka The Love Pirate) (see below) as the nymphomaniacal boyfriend-stealing Elsie Drummond. However, the "vamp" didn't last too long at this time, because it soon became too recognizable a caricature.]

The sexy actress was first introduced as an evil temptress in this film with her character name: Vampire. She was portrayed as a predatory vamp (luring men to ruin and destruction). The vamp was a reflection of the society's anxious fear and attraction to the newly-emancipated woman of the early 1900s.

As a homewrecker, she destroyed the marriage of wealthy lawyer and statesman John Schuyler, a successful Presidential special envoy to Britain. She delivered her most famous lines to him, shown in two title cards, as she draped her arms over him:

"You have ruined me, you devil, and now you discard me!"
" Kiss me, my Fool!"

 

A Free Ride (1915)

A Free Ride was reportedly the earliest-known US silent stag ('men only') or pornographic film. Because these kinds of films (with increasingly explicit amounts of nudity and sexuality) were completely illegal, they were shown in all-male locations, clubs, etc., not in mainstream theaters.

Its comic titles foretold its plot:

Directed by A. Wise Guy, Photographed by Will B. Hard, and Titles by Will She.

It included explicit sex scenes of a wealthy man having sex with two female hitchhikers by the side of the road.

 

I don't know if there's anything that has had a more significant effect on my thoughts, fantasies, and imaginings of sex in childhood. I remember rewinding and fast forwarding to VHS tapes with nudity.

 

I was shocked by some films tbh.
I will get to those, history first.