SEX in the Movies.

Forbidden Daughters (1927) (short)

Director and prominent nude photographer Albert Arthur Allen's 13-minute short was a forerunner of the "nudie" comedy feature films that emerged in the late 1950s.

It told of a wealthy NY socialite wife named Alva (Clarice Conwell) (naked under her robe) who received a telegram from a London detective bureau about the whereabouts of her lost adventurer-husband-explorer Russell Silby (Ralph O'Brien) in Africa. He was reported to have been distracted and "held captive by the great love" of Loma, a lovely native Princess.

In the next scene set in a trading post in Central Africa, Alva was searching for him and dressed in jodhpurs and jackboots. She entered the adjoining harem (filled with bare-breasted black natives), where she viewed a Caucasian female, labeled the Harem Favorite (Gladys DeLores) of the wealthy Rajah Sana.

Soon, Alva was wrongly blamed, apprehended and placed in a dungeon (with other nude prisoners) for stabbing the Harem Favorite to death. (Another jealous dancer had murdered her.) One night, Alva picked open the lock, slipped through a window, and escaped into the African jungle where the sound of tom-toms led her to a village where the nude natives were performing "The Dance of the Forbidden Daughters." Afterward, they celebrated the Feast of Lom-a-Loma (bananas!).

Alva spotted her "lost" husband entranced by the dancing of the nude Princess Loma. The title card described: "Alva sees Princess Loma's native dance; she obeys the impulse of love - - Native as native does." She stripped off her clothes before confronting her husband - and asked: "The judgment - - - Choose between us!" There was a long pan up Alva's naked body - from Russell's point of view. The film abruptly ended with Russell taking his naked wife into his arms and kissing her.

 

Hula (1927)

The star of this film was flapper icon Clara Bow, dubbed the "It" girl during the 20s, who was one of the earliest sex symbols. This romantic adventure was a forerunner of Red Dust (1932), starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable.

Bow appeared in this Victor Fleming-directed film as Hula Calhoun, a flapper girl raised on a ranch near Hana (Maui) in Hawaii. She was the daughter of a Hawaiian planter, who became infatuated with a married man - Anthony Haldane (Clive Brook), a young English engineer who was supervising the construction of a dam on the rural estate.

She was featured languorously nude (implied) in a lagoon bathing scene in an early scene and performed a provocatively sexy hula dance (more like the Charleston) to entice Haldane. She connived to have Haldane's wife Margaret (Maude Truax) agree to a divorce so that they could marry.

 

It (1927)

This was an appealing sex symbol for Clara Bow's most famous, star-making, signature film as the self-proclaimed "It" Girl, her first film for Paramount. She has often been regarded as the first major sex symbol.

A title card early in the Clarence Badger-directed film described the meaning of "It" - a quote by British novelist Elinor Glyn, the author of the novella that was serialized in two parts in 1927 in Cosmopolitan Magazine:

'IT' is that quality possessed by some which draw all others with its magnetic force. With 'IT' you win all men if you are a woman - and all women if you are a man. 'IT' can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.

To emphasize the 'sex appeal' aspect, another quote about "IT" was highlighted in the Cosmopolitan magazine article written by Glyn, as it was being read by the film's gay character, 'Monty' Montgomery (William Austin), the friend of the department store's wealthy owner:

"'IT' is that peculiar quality which some persons possess, which attracts others of the opposite sex. The possessor of 'IT' must be absolutely un-selfconscious, and must have that magnetic 'sex appeal' which is irresistible....Mothers spoil boys with 'IT'; - women never refuse them favors!"

Monty then viewed himself in a mirror and declared: "Old fruit, you've got 'IT'!"

The main film role was of a devil-may-care, quintessential flapper type named Betty Lou Spence - a vivacious Waltham's department store lingerie salesgirl who represented female independence, sexual freedom, Jazz modernity and the modern lifestyle in the Roaring 20s Jazz Age.

[Note: In reality, Clara Bow was alleged as free off-screen as she was on-screen. She was known to have posed nude for photographs.]

When she first saw her handsome young mustached boss Mr. Cyrus Waltham, Jr. (Antonio Moreno), heir to the Waltham's department store empire, she declared: "Sweet Santa Claus, give me him!"

Later, in the romantic/melodramatic scene pictured, after receiving her salary check, she closed her boss' PRIVATE office door, sat on his desk, and asked: "Are you mad at me because I slapped you?", then stretched across his entire desk, and sweetly apologized:

"I'm sorry but a girl has to do that. You know how those things are! Let's forget it. We've got each other straight now, haven't we?"

She then had him profess: "I'm crazy about you" and confessed back: "I love you, too." Furthermore, he promised: "I'll buy you diamonds - clothes - everything you want - " but then she realized he was buying her off:

"What are you trying to do? Offer me one of those left-handed arrangements?"

As she left his office, she reminded him that being 'crazy' about her wasn't enough: "I suppose that's what you men call love!" The film continued with a series of misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and missed opportunities between Betty and her 'dream man' (at one point, Betty claimed she was an unwed mother!), until the closing when the two finally fell in love and kissed in a curtain-closing scene.

 

I love the sexy pose, and the prop!

 

Metropolis (1927, Ger.)

In Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis (1927) in the early Eternal Gardens sequence, Freder (Gustav Frohlich), the aristocrat capitalist's son, frolicked with young ladies (wearing sheer and braless blouses) in a grotto. He chased one young lady with a backless tight black top around a circular fountain. When he caught her, he bent her backward and pressed towards her for a kiss.

Later in the film, the mad scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) created a female robot - a double of ethereal nurse Maria (Brigitte Helm).

As the evil robotic Maria (Helm also), she performed an erotic, Salome-style, hip-swiveling semi-nude dance ("the dance of the whore of Babylon") at Yoshiwara's depraved night-club, arousing the lecherous, wide-eyed male audience into a frenzy.

 

Pitfalls of Passion (1927)
and
Is Your Daughter Safe? (1927) (retitled The Octopus)

Two openly defiant, tawdry exploitation films about brothels, teenage pregnancy, birth control, white slavery (women lured into prostitution), and venereal disease-syphilis (all forbidden topics according to the Hays Office), were circulated as road shows by independent producer and entrepreneur Sam .S. "Steamship" Millard.

They were exhibited to display nudity in the guise of educational and medical documentary films. Pitfalls of Passion (1927) featured the tagline: "Is Sex Knowledge a Sin? See the Birth of Life Unfolded."

 

The Mysterious Lady (1928)

The beautiful and bewitching Greta Garbo provided great sex appeal and numerous love scenes in this MGM, Fred Niblo-directed silent melodrama. The tagline described the espionage-tinged plot set during WWI:

No man knew what she really was. And no man could resist her exotic beauty. A famous Russian spy, moving through the lives of men, in a maze of intrigue, passion and love.

The main characters who became passionate lovers in the Mata Hari tale were:

• Tania Fedorova (Greta Garbo), a Russian spy, the "mysterious lady" with 'exotic beauty'
• Capt. Karl von Raden (Conrad Nagel), an Austrian military officer

Early on in the film, the seductive Tania stole important and top-secret war documents (with military plans) from Capt. Raden after meeting him at the opera in Vienna and spending a flirtatious and loving night together. (Raden had been set up to meet her, although she later professed that she really loved him.)

Raden was court-martialed, demoted and imprisoned for the crime of treason, but then his uncle, Col. Eric von Raden (Edward Connelly), head of the Secret police, proposed a way for Capt. Raden to restore his honor. He would escape from prison, take the identity of a professional pianist from Serbia, and pursue and confront Tania in Moscow at a birthday party held in her honor by her platonic lover and spy-boss, Gen. Boris Alexandroff (Gustav von Seyffertitz).

With great sexual tension and uncertainty during the final confrontation, Raden was trying to prove decisively whether she loved him or not, and whether she was truly a cold-hearted Russian spy or not. In the end, Raden's friend Max Heinrich (Albert Pollet) was revealed to be the real traitor, and Tania chose to aid Raden in killing Alexandroff, retrieve the stolen plans and escape with her.

 

Not seen it myself.
I find it interesting to see the history.

 

Anna Christie (1930)

Anna Christie (1930) was the MGM film in which cinema's greatest silent star - an asexual, supercool, 24 year-old Nordic beauty named Greta Garbo - first talked, as the film's title character.

She coarsely delivered her line - to a bartender:

"Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby!"

In Garbo's transitional role to the talkies, she played the role of a former prostitute (with a veiled reference to being "in the house") whose sordid past could possibly ruin her chances for happiness.

 

The Blue Angel (1930, Ger.) (aka Der Blaue Engel)

This unstrained first film by director Josef von Sternberg featured the legendary Marlene Dietrich in a star-making role - with a plot that would often be repeated in their collaborations.

The film told about a meek and repressed teacher Professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) who was tempted, seduced, and destroyed by a sensual, carefree, and carnal top-hatted entertainer named Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) at the Blue Angel nightclub as he watched her.

There, she sang a throaty rendition of "Falling in Love Again" astride a barrel on stage. She tilted her head to the side, leaned backward, and grasped one gartered-stockinged leg on bare thighs with her arms.

In her dressing room, the Professor knelt before her and was commanded to slip black stockings over her legs.

 

The Divorcee (1930)

This pivotal Pre-Code film about divorce and infidelity, by director Robert Z. Leonard, was banned by the Production Code Administration as being too brash, racy, and forward because it didn't condemn its sinful heroine.

This film's original title was Ex-Wife (the title of the original and controversial 1929 novel by Ursula Parrott). The film was controversial at the time for its reversal of the hypocritical 'double standard,' although it was considerably cleaned up. The husband's affair became a romance, and the wife's own romances were considered dates.

Norma Shearer won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as a Manhattan ad writer with a man's name (Jerry) and a "man's point of view" who soon became a wayward, 'loose woman.'

At the start of the film, she agreed to get married only if she and her husband were equals, joking: "That's why we're gonna make a go of it - everything equal...75/25." Although happily married, she caught her unfaithful husband-newspaperman Ted Martin (Chester Morris) engaged in philandering and infidelity with an ex-girlfriend (the recently-divorced brunette Janice (Mary Doran)). Janice embraced Ted in their kitchen on their own third wedding anniversary. Jerry was devastated and disillusioned when Ted downplayed the incident:

"There's no sense in overplaying it. There's nothing to it...It isn't the end of the world, darling...Please believe me, darling, it doesn't mean a thing, not a thing. It doesn't make the slightest difference. Come on, snap out of it."

On that same evening after he left for a week-long work engagement in Chicago, she matched Ted's unfaithfulness with her own sexually-adventurous, one-night stand tryst with their consoling, wealthy best friend Don (Robert Montgomery) after an evening of partying (the sex scene was off-screen, signaled by the closing of curtains to darken the bedroom). When her husband returned and repented, she wasn't ready to let the incident be covered up and forgotten so quickly:

"You're like a little boy that's stolen some jam, been spanked and kissed and happy again."

When she admitted her own affair (with an unknown male) to her astonished husband to match the score: "I balanced our accounts, that's all...I didn't really intend to, but that's how it is," he wasn't as quick to understand ("It can't be true. Why, I always thought you were the most decent thing in the world. It can't be true").

She begged him to forgive and try again ("I'll forgive you anything, dear. Can't you please forgive me?"), but Ted stubbornly packed up and explained how his vanity and honor were ruined. Then she fatefully vowed to him as she lost her temper that she would become a sexually wanton 'bad girl':

"I'm glad I discovered there's more than one man in the world while I'm young and they want me. Believe me, I'm not missing anything from now on...Loose women are great, but not in the home, eh, Ted?...The looser they are, the more they get. The best in the world! No responsibility! Well, my dear, I'm gonna find out how they do it. So look for me in the future where the primroses grow, and pack your man's pride with the rest. From now on, you're the only man in the world that my door is closed to."

After their divorce, she experienced a series of sexual escapades (shown in a montage of close-ups of men's hands, rings, and off-screen dialogue), and two weeks on a yacht in the summer with married former beau Paul (Conrad Nagel). He was estranged from his wife Dorothy (Helen Johnson) (who had a disfigured face from a car accident). Jerry decided not to join Paul as his new wife to live in Japan - when Dorothy made a plea to have her husband back.

In a conventional happy ending after Jerry was job-transferred to London, she selflessly returned and was reconciled to her husband where he was working in Paris. They decided to take a second chance on marriage at midnight, during a New Year's Eve celebration at a nightclub:

Jerry: "You're the only husband I ever had - and ever want. A new year in a minute, Ted. All the world gets a new chance."
Ted: "I'd give my right arm another chance."
Jerry: "I like that right arm. How about putting it around me?"

They clinched as the film ended.

 

Hell's Angels (1930)

In Howard Hughes' WWI film Hell's Angels (1930) - (reportedly the most expensive film ever made at the time of its release), 18-year old platinum blonde Jean Harlow shocked audiences. Harlow became screendom's first official 'bombshell' -- meaning hot and explosive.

She starred as sexy floozy Helen - with generous glimpses of flesh available through her slinky dresses. She encouragingly and enticingly asked her fiancee Roy's (James Hall) brother Monte Rutledge (Ben Lyon) to take her home during a dance, while Roy was occupied with committee matters: "Tired. Take me home, Monte...It's not far. I've taken a flat in town near canteen headquarters"; once they arrived by car out in front of her apartment, she asked: "Are we here?..Wanna come up for a cigarette and a drink?...Come see my room. I've only had a place of my own for a week. It's a new toy."

She delivered a famous line of dialogue to the awaiting uniformed soldier in her apartment after serving him a drink, and chugging down her own drink:

Helen: "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?"
Monte: "I'll try to survive."

She seductively entered her bedroom letting her wrap fall to reveal her backless dress, and a side view of her remarkable figure before disappearing.

A few moments later, she returned wearing a white-trimmed dark robe - provocatively open to her waist and bare underneath. After some small talk, she explained her philosophy of life and her desire not to be tied down with marriage and family:

"Roy's love means marriage and children and never anyone but Roy. I want to be free. I want to be gay and have fun. Life's short and I want to live while I'm alive."

She enticingly reclined back, almost inviting him to kiss her. When he balked and began to excuse himself to leave, she stretched out her arms and he pulled her up into his arms. They were frozen, inches away from each other's lips - and then they kissed. She surrendered herself to him and they lowered themselves back to the couch and embraced further - as the scene faded to black.

 

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Howard Hawks' famous screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938) was purported by many commentators to contain the moment in the film when the meaning of the word 'gay' changed.

Fluffy, boa-collared, negligee-wearing David Huxley (Cary Grant) gave an uncensored, emasculated exclamation while jumping up in front of Aunt Elizabeth (May Robson), a relative of Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn):

"Because I just went gay all of a sudden."

 

Child Bride (1938) (aka Child Bride of the Ozarks)

The film's exploitational taglines: "A throbbing drama of shackled youth!" and "Where Lust was called Just!" hinted at its 'educational' plot contents designed to circumvent the Production Code restrictions.

This independent film was 'road-showed' by legendary roadshowman Kroger Babb, although it was banned in many locations due to its infamous underage nudity.

The film supposedly had a positive purpose - to warn against underage marriage: "...if our story will help to abolish Child Marriage - it will have served its purpose." It told about the door-to-door moral crusade of schoolteacher Miss Carol (Diana Durrell) to rid the Ozark rural community of Thunderhead Mountain of hillbillies (especially Warner Richmond as Jake Bolby) who courted and married underage girls.

The film's most notorious and gratuitous sequence was at the 30 minute mark -- a 4 minute undressing and nude skinny-dip in a pond surrounded with woods by Jennie Colton (nubile young 12 year-old actress Shirley Mills (not Miles) in her screen debut), accompanied by young friend Freddie Nulty (Bob Bollinger in his sole film role). As she disrobed, she told him not to undress but to stay onshore, and they discussed how their physical differences were beginning to show:

Freddie: "I'll beat you undressed, Jennie."
Jennie: "Freddie, you ain't goin' swimmin' with me no more. So don't you take your clothes off."
Freddie: "Aw, you're teasin'."
Jennie: "No, I'm not. I mean it."
Freddie: "We've always gone in swimmin' together. Why not now?"
Jennie: "Teacher says not to."
Freddie: "Why?"
Jennie: "Well because, because we're not what we used to be."
Freddie: "You mean, we're different. How?"
Jennie: "Naw. We're the same, only you can't see me without my clothes on."
Freddie: "How come? I know how you look without your clothes on. I've seen ya lots of times, haven't I?"
Jennie: "Yes, I know, but now we're grown up and barin'. Teacher says that I shouldn't put bad ideas into your head."
Freddie: "Aw shucks. Now I can't kiss ya no more."
Jennie: "Of course you can, silly. Only with my clothes on."
Freddie: "All right, but I wish that teacher would mind her own business."
Jennie: "Now don't beg."

At the end of her long and playful swim, she was leered at by Jake from a nearby ridge, and an old women startled the voyeuristic Jake by asking: "Pretty, ain't she?" When Freddie noticed, he alerted Jennie and she swam for cover.

 

the million dollar question that has never been answered.

In the scene (briefly shown at 11:38 on this video), were Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie doing it for real.

During the press screenings, everyone was asking the same question, rather than concentrating on the film. But was it all deliberate on the part of the production company. The old saying "Their is no such thing as bad publicity", was certainly true in this case.

 

Now the voice of Donald Sutherland still sends shivers down my spine. SO SEXY!

 

Whatever happened to I dream of Jeannie, Gilligan's Island etc