Baby Face (1933) - Barbara Stanwyk Pre-Code

The clothes and sets - all the Deco is amazing!

Here's a good article about the film and Pre-Code in general.

Night Nurse is another really good pre-code Stanwyck film

Stanwyk's braless nip and hearty drinking!

R3 oh yeah, Night Nurse is great!

Zou Zoun (1934) has Josephine Baker topless. Another great pre-code film. In French though...not sure there is a subtitled version.

The period between the advent of sound and the establishment of the Hayes Code is my very favorite period in Hollywood. There was a frankness about sexuality then that the Code just destroyed.

TCM released a bunch of these on 10 DVDs as "pre-Code Hollywood," and they have some real gems in the bunch, including:

FEMALE (1933)- Ruth Chatterton as the head of an auto company who very openly keeps boy-toys working for her in her beautiful office suite. very funny and very sexy.

WATERLOO BRIDGE (1931) -- Directed by James Whale with Mae Clarke in the lead role, this is a much more sexually honest film than the later re-make with Vivien Leigh--and since it's directed by Whale, you know it's good.

THE DIVORCEE (1930) and A FREE SOUL (1931) -- Before she was MGM's biggest stockholder 9as Irving Thalberg's widow) and playing infuritatingly noble roles like in THE WOMEN, Shearer was one of the sexiest women on the MGM lot, and her specialty was playing naughty women in silk negligees (she had a great body!) who were giving in to sin. These are two of her most famous parts, and show that she was was once much more fun than she was as Mary Haines

LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT (1933)-- This was the film that actually made Barbara Stanwyck a gigantic star: she's a tough broad behind bars, and she gets to interact with Lillian Roth (one of the most fun but now forgotten stars from the period, even though Susan Hayward played her in I'LL CRY TOMORROW).

Was Mae West the big reason the code was put in place?

Stanwyck was no stranger to nudity...

Love this movie and its breathtaking cynicism. Stanwyk is great fun to watch.

I think there were several pre-Code movies that prompted Hollywood to adopt the Production Code. Mae West would certainly fit into that group, as well as "Baby Face", "Night Nurse", etc.

Mae was a tipping point, I think.

R9, weird that Jean Harlow was considered a sex symbol compared to THAT. Stanwyck had a great body and looked way better with dark hair

Harlow never wore underwear of any kind, not even on film. It's really obvious in this clip from Hell's Angels.

Can you imagine what movies would have been like by the 40s if the code had never come in? We'd have gotten to full-frontal nudity and all seven dirty words by the end of the war.

It makes you wonder if different actors would have become stars under a freer system like that.

R14, I doubt it. Even before the production code most states had local censorship boards. I seriously doubt you would have seen nudity in American films at the time, even on TV in the 50s they couldn't show married couples sleeping in the same bed

Add me to the Night Nurse fan club.

R13, she looks better in color than in black and white.

[Quote]The black friend, not simply maid, who is her companion?

OP, R2 The Black actress who starred with her was Theresa Harris, a beautiful and multi-talented performer whose film appearances often rose above the image of the stereotypical mammy that Hattie McDaniel usually had to play. It's refreshing that she was allowed those rare opportunities to shine, but sad that they were few and far between.

Nudies!

Theresa starred in another movie with Barbara, called Banjo On My Knee. Theresa sings St. Louis Blues in this one.

We might not have gotten nudity by the end of the first World War, but Hollywood without the code would have made much less of the treacly dreck put out by studios like MGM in the 30s and 40s.

R18, R 20 - What marvelous footage of Theresa Harris singing "St. Louis Blues". I have never seen "Banjo on My Knee" but will put it on my pre-code watch list. Theresa Harris was simply beautiful. Halle Berry who? And that outfit. Wow!!

OP here, I agree with all posters about how the Code stunted film development. It is likely we would have seen Goodfellas or Pulp Fiction in the 30's or 40's. I mean, nothing new under the Sun. The ideas were there, but strictured.

No, we wouldn't have seen Goodfellas in the 40s. People still were bitching and moaning about interracial couples on TV in the 60s.

R13 - re: Harlow's pert derriere shadows. I have seen this film in B&W but not the colorized version. Wondering if the "no panty lines" also showed in B&W, which may be why they didn't worry about it while filming?

The code also led to some strange endings, as evil always had to be punished. For instance, A Streetcar Named Desire had to have the ending changed from the original play (Stella leaves Stanley instead of staying with him) because Stanley couldn't be seen to get away with his assault on Blanche. But having Stella leave undermines the whole theme of the movie.

Hate to compare TV with film, in a world without The Code. TV simply would have had it's own code due to family access, whereas for film, access could be limited by admittance. But I agree R24 that the interracial relationship question would be something TV would never have breached until later. Does anyone know what was the first example of interracial relationship in old film? Could it be "Imitation of Life" (1934) - which would be pre-code, or the later version (1959)?

R25, the full film version at YouTube has a caption which states that this color sequence was part of the original film, butt shadows and all.

That was Howard Hughes for you--this is the man who designed a special bra for Jane Russell to wear in The Outlaw that maximized her cleavage. The film scandalized censors with a direct peek down her shirt in one sequence in the film. HH knew the appeal of T&A.

Here's the full film of Hell's Angels at YouTube. All black and white except for the ball scene.

BTW, I love "imitation of Life" (1934) and the intimation of the Aunt Jemima character, a very hot button and au courant topic these days!

Harlow did look better in color. It made the hair/skin contrast less harsh.

The color sequence in Hell's Angels was the only color sequence she ever did.

Love pre-code films if the copy's in decent shape--Shanghai Express, Red Dust (another Harlow), even stuff like the Golddiggers of 1933 have this sexual frankness about them that's refreshingly grown-up compared to post-code films. Bitter Tea of General Yen is early Stanwyck and features an uptight missionary falling for a Chinese Warlord--but warlord is played by a Scandinavian actor, but it's still an interesting film because of just open it is about Stanwyck's sexual attraction. She really was able to just put it out there that makes her come off as very modern in those early films.

And, also, there's Ecstasy--the German film that started Hedy Lamarr's career--orgasm and full frontal nudity (swimming). Hollywood took notice, recruited Lamarr, but did their best to bury the film.

R32 Orgasm, really?? I will youtube!!

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the pre-code era is very sexual as well. Also, Tarzan.

R33, Oh, it's just her face. She said someone on the crew stuck her with pins to get the O-face.

R 35, well that's a coitus interruptus, isn't it? LOL

[quote]'m a dipsomaniac and I like it! D'ya hear me, I LIKE it!

You...MOTHER!

[quote]'m a dipsomaniac and I like it! D'ya hear me, I LIKE it!

You...MOTHER!

Do you have any experience?

Plenty!

First and only time I've heard the name Peola, r30.

Peola is a very unusual name. First time I saw the film I thought they were saying Biola, which is also weird and rare.

Watching this now. It's delightfully cynical, given that it's almost 100 years old.

Barbara Stanwyck was an unrepentant SLUT!

[quote]R7 Shearer was one of the sexiest women on the MGM lot

Thank you for pointing that out. What I find crazy about Miss Shearer’s career is that she felt the need to abandon her birth name (Gollum). She’d already achieved some fame through [italic]The Lord of the Rings,[/italic] and it suited her.

Still, the front office insisted.

I happen to like Norma Shearer. Not supremely beautiful, but passable esp. in 1930's as the hard-done-by wife, which she often played. I do like that when she retired, she stayed gone and seemed to enjoy the rest of her life away from the spotlight!

Plus, her wonky eye makes her instantly recognizable at a glance. And The Women (1939) is such a great movie!!

I know he was old, but her Nietzsche-quoting confidant had a phat ass.

[quote]R45 her wonky eye makes her instantly recognizable at a glance.

It sure does!

I will say she had a lovely profile - though the whole reason they resorted to showcasing that so much is because they couldn’t get her damn eyes to focus!

It’s almost like she became a star through some affirmative action program for the handicapped.

Sign of the Cross is wild--Colbert naked in ass's milk (not that kind), plus rapes and tortures abound. I'd heard about it from mum, but when I saw it was genuinely astonished at the antics you could put on the screen in 1932.

R49 really??! Wow. I have never seen Sign of the Cross! Will have to youtube! I believe most of these movies are public domain now, which is awesome!

I was going to say that was the movie Loretta Young who’d her pregnancy in... but that was actually “The Crusades” (1935)

[bold]HID[/bold] her pregnancy in... not “who’d”

Goddammit!!

(Illegitimate) Baby On Board!

One occasionally sees male rear nudity in silent films about WWl- showers, physical exams.. but rarely does one see naked women until the pre-code era for some reason when you start seeing nipples at least in silhouette. The family musical Flying Down to Rio the first film to feature Fred and Ginger managed to get a C rating from the Catholic church as in Condemned 'suitable for no one' due to I assume the breasts on display in shear blouses. But no one paid any mind and the film was a big hit.

Flying Down to Rio is a great film! I watch it every time I can on TCM. It's interesting that pretty much the first thing people did with "motion pictures" was film bawdy stuff, perhaps earlier than studio produced, but they knew what would sell. LOL. A lot of times they used the pretense of "natives" or "foreign" to allow the nudity.

Here is a compilation of really early (1915-28) pre-code nudes in silent film from youtube! Enjoy!

I watched it last night, r55. Something I hadn't noticed before. When the girl falls off the plane, there's an immediate shot of the crowd going "Ooooh!" Then she lands face down on the wing of the plane below her and the man goes to her. Then you get a shot of the crowd all going "Whew! Yay, she's rescued....whatever". But was she? I don't think she even lifted her head after she landed face first.