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4.30.03 - 6.5.03
SIN UNCENSORED: HOLLYWOOD BEFORE THE CODE Religious leaders and industry watchdogs, concerned with the potential of moving pictures to influence and corrupt moviegoers, have sought to regulate American production companies since their beginnings. In response to this pressure, in 1930 the Hollywood studios established the Motion Picture Production Code to regulate and censor offensive material, especially sexually suggestive content.
For the next few years, though, the Code was largely ignored, and erotically charged and morally ambiguous subject matter became almost commonplace. At the height of the Great Depression, profit-hungry studios produced startlingly frank depictions of infidelity, prostitution, drug use, crime, sexual perversion and miscegenation. But by July 1934, the party was over: after four years of films which appeared to celebrate promiscuity and vice, the arbiters of morality had had enough, the Production Code was revised and expanded, and the crackdown began.
The period from 1930 to 1934 produced some remarkable pictures, especially daring in their depictions of complex and sexually uninhibited women. We've compiled a sampling of some of the most notorious and risqué works of the period. Among these racy rarities are several nitrate prints from our own collection that haven't been screened in decades; none of the films in this series is available on commercial video or DVD. From the playfully salacious (SEARCH FOR BEAUTY) to the down and dirty (KONGO, BLOOD MONEY), this program offers the opportunity to experience a fascinating and all-too brief period in Hollywood history.
Special thanks to: Mark Vieira—The Starlight Studio; Caroline Yeager—George Eastman House; Bob O'Neil, Paul Ginsburg—Universal; Rusty Casselton. Saturday May 17 2003, 7:30PM
THE CHEAT
(1931) Directed by George Abbott The inimitable Tallulah Bankhead stars in this delirious and rarely screened remake of the De Mille classic. Bankhead plays a thrill-seeking housewife who gambles away $10K (at the height of the Depression), pinching it from her local charity only to lose it in a shaky market deal, leaving her desperate and open to the lascivious charms of local art collector Irving Pichel. The Pichel character, smoky with Oriental fetishes, gives her the dough but expects a pound of flesh in return. Unforgettable is the branding incident and the ensuing courtroom scene as she exposes her shame to all in order to save her man from the chair. Paramount. Based on the story by Hector Turnbull. Screenwriter: Harry Hervey. Cinematographer: George Folsey. Editor: Emma Hill. Cast: Tallulah Bankhead, Irving Pichel, Harvey Stephens, Jay Fassett. 35mm Nitrate, 70 min. FAITHLESS
(1932) Directed by Harry Beaumont What begins as a comedy grows into a gritty realist drama that suggests that the only unforgivable sin during the Great Depression was the profligacy of wealth. At first, pampered heiress Carol Morgan (Bankhead) comes in for gentle satire when she refuses to live on her fiancé's salary—$20,000 a year in 1933! When her own finances fail, however, Morgan begins a humiliating descent through the social strata that ends on the streets. Through it all, the film never shrinks from a stark but ultimately sympathetic depiction of what women must sometimes do to survive. Sunday May 18 2003, 7:00PM
KONGO
(1932) Directed by William Cowen One of the most shocking and lurid films of the pre-Code era, this underrated gem stars Walter Huston as "Deadlegs" Flint, a ruthless trader who seeks revenge on the man who crippled him by tormenting his daughter, taking her from a convent to a brothel. By turns tragic and hilarious, Conrad Nagel is the doped-up doctor who staggers in from the jungle, and Lupe Velez is Tula, Flint's Portuguese mistress and the local tramp. Flint rules over this gallery of grotesques with sex, drugs, and alcohol—not to mention leeches! It's as if Tod Browning's most frightening vision was transplanted from the carnival to the Congo. Not for the fainthearted. MGM. Based on the play by Chester De Vonde, Kilbourn Gordon. Screenwriter: Leon Gordon. Cinematographer: Harold Rosson. Editor: Conrad A. Nervig. Cast: Walter Houston, Lupe Velez, Conrad Nagel, Virginia Bruce, C. Henry Gordon. 35mm, 86 min. WHITE WOMAN
(1933) Directed by Stuart Walker No actor has ever oozed evil quite like Charles Laughton sweating it out in the tropics (ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY), and this steamy jungle potboiler turns the heat way up. As ruthless Caribbean plantation owner Horace Prin, Laughton cracks the whip over natives and guilt-wracked expatriates alike. The dark, surrounding wilds seethe with revenge, but Prin's empire of fear doesn't begin to crumble until the arrival of his wife (Carole Lombard). A melancholic torch singer, she ministers to the longing and psychic wounds of the plantation's overseer (Kent Taylor), which only fans the sadism of the spurned Prin. Paramount. Based on the play "Hangman's Whip" by Norman Reilly Raine, Frank Butler. Producer: E. Lloyd Sheldon. Screenwriter: Samuel Hoffenstein, Gladys Lehman. Cinematographer: Harry Fischbeck. Editor: Jane Loring. Cast: Charles Laughton, Carole Lombard, Charles Bickford, Kent Taylor. 35mm, 73 min. Tuesday May 20 2003, 7:30PM
HOOPLA
(1933) Directed by Frank Lloyd Clara Bow's final film has all the makings of a punishing tragedy, with Bow coming as close as she ever would to baring it all playing an exotic carnival dancer who casts a spell over a clean-cut law student. In a twist, however, it's Lou's tarnished heart of gold and not her sparse, ultra-sheer costumes that lures the naïve Chris (Richard Cromwell) from his studies. That's what his disapproving father (Preston Foster), the carnival's manager, can't understand—despite Bow's captivating performance as a woman redeemed through love. Preceded by BOOP-OOP-A-DOOP
(1932) Directed by Dave Fleischer Betty Boop fights to save her Boop-Oop-a-Doop from a lascivious circus ringmaster. EXCERPT FROM PARAMOUNT ON PARADE
(1930) Clara Bow, surrounded by a crew of sailors, sings "I'm True to the Navy." CALL HER SAVAGE
(1932) Directed by John Francis Dillon Clara Bow storms the '30s with this scorching cautionary tale about a Texas debutante gone bad. Adultery and miscegenation, primary taboos of the Hays Code, are mere springboards for Nasa "Dynamite" Springer's whirlwind life of spirited rebellion and debauchery. CALL HER SAVAGE features a fascinating Hollywood recreation of a Greenwich Village cabaret where drag queens perform for bohemians and socialists and where a drunken Nasa, on a disastrous slumming expedition, sparks a riot. Fox Film Corp.. Based on the novel by Tiffany Thayer. Screenwriter: Edwin Burke. Cinematographer: Lee Garmes. Editor: Harold D. Schuster. Cast: Clara Bow, Monroe Owsley, Gilbert Roland, Thelma Todd, Estelle Taylor. 16mm, 87 min. Saturday May 24 2003, 7:30PM
THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE
(1933) Directed by Stephen Roberts Based on "Sanctuary," William Faulkner's most sensational novel, this gothic shocker prefigures the nightmarish underbelly of small town America explored by David Lynch. Though every man wants her—and one marriage-minded lawyer wants to save her—a secret sadness haunts the eyes of Temple Drake (Miriam Hopkins). A Southern belle and judge's granddaughter, she can't resist the darker compulsions of her nature. After a drunken misadventure leads her into a world of bootleggers, gangsters and white slavery, the film itself succumbs to a dream state from which it never fully re-emerges. Paramount. Based on the novel "Sanctuary" by William Faulkner. Producer: Emanuel Cohen. Screenwriter: Oliver H.P. Garrett. Cinematographer: Karl Struss. Cast: Miriam Hopkins, William Gargan, Jack La Rue, Florence Eldridge. 35mm Nitrate, 71 min. BLOOD MONEY
(1933) Directed by Rowland Brown This raunchy tale of the Los Angeles underbelly has it all—sexual masochists, cross-dressing lesbians, kleptomaniacs and corrupt politicians. George Bancroft plays Bailey, a powerful and crooked bail bondsman who falls for one of his clients, Elaine (Frances Dee), a nubile nymphomaniac from Brentwood who's suffering from "underworld mania" and just looking for a man to kick her around. When Bailey's hand isn't firm enough, she falls for a young bank robber, and the whole lot become embroiled in a citywide scandal. It's no wonder that in 1934 BLOOD MONEY was first on the list of films banned by the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency. Sunday May 25 2003, 2:00PM
THE MIND READER
(1933) Directed by Roy Del Ruth Manhattan's social elite and seedy carnival denizens compete for top honors in debauchery in this cynical melodrama about a traveling huckster (William) who operates a fortune telling scam. Whether in the sideshow or the penthouse, "Chandra the Great" exploits the jealousy and insecurity of his paying clients with cooked visions of impending doom and adultery that invariably lead to real-life scandal and tragedy. His strong-willed if trusting wife (Cummings) insists he quit, but "Chandra" persists until his ill-bred chickens come home to roost. Preceded by THEATRICAL TRAILER FOR THE SPIDER
Fox Film Corp.. 35mm, 3 min. THE SPIDER
(1931) Directed by William Cameron Menzies and Kenneth MacKenna Magic, mystery and murder take center stage in a vaudeville house on Broadway. The show is "Chatrand the Great," featuring a magician (Lowe) who spellbinds his audience with amazing feats. The most powerful part of Chatrand's act is the psychic demonstration he does with his blindfolded assistant Alexander, who ironically suffers from amnesia. When a murder takes place during the act and the smoking gun is found beside Alexander, Chatrand must solve the murder and the mystery of his assistant's identity. Brilliantly photographed by James Wong Howe, the action is perfectly illuminated between the darkness of the illusions and the haunting faces of the magicians. Fox Film Corp.. Based on the play by Fulton Oursler, Lowell Bretano. Screenwriter: Barry Connors, Philip Klein. Cinematographer: James Wong Howe. Editor: Al De Gaetano. Cast: Edmund Lowe, Lois Moran, Howard Phillips, El Brendel. 35mm, 65 min. Preserved by  Tuesday May 27 2003, 7:30PM
MIDNIGHT MARY
(1933) Directed by William Wellman Based on a story by Anita Loos, this hard luck saga of an innocent-urchin-turned-reluctant-moll opens on a note of cool defiance: on trial for the murder of her gangster sugar-daddy, Mary Martin (Loretta Young) meets the prosecutor's accusatory finger from behind the cover of Cosmopolitan. Such glittering contempt, like a Broadway marquee, lights every turn of Martin's journey from shantytown to penthouse, with few sacred institutions—marriage, the courts, high society—spared its penetrating glare. Director Wellman's deftly mobile camera puts a dizzy spin on this urban melodrama while the film's sympathies never leave its heroine's corner. SAFE IN HELL
(1931) Directed by William Wellman A tiny Caribbean island without extradition laws is the final stop for a New Orleans call girl on the run in this sweltering travelogue of the damned. Star Mackaill exudes a ferocious energy as the defiant Gilda, a wanted woman led to the island's notorious hotel by her well-meaning fiancé, a sailor who abandons her to the hungry attentions of her fellow fugitives, an international crew of salivating cowards and thugs. Director Wellman builds a thick atmosphere of desperation and sexual tension as he transforms swaying palm trees and golden sunsets into tragic reminders of a paradise lost. Saturday May 31 2003, 7:30PM
SEARCH FOR BEAUTY
(1934) Directed by Erle C. Kenton This risqué and riotous tale features the hunky Buster Crabbe and young ingenue Ida Lupino, making her American film debut. Crabbe and Lupino star as Olympic athletes duped by a pair of unscrupulous hustlers into fronting a fitness magazine—really a titillating skin rag—and a resort, "Health Acres." While the earnest pair has high hopes for the fitness camp, their patrons have other ideas. SEARCH FOR BEAUTY includes hilarious dialogue, salacious innuendo and a shocking locker room sequence featuring a bare-bottomed Crabbe. Also appearing are 30 winners of the "International Beauty Contest," a studio stunt that offered the winners a trip to Hollywood and a part in the film. Paramount. Based on the play "Love Your Body" by Schuyler E. Grey, Paul R. Milton. Producer: E. Lloyd Sheldon. Screenwriter: Frank Butler, Claude Binyon. Cinematographer: Harry Fischbeck. Editor: James Smith. Cast: Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Ida Lupino, Robert Armstrong, James Gleason, Gertrude Michael. 35mm Nitrate, 78 min. Preceded by HOLLYWOOD ON PARADE, NO. B-5
(1933) Buster Crabbe entertains the winners of Paramount's "International Beauty Contest" by taking them to several Hollywood hot spots: the opening of Mae West's I'M NO ANGEL at Grauman's Chinese Theater, Cecil B. De Mille's 20th anniversary fete and a Hollywood costume party where stars impersonate other stars. GIRL WITHOUT A ROOM
(1933) Directed by Ralph Murphy Baz Lurhman's MOULIN ROUGE has nothing on this sing-song romp through the amorous, scandalous Parisian avant-garde. When an amateur American painter (Charles Farrell) wins an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris, his sponsors expect him to learn about art. But the Tennessee wallflower (who uses his imagination to paint nudes) falls in with the boisterous bohemians of turn-of-the-century Montparnasse and gets schooled in matters of a more indelicate nature. In the film's romanticized grottoes of starving artists and très moderne nightclubs, anything goes as Paris' finest vamps and chiselers exploit the "banjo-eyed numbskull" for a good time. Paramount. Based on the story by Jack Lait. Screenwriter: Frank Butler, Claude Binyon. Cinematographer: Leo Tover. Editor: Richard Currier. Cast: Charles Farrell, Marguerite Churchill, Charlie Ruggles, Gregory Ratoff, Grace Bradley. 35mm Nitrate, 75 min. |