"Babyface" (1933) Censored vs. uncensored

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Gentree
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"Babyface" (1933) Censored vs. uncensored

Post by Gentree »

Barbara Stanwyck’s character, Lily, has just witnessed her abusive pimp/father blown to pieces after his illegal home-brewery explodes. She’s talking to the one customer of her father’s now seized speak-easy that she can stand, Mr. Cragg, an irascible Russian immigrant who a scene earlier had berated her for not reading the book he had borrowed her. In the prerelease version, before the censors touched the film, they name that book – it is “Will to Power,” by Nietzsche, “the greatest philosopher of all time!” according to Cragg.

L: “So, now what?”

C: “Well, the future looks very bright....the manager of the Star and Garter Burlesque House offered me a job in the chorus to do a strip act.”

“A strip act?”

“Yeah,” Lily says nonchalantly, “Show my shape.”

“Well, that’s a business in itself....What’s to become of you? It’s up to you to decide. If you stay in this town, you are lost.”

“Where would I go? Paris? I got four bucks.”

“That’s what makes me mad with you. You’re a coward. I mean it. You let life defeat you. You don’t fight back.”

“What chance has a woman got?”

“More chance than men. A woman, young, beautiful like you can get anything she wants in the world, but there is a right and a wrong way. Remember the price of the wrong way is too great. Go to some big city where you will find opportunities. Don’t let people mislead you. You must be a master, not a slave. Be clean, be strong, defiant and you will be a success.”

Here is the dialogue in the prerelease version of the film:

“More chance than men. A woman, young, beautiful like you can get anything she wants in the world because you have power over men. But you must use men, not let them use you. You must be a master not a slave. Look. Here. Nietzsche says: ‘All life, no matter how we idealize it is nothing more, nor less, than exploitation.’ That’s what I’m telling you. Exploit yourself. Go to some big city where you will find opportunities. Use men. Be strong! Defiant! Use men to get the things you want!”

One scene later, the theatrical version chops off the end of the train to New York scene where Lily is forced to use her body lest the rail-worker throw them off. In the original, we see the rail-man realize what Lily is offering when she invites him to sit and talk about it. They walk to the dark corner of the rail car and the camera focuses in on a close shot of his worker gloves falling to the ground, and his naked hand turning off the kerosene lamp. The theatrical version is an utterly useless scene in its cut version; Lily and her maid hop the rail and sit down contentedly…fade out.

When Lily makes it to the city, she finds her way to the Personnel Dept. on 47th street where she flirts her way through a hefty young Mr. Pratt from Tallapoosa, Georgia, to get an interview with the boss: “I know some Pratts where I come from,” she says. “Where was that?” he asks. “Oh, maybe I’ll tell you someday when I know you better.” She then slinks to the boss’ office, inviting the befuddled, but interested, Mr. Pratt to “talk it over” inside the office till the boss gets back. In the theatrical version, Pratt stands up and watches her walk to the door, in the prerelease version he enters the room with her, looking over his shoulder and closing the door.

It’s these tiny censor cuts that take away from the realness of these scenes; the lengths that Lily is really willing to go “to get the things [she] want.” Sure, her actions are still relatively implied, but the truncated theatrical scenes feel truly anticlimactic. When her new boss Brody makes a pass at her and follows her into the ladies restroom, his boss, Mr. Stevens finds him out, but when Brody walks out of the restroom in the theatrical version his hair is still slick, his suit, wrinkleless. In the prerelease version he is combing his hair down, smoothing his suit. Strangely, the censors cut out a small line of dialogue when the big boss confronts Lily and she makes the excuse that “He followed me in there.”

When Brody is caught, he is told by his fiancé’s father, Mr. Carter to get rid of the girl, but of course, once Mr. Carter meets Lily, he falls for her and she becomes his “kept” woman. The scene that introduces this is cut completely from the theatrical version. In the prerelease version, Mr. Carter arrives at Lily’s house to discuss the incident with Mr. Brody and his daughter. He enters her room and it is dark outside. He is then seen leaving the room when it is now light. Fairly tame, you would think? But the censors didn’t think so.

One day, lounging in her fur coat at her new swanky digs, Lily gets a book and a letter from old Mr. Cragg. In the theatrical version, the book is, if you look closely, “Stanley’s Christian Institutions.” In the prerelease version, the book is Nietzsche’s “Thoughts Out of Season.” The theatrical version has Cragg writing her an angry letter, berating her for “[choosing] the wrong path. You are still a coward. Life will defeat you unless you fight back and regain your self respect. I send you this book, hoping that you will allow it to guide you right.” In the prerelease version, he has highlighted a passage for her: “Face life as you find it–defiantly and unafraid. Waste no energy yearning for the moon. Crush out all sentiment.” What I fail to understand about the early Code censors is why they did not allow audiences to read those lines and judge for themselves what they mean – for Lily, for their own lives. Is she distorting Nietzsche’s teachings? Is it emotionally healthy to “crush out all sentiment”? These are powerful and thought-provoking ideas that censors frequently disallowed viewers from engaging with. And on a similar note, proving again that the censors (today and yesteryear) will always chop sexual innuendo but leave in the grisly violence, the film’s following murder/suicide scene where Brody discovers that Mr. Stevens is keeping Lily, is kept perfectly intact.

Now, with her two recent lovers gone, the bank where Lily works brings in Mr. Courtland a young, handsome playboy as their new CEO. He immediately figures out Lily’s game, and instead of letting her sell her sordid story to the papers, tricks her into not selling the story, but transferring her to their Paris branch. Upon visiting Paris, Courtland finds that Lily has done the exact opposite he expected: she is working hard at the bank, not having the “gayer” time Courtland expected. He falls for her and weds her. The already struggling bank then indicts Courtland on charges that are never revealed. He needs money to fight the case, and asks Lily to stick by him, to sell all the jewels, bonds and securities he has given her.

In possibly one of Stanwyk’s best scenes, and easily the best scene of the film, Courtland asks Lily, “You have everything here, don’t you?” To which she is nearly speechless, only able to stammer “I...I can’t do it....I have to think of myself.” And then the clincher: “I’ve gone through a lot to get those things.” It’s this moment where all the theatrical cuts are now felt most deeply. In the censored version, one doesn’t fully grasp both the emotional and physical things she has been through. “All the gentleness and kindness in me has been killed,” Lily says. “No, I won’t give them up.” Courtland stands dumbfounded and heartbroken as Lily starts packing to leave.

Part of me thinks that the prerelease version should have ended at this moment, with Lily reaching her apex of greed and self-centeredness; leaving the one man who truly loves and understands her for her material possessions. With the Nietzsche scenes intact, the censors should have felt safe that the audience would see that Cragg’s “dangerous” Communist leanings and individualistic attitude led to her moral downfall (maybe not inherently, but because of her distortion of them). But the biggest fault of the early Hollywood censors is that they did not trust their audience to make the right conclusions, but shoved their own down their throat. That is why the theatrical version removes all references to Nietzsche and gives us the pat, changed-her-ways ending. The theatrical version goes a step farther, adding a scene after Courtland’s attempted suicide and Lily’s rescue of him. The bank’s board of trustees is sitting around the table when they receive a check from Mr. and Mrs. Courtland Trenholm to save the bank. We find out that the Trenholm’s have sold everything and they are now blue-collar laborers in a steel mill in Pittsburg. “They are working out their happiness together,” the man says to close the film. Anyone familiar with early Hollywood Code knows that they did this sort of thing all the time, lest the audience believe that “crime paid.” Again, they did not trust their audience to fill in the blanks – to assume that the now changed Lily and that Courtland, recovering from a suicide attempt would stay changed.
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Dewey1960
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Post by Dewey1960 »

Great post, Gentree, on one of my favorite pre-code films; highly illuminating! And oh, by the way, welcome to the boards!
feaito

Post by feaito »

Very interesting post Gentree. I'm a fan of this film and when I bought the Forbidden Hollywood Collection, I realised that the cuts and changes (especially those concerning the advice Cragg gave to Lily) that this film underwent for its theatrical release made a lot of difference. The Pre-release version is a different film altogether.
Gentree
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Joined: December 17th, 2007, 11:05 pm
Location: Minneapolis
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Post by Gentree »

Thanks for the kind words. Love the forum. Not sure if this was the right area to post this. I have a bunch of high quailty vidcaps from the movie on my blog (see sig below) if you're interested.
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