The Silver Screen Oasis

I've been watching some pre-codes and it's interesting to see that even in the most mundane films, the women, often for no apparent reason, like to undress.

Fooling around in iMovie, I put together a couple of clips:

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Those were great! I just love how you cut together all those famous bath scenes! And is it my imagination, or did Babs, Joanie, and maybe Jeannette make the most lingerie drops?

I think I saw Miriam Hopkins leg.....

Who was the blonde in the second vid right after a dark haired Joanie Blondell in the tub? The one with extremely blonde curly hair and a flippant attitude about the 4 minute mark? I have a guess of Dorothy MacKaill, but I am usually wrong.

MichJ, you are good at this!! I hope you'll do more in the future.

And then...there's the entire movie of Search for Beauty (1934) which features little else but acres of male and female flesh on parade.

Released only five months before The Production Code got teeth, the movie is about con artists promoting a "health magazine" and later a "health spa" with hopeful and shapely youngsters of both sexes from all over America gathered there to train/fleece the rich clients. To be honest, it gets pretty monotonous after awhile, though I kept watching strictly for research purposes. Ida Lupino, at the indictable age of 15 is the leading lady (she's almost unrecognizable as a bleached blonde with almost no eyebrows--though she may be one of the few females with a brain in the movie). Buster Crabbe radiates health and imbecilic innocence as he displays his Olympic-trained form for all to ponder (I actually like Buster in some roles, but this flick was just too creepy for me). Robert Armstrong, Jimmy Gleason, Toby Wing and Gertrude Michael portray some of the con artists with varying degrees of sleaziness. All of them except for Ms. Wing keep their clothes on. Look quick and you can see a badly marcelled Ann Sheridan in the Texas contingent of this movie.

Great work MJ. Really great. I kept expecting to see Thelma Todd. Have you seen the Buster Keaton talkie Speak Easily? She can't keep her clothes on in that one.

Did I miss Helen Mirren?

Nicely done, Mr. Frog.

intothenitrate wrote:Great work MJ. Really great. I kept expecting to see Thelma Todd. Have you seen the Buster Keaton talkie Speak Easily? She can't keep her clothes on in that one.

That's for sure!

This project started when I finally recorded the Barthelmess film Central Airport from the DVR. I was very conscious of the sequence where he and his girl have a conversation through a closed door. On one side, Barthelmess is fully dressed, while on the other, Sally Eilers just happens to be changing her clothes. As a pre-code, Central Airport is pretty innocuous, and I started to see that many, otherwise tame pre-codes, still featured the ladies in various stages of (un)dress.

JackFavell wrote:And is it my imagination, or did Babs, Joanie, and maybe Jeannette make the most lingerie drops?

Going through just a few of the pre-codes, it wasn't long before I had way too much "material" (which was why I divided them into two videos). Jeannette, Babs and Blondell were easily the chilliest stars, at least in the few films I pulled from.

JackFavell wrote:I think I saw Miriam Hopkins leg.....

You did, indeed. In fact you saw more than one.

moirafinnie wrote:MichJ, you are good at this!! I hope you'll do more in the future.

Thank you. It was really fun editing and trying to make scenes work with the music. (Apologies for editing the song Swing, Swing, Swing itself, but I figured over eight-and-a-half minutes of nearly nekid ladies might be too much. Wait, what am I saying?!)

intothenitrate wrote:I kept expecting to see Thelma Todd. Have you seen the Buster Keaton talkie Speak Easily? She can't keep her clothes on in that one.

Which is one of the reasons to watch the film! (It just came out on Warner Archives.) There are plenty of Todd shorts, too, in which she's, well….

ChiO wrote:Did I miss Helen Mirren?

Hmm, a Helen Mirren video compilation could be very…interesting.

Oh Bob!!! Here's a thread up your alley...

Thank you, Theresa, for alerting me to this. You know what I really like about movies!

And thank you, MichiganJ for doing such a great job selecting and editing. I'm not sure how much these young women or their characters "like to undress", but this dirty old man is delighted that they did. Nudity and deshabille on the screen today, and there's plenty of it, almost always lacks the charm and grace of these adorable young women many years before I was born.

Lingerie in the twenties and thirties was so hot! What happened in the forties and fifties? I guess we're lucky that the Code prevented us from seeing much of those underthings that looked like suits of armour rather than suits of amour!

Moira, I agree with you about Search for Beauty. It's one of the many films to be reissued in the past few years that are of precious little interest besides their being pre-Code. Like Film Noir, Pre-Code has become a marketing term applied to more and more movies that are less and less worthwhile. Let's not forget that there were some great films made during that era, for example, Morocco, Design for Living, and A Farewell to Arms.

Robert Regan wrote:Thank you, Theresa, for alerting me to this. You know what I really like about movies!

Well...that's what friends are for.

What happened in the forties and fifties? I guess we're lucky that the Code prevented us from seeing much of those underthings that looked like suits of armour rather than suits of amour!

Cute play on words, Bob.

Michigan J., you did a fantastic job compiling these clips. I loved your music selection
( so important in doing these videos ) which provided such energy. I had fun trying to
guess the names of the actresses. Ha...I guess you were square if you didn't reveal
your lingerie. How long did it take you to do this? What's next on your plate?

Aaaaaah, the male gaze in action. Really great job M.J.

suit of amour hee hee

I really was just goofing around with these and am very happy that they are being received so well. Thank you, everyone.

CineMaven wrote:I loved your music selection
( so important in doing these videos ) which provided such energy. I had fun trying to
guess the names of the actresses. Ha...I guess you were square if you didn't reveal
your lingerie. How long did it take you to do this? What's next on your plate?

The music pretty much drove the whole process for me. I knew I wanted a jazz tune, and preferably something from the pre-code era. Henderson's Hotter Than 'ell seemed to fit the bill (the title works, too) so with that, I pretty much just grabbed my TCM DVD-folder and pulled out some pre-code DVDs and ripped the "naughty bits" from them. That was the hardest part. The program I have will pull very specific sequences, but the counter is in base 10, whereas the DVD player only reads time, which, of course is base 6. Easy math if you just remember to do it.

Finding and pulling the clips took the most time. (Each clip took between 10 and 15 minutes to rip). Once I had the clips and converted them so iMovie would accept them, editing was pretty quick. Originally I was only going to do one video, but it was too much fun, and I had so much material (and didn't even scratch the surface of films to pull from), that I broke them into two.

Not sure what I'll tackle next, but I'll keep you posted.

WOW You did a great job Kevin!! Loved the choice and yuxtaposition of clips. Clever montage. Great Jazz music. Loved every moment of it.

Kevin:

I'm late to the party but my compliments on the clips. You have a gift. (I especially laughed at the Keaton shot with the hand over the camera at the end.

Nice job.

Thanks. It was the only way I could think of to end the video.