Now that I have your attention . . .
Racy 1930s pre-code features are on tap again tonight on Turner Classic Movies. Before the censors took the reins for Hollywood's "golden age," filmmakers tried getting adult in ways they wouldn't again approach until the 1960s (when they exceeded those ways immeasurably).
It's all explained in tonight's new TCM documentary "Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood" (Monday, March 3 at 9:30 p.m. and 2:30 a.m.), promising to examine "how the [era's] social, financial and moral forces all helped shape one of the most intriguing periods in Hollywood history." Anybody who's seen Barbara Stanwyck sleep her way to the top of the corporate food chain in 1933's "Baby Face" knows what that means. (You can watch her do it again this Saturday night, March 8 at 12:30 a.m.)
Tonight's lineup:
8 p.m. - "The Divorcee" (1930), with Norma Shearer in a "double standard" expose.
10:45 p.m. - "Night Nurse" (1931), Stanwyck again, with Clark Gable.
12 midnight - "Three on a Match" (1932), with Joan Blondell, Bette Davis and gangsters.
1:15 a.m. - "Female" (1933), Ruth Chatterton as a female CEO "who's used to buying love."
3:45 a.m. - "A Free Soul" (1931), with Lionel Barrymore, Shearer and Gable.
You shouldn't be surprised to learn that TCM's corporate-allied video arm (Warner) is releasing another set of pre-code DVDs tomorrow (March 4). "Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2" contains all five of tonight's vintage features.
Comments (1)
I was surprised at how racy a few of the earlier movies were. I guess I was used to watching the ones produced under the Code, and then some that pre-dated it and wow! They really contained some risque material.