I don’t know why, but I’ve always wondered what the first nude scene was in a major feature film(after the 1940’s when the code went into effect).
Also, what’s the first movie with the f-word in it? What’s the line?
Hedy Lamarr did a full-frontal nude scene sometime back in the 1930’s, as I recall. She also had a brain, and invented some electronic stuff that helped win WWII.
Do you only mean American films? “And God Created Woman” had Bardot’s nude scene…but a lot of French films had nudity before American films would show a single bed in a honeymoon suite.
If I am not mistaken, Raquel Welch was the first to use the “F word” in a more or less mainstream movie.
I know Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor had some nudity in it. The dancing girls in the sequence when she entered Rome, for one. There was also a shot of Cleo (Liz) on her stomach about to get a rub-down. I’m not sure when fuck was first uttered.
Guinness published a book called The Guinness Book of Movie Records that listed movie firsts, but it’s been a long time since I read it. It may be at the library, but I won’t be able to get it till tomorrow.
Extase is not the first film to have nudity; have you ever seen B&W silent porn? People were making sex films within just a few years after the motion-picture camera was invented. It’s available on VHS.
What Hedy Lamarr (along with George Anthiell) invented was a method for communication to torpedoes, by sending the signal over constantly changing frequencies, with the reciever and transmitter coordinated to change frequencies automatically. This technology (known as spread spectrum) never actually made into use for its intended purpose. It was later used, after the patent had expired, as the basis for secure cell phone communication.
I saw a program on AMC yesterday about the very first women directors in Hollywood. One of the female directors, Lois Weber directed a controversial film in 1914 called Hypocrties. The reason it was controversial was that it was the first movie discussed the topics of corruption in politics and it featured the very first nude scenes, a naked woman walking around the background representing “the naked truth” around the people that have lied. It was so shocking, a filmhouse in Boston asked to have all the frames of the film with the nudity painted over with clothes.
Damn you, Louie, I was about to jump in with “Hypocrites!” I saw that film on AMC last year, and it is actually a VERY boring religious screed, even with that woman walking around starkers.
As for the F-word, I’m afraid I have no idea . . .
The silent film “Orphans of the Storm” has some brief nudity.
“Metropolis” also has some.
Depending on your definition of “film,” Eadweard Muybridge, who was a pioneer of using motion in photography, did nude studies in the 1880s. (He is considered the first to project a motion picture.)
There’s a tie for first film to include the f-word–“I’ll Never Forget What’s 'Is Name” (with Oliver Reed), and “Ulysses”, both released in 1967. “Ulysses” came out in March, “What’s…” in December.
For the nude scene, that’s a bit trickier. There were plenty of nudie films in the silent era, of the “What the Butler Saw” type. As noted above, “Esctasy” did have a nude Hedy Lamarr (hubba, hubba!) in it. “Daughters of hte Gods” (1914), also contains a watery nude scene, this time under a waterfall. “Roman Scandals” (1933) has a scene with nude chorus girls (including Lucille Ball!) in the background. In 1941, the Italians released “La Cena delle Beffe”, which contained a brief nude scene, but obviously the Italians were not bound by the Hayes Code.
“The silent film ‘Orphans of the Storm’ has some brief nudity.”
—Are you sure? Where? I just can’t picture the Gish girls doing fan dances . . .
Not sure what was the first film to use “fuck,” but I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut is the first to use “Uncle Fucker.” 
Yup. And Marianne Faithfull was the first person to utter it.
I was 19 when I saw it. Of course I’m sure. 
It wasn’t the Gishes, though. It was a bunch of spoiled aristocrats going skinny dipping, a commentary of the decadance of the ruling class at the time.
- There were nude, or at least topless, flower girls clearly visible in the Babylon procession scene in “Intolerance” by D.W. Griffith. That’s, what, 1916?
[slight hijack]
2) I always wondered how Muybridge got his subjects, who in my understanding were college students at U.Penn., to pose nude for his motion studies back in the 1880s. “Let me get this straight: you’re making pictures of how people throw things, or walk up stairs, or run, or box, right?! And the subjects need to be naked for these photos? You need me to be nude so you can know how a woman carries a pitcher of water across the room?!?!” That would be a hard sell in 2001, never mind 1885.
John Bredin, that’s disingenuous. Painters and sculptors had been hiring nude models for many centuries before photography came along. It was not a big stretch to hire nude models for photography, in any era (except maybe the 1950s). Maybe you’re still living in the 50s.
For your edification, a previous discussion of the f-word question can be found here.
I’m quoting the OP in full to remind everyone that the question is about movies made after the Hays Code was instituted. (It was the explicit nature of 1960s movies that led the MPAA to create, in 1968, the ratings system we have now.) He didn’t ask what happened in The Silent Era.
BTW: “The Hays Production Code,” as it was called, was instituted in 1930.
This page says the Code was created in 1934. I believe this is correct because King Kong (1933) was re-edited upon re-release in the 1940s to fit the Code. (They snipped out some violence and the scene where Kong undresses Fay Wray. These scenes were restored in the 80’s and are now in all home video versions.)
<sigh>
This whole thread and nobody has touched this one.
[Harvey Korman]
It’s Hedley!
[/Harvey Korman]