# Flying Under the Radar of Censorship
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [July 23, 2004, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500 "2004-07-23T12:59:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2004, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/21 "2004-07-24T17:09:58Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> . . . **The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek** is ultimately about a sexual fling (although Trudy Kockenlocker did marry Ratzkywastki or something first) and the screenplay uses the name “Kockenlocker” much more than it should.
–AND it’s a pretty hilarious satire on the Virgin Birth to boot. Don’t know how this one passed.
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### Author:  [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2004, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/22 "2004-07-24T17:13:58Z")
There’ a fascinating sequence in Scorsese’s “A Personal Journey Through American Film” (or some such title) about exactly this title: Directors, like Sirk for example, who got their theme under the censors’ radar; he uses that term, in fact, IIRC. Well worth watching.
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### Author:  [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2004, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/23 "2004-07-24T22:39:45Z")
Is there any nudity in any approved talking Hollywood pictures after 1934? After 1947, prior to 1934?
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### Author:  [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2004, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/24 "2004-07-25T02:02:17Z")
_Anatomy of a Murder_ is quite explicit for something from 1959 a rape victim’s panties are referred too several times, as well as the presence of semen. But I don’t think it slipped past the radar as much as it signalled the beginning of the end of the Production Code.
In \*\* Sullivan’s Travells\*, I was rather surprised when Joel McRea and Veronica Lake slept in the same box car (they fall asleep side by side and wake up huddled in the cold). Considering that twin beds were used for married couples on the screen in those days, I bet that was seen as rather racy, though nothing like sex was implied…and after all Lake was dressed like a man…😉
And it was also funny in light of the producer who insisted that any film with socially relevant content must be balanced with “sex”.
Wasn’t Lauren Bacall’s line to Bogie about knowing how to whistler very risqué too?
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### Author:  [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2004, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/25 "2004-07-25T04:20:33Z")
[http://www.geocities.com/imokproductions/gilligansislandcast.jpg](http://www.geocities.com/imokproductions/gilligansislandcast.jpg)
Imagine Mr. and Mrs. Thurston Howell III 🆒
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### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2004, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/26 "2004-07-25T21:28:19Z")
> [@Ilsa\_Lund](#):
>
> Is there any nudity in any approved talking Hollywood pictures after 1934? After 1947, prior to 1934?
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I recall that the fantasy scenes in _Dante’s Inferno_ (1935) had a lot of near-naked sinners undergoing punishment in Hell. The Hayes Office may have been more lenient than usual because of the moral/religious nature of the scenes (i.e., the De Mille effect).
In the epic _Anthony Adverse_ (1936), Anthony at age ten is stripped of his clothes by a street gang until he is rescued by a priest, who wraps him in his cloak. (:dubious: No jokes, please.) Brief rear nudity which may have been a leotard.
Jane Wyatt’s double bathes nude in a far shot in _Lost Horizon_ (1937). Although the double really was nude, director Frank Capra had several crew members attest to the Hayes Office that she was wearing a pink leotard, and the scene passed. In the same movie, several of the native boys are seen skinny-dipping in a river.
Nudity made a full-scale return in the mid-1960s, with a bare-breasted prostitute in _The Pawnbroker_ (1964), and Adam and Eve in _The Bible_ (1965).
I don’t infer what importance the year 1947 has to the Production Code — please explain.
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### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2004, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/27 "2004-07-25T21:31:11Z")
Make that 1966 for _The Bible_.
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### Author:  [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2004, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/28 "2004-07-25T21:58:58Z")
[Tarzan and His Mate](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025862/trivia) (1934) included a nude swimming scene with Jane fully nude. Really. But the Hayes office made 'em cut the scenes to get that seal of approval. Bastids. A print with the full scene was discovered in Turner Entertainment’s vaults later, and the scene was restored. I’ve seen the restored version … big whoop by modern standards, but in those days it would have destroyed Western civillization to show it.
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### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2004, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/29 "2004-07-25T22:13:13Z")
From _The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures_:
> [@](#):
>
> According to censorship files contained in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library, an underwater swimming sequence in the picture caused much consternation with the Hays Office. On 10 Apr 1934, Joseph I. Breen, director of public relations of the MPPDA, reported to MPPDA President Will H. Hays that Tarzan and His Mate had been rejected because of shots in which “the girl was shown completely in the nude.” . . . After Breen verbally rejected the film because of the sequence, an Association of Motion Picture Producers jury composed of B. B. Kahane of RKO, Carl Laemmle, Jr. of Universal and Winfield Sheehan of Fox viewed the picture and agreed with Breen. According to a _Hollywood Rreporter_ news item, however, it was Sheehan and Jack Warner of Warner Bros. who cast the deciding votes that “eliminated one of the most beautiful scenes” from the picture. . . Modern sources add the following information about the censorship situation: M-G-M eventually released three different versions of the scene: one in which Jane is fully clothed, one in which only her breasts were exposed, and the one in which she is completely naked.
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### Author:  [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2004, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/30 "2004-07-27T01:31:07Z")
> [@Walloon](#):
>
> I don’t infer what importance the year 1947 has to the Production Code — please explain.
:smack:
19_2_7. After the conversion to sound, prior to fullscale enforcement of the Hays Code.
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### Author:  [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2004, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/31 "2004-07-27T02:02:18Z")
> [@xvxdarkknightxvx](#):
>
> [This](http://www.digischool.nl/ckv1/film/hot3.jpg) one?
Actually, it’s ALMOST that one. There’s a white version of that same dress that she wears earlier in the film (that’s the one she wears right at the end, during her last musical number) the sheer top of which kind of disappears against the paleness of her skin. It does look VERY daring in black and white, though it’s probably quite proper in its original color.
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### Author:  [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2004, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/32 "2004-07-27T02:07:52Z")
Found a pic of the dress in question! [Here](http://www.geocities.com/melaniumom2/SLIH6.html).
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### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2004, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flying-under-the-radar-of-censorship/256500/33 "2004-07-27T06:36:22Z")
> [@Ilsa\_Lund](#):
>
> 19_2_7. After the conversion to sound, prior to fullscale enforcement of the Hays Code.
A full-length nude appears in the prison scene in _The Yellow Ticket_ (1931), about prostitution in Czarist Russia.
The aforementioned _Sign of the Cross_ (1932) had several [Christian women](http://www.lynnpdesign.com/classicmovies/demille/signofthecross5.jpg) wearing little more than garlands as they are bound for death in the Roman arena.
The loincloth that Buster Crabbe wore as an imitation Tarzan in _King of the Jungle_ (1933) was more like a thong, leaving him nearly butt-ass naked from behind.
A life-size [nude statue](http://us.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1159/Mptv/1159/0709_0113.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0024598) of Marlene Dietrich was central to the plot of _The Song of Songs_ (1933).
Eskimo women appear topless several times in the Oscar-winning MGM docudrama _Eskimo_ (1933), including a close-up of one woman breast feeding her child.
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