–AND it’s a pretty hilarious satire on the Virgin Birth to boot. Don’t know how this one passed.
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.
Is there any nudity in any approved talking Hollywood pictures after 1934? After 1947, prior to 1934?
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?
http://www.geocities.com/imokproductions/gilligansislandcast.jpg
Imagine Mr. and Mrs. Thurston Howell III 
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.
Make that 1966 for The Bible.
Tarzan and His Mate (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.
From The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures:
:smack:
1927. After the conversion to sound, prior to fullscale enforcement of the Hays Code.
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.
Found a pic of the dress in question! Here.
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 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 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.