# "Frankly my dear," take off your clothes! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 27, 2005, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795 "2005-05-27T18:56:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Drum\_God](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drum_god/32/44_2.png) [@Drum\_God](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drum_God)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/1 "2005-05-27T18:56:14Z")
It is widely regarded (isn’t it?) that Clark Gable’s “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!” in _Gone With the Wind_ was a scandalous use of harsh language in its day. In fact, isn’t it the first use of “profanity” in a mainstream movie? My point, though, is what is the first use of nudity in a movie intended for mainstream audiences in wide release? I don’t mean intentionally “blue” movies or stag films. Instead, when did a major Hollywood star first show skin? What was the general reaction at the time? Does it seem as quaint now as Clark Gable’s foul language? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/2 "2005-05-27T19:09:15Z")
There was nudity in D. W. Griffith’s **Orphans of the Storm** back in 1921. IIRC, it was a scene showing a bunch of women jumping into a pool naked. There are other examples of this during other silent films (I see **Intolerance** listed – probably for the orgy scenes) Hedy Lemarr had a nude scene in **Extase** in 1933, though she wasn’t a star yet and it was a German film. There is a quick shot of a painting of a nude Mae West in **She Done Him Wrong** , also from 1933. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/3 "2005-05-27T19:15:22Z")
I’d heard that the 1912 Italian film **Dante’s Inferno** featured nudity. The IDMB seems to back this up: > **[Dante's Inferno (1911) - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0002130/trivia)** > > Dante's Inferno (1911) Trivia on IMDb: Cameos, Mistakes, Spoilers and more... I’d heard that portions of it, at least, showed up in American films, and that seems substantiated too: > **[Dante's Inferno (1911) - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0002130/movieconnections)** > > Dante's Inferno (1911) Connections on IMDb: Referenced in, Featured in, Spoofed and more... I 've never seen any of this, but I’d heard that some nudity crept in. I’ll bet the full-frontal male nudity didn’t. Some foreign films with limited nudity showed up in the US, I believe, in the late 1950s. Ceertainly by the 1960s. They were releasing “nudie cuties” by the late 1950s, like Russ Meyer’s **The Immoral Mr. Teas** : [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052920/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052920/) The earliest flick I recall seeing with it was **Planet of the Apes** , in 1968. ---
**Author:** ![seosamh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@seosamh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seosamh)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/4 "2005-05-27T20:15:29Z")
Does Gable not lessen the impact of the line by stressing the word _give_ rather than the word _damn_? Maybe that’s how they got away with it. ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/5 "2005-05-27T20:27:48Z")
**Tarzan and his Mate** (1934) has a nude swim scene. I don’t think it’s Maureen O’Sullivan, though; but rather a body double. ---
**Author:** ![Mycroft\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/898d66/32.png) [@Mycroft\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mycroft_H)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/6 "2005-05-27T20:37:37Z")
No, it was Maureen. Years ago I saw an interview with her and she talked about it. She did not think the brief bit of nudity\* was a big deal, but many others though she was either acting like a whore (not her words), or being cruelly taken advantage of. I do recall from the interview that another female star offered her a place to stay out of the limelight until the hoopla settled down. (\* As she was jumping into the water, Tarzan/Weismuller held onto her dress which came off with nothing worn underneath. The quick full frontal flash as she dove off the tree limb probably lasted only a few frames.) ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/7 "2005-05-27T20:53:58Z")
Since this is a question about films, I’ll move this thread to Cafe Society. bibliophage moderator GQ ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/8 "2005-05-27T20:55:16Z")
> [@seosamh](#): > > Does Gable not lessen the impact of the line by stressing the word _give_ rather than the word _damn_? Maybe that’s how they got away with it. Apparantly producer David Selznick had to argue long and hard to keep “damn” in, which overall is pretty odd since the line appears in the bestselling novel (though without the “frankly”; that was added for the movie). Had the line been dropped, I suppose we’d’ve had “Windies” complaining about the betrayal of the adaptation. Damn you, Hays! ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/9 "2005-05-27T20:57:26Z")
_Ben-Hur_ (1925) features a naked slave boy chained to a wall. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/10 "2005-05-27T21:02:04Z")
Somewhere I think there’s an informative post by **Eve** about the surprisingly frequent use of of nudity in films in the days before the major studios adopted the Hays Code. Eve’s name is too short for the search engine, so I can’t find it. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/11 "2005-05-27T21:16:39Z")
> [@Mycroft H.](#): > > No, it was Maureen. Years ago I saw an interview with her and she talked about it. She did not think the brief bit of nudity\* was a big deal, but many others though she was either acting like a whore (not her words), or being cruelly taken advantage of. I do recall from the interview that another female star offered her a place to stay out of the limelight until the hoopla settled down. > > (\* As she was jumping into the water, Tarzan/Weismuller held onto her dress which came off with nothing worn underneath. The quick full frontal flash as she dove off the tree limb probably lasted only a few frames.) There’s real question about all of this, both whether Maureen used a double and whether the nude scenes were excised before the movie was shown or just after. A poster at [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025862/) says: > [@](#): > > The film had an interesting back story; Cedric Gibbons, MGM’s legendary Art Director, had gotten a commitment from the studio to direct the sequel, prior to the release of TARZAN THE APE MAN, despite the fact that he’d NEVER directed before (the studio hadn’t anticipated the film’s impact, and didn’t think a novice director would matter much on a ‘novelty’ film…and they wanted to keep their Oscar-winning department chief happy). Gibbons, a prodigiously talented and imaginative visual artist, loved the freedom of pre-Code Hollywood, and decided to have TARZAN AND HIS MATE ‘push the envelope’ to the limit…Tarzan and Jane would frolic in a nude swim, and Jane would appear TOPLESS through most of the film. Maureen O’Sullivan said in an interview shortly before her death, in 1998, that while a double was used for the swim, she trusted the studio, and did ‘a couple of days’ of filming sans top…but it became too much of a headache trying to strategically place plants and fruit to block her nipples, and the idea was abandoned (the film shot those days would be worth a fortune!) She did do a nude silhouette scene in a tent, flashed her breasts at the conclusion of her ‘swim’, and donned a revised ‘jungle’ costume that was extremely provocative, very thin, and open at the sides…and the resulting outcry would help ‘create’ the Hays Office, and the self-censorship that would soon engulf the entire industry. Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim was the double, according to all other sources. I would be extremely surprised if the nude scenes survived to national rollout of the picture. They may have been in a preview, but I’d bet they were gone before the official premiere. MGM did release the movie in different versions for different markets, but the American public never saw Maureen’s breasts until recently. Back to the OP: I don’t know the exact first use of nudity in a major Hollywood film, but it would have been in the late 1960s or early 1970s. By that time foreign movies had become famous for nudity, and _I am Curious Yellow_ already had on-screen sex. The culture had already moved on before the movies did. Playboy and imitators were increasingly mainstream, the hippies epitomized nudity (even if it was mostly in peoples’ salacious imaginations, rock stars were getting wilder with every year, and lots of non-mainstream movies had huge amounts of nudity. By 1972, the big three of porn - Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, and Behind the Green Door - would make mere movie nudity a trifle. Some people certainly made a fuss, whenever it was, but it was just a ripple in the larger hurricane. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/12 "2005-05-27T21:23:18Z")
[Here](http://silentgents.com/Nudes.html) are some (pretty much work-safe) nude stills from the silent era. (Ramon was such a hottie; shame what happened to the old chicken hawk so many years later.) [Women in Love](http://imdb.com/title/tt0066579/) is commonly regarded (how correctly I don’t know) of being the first mainstream movie to feature full frontal male nudity (Alan Bates & Oliver Reed- two guys I never particularly wanted to see nekkid). I think Ewan McGregor and Harvey Keitel are still responsible for about 60% of the frontal male nude scenes in cinema history, however. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/13 "2005-05-27T21:25:20Z")
For anyone interested, Marilyn Monroe’s first nude scene was in Cukor’s unfinished _Something’s Got To Give_, 1962. It was unfinished because she died. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/14 "2005-05-27T22:13:10Z")
> [@Drum God](#): > > It is widely regarded (isn’t it?) that Clark Gable’s “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!” in _Gone With the Wind_ was a scandalous use of harsh language in its day. In fact, isn’t it the first use of “profanity” in a mainstream movie? No, and no! The word “damn” was not considered a scandalous use of harsh language in the 1930s. In fact, it was common in popular novels and magazines of the day. And you can find numerous uses of “damn” or “damned” in the silent era and early talkie era, before the Motion Picture Code began to be enforced in 1934. **The Bad Man** (1930) _Pancho Lopez:_ I make ze love to you myself — personal… What? Because you are marry you do not wish to spik of love! Leesen Lady — eef Pancho Lopez want woman, he take her, damn queek! **The Green Goddess** (1930) _The Raja:_ She would probably have been a damned nuisance anyhow. _(closing line)_ **Blessed Event** (1932) _Mrs. Roberts:_ Well, I’ll be damned! **The Scarlet Pimpernel** (1934) _Percy Blakeney:_ Magnificent fight this afternoon, my dear. Gad! That Mendoza’s got quick ears. In the 10th round, when Jackson had him down, I shouted, “Get up, Mendoza!” And damn me, he did and sink me, he won! **Holiday** (1938) _Linda Seton:_ Out, damned spot! Other pictures with “damn” or “damned” in the dialogue: _The Big Parade_ (“goddamn” no less) (1925), _Glorifying the American Girl_ (1929), _Hell’s Angels_ (1930), _Arrowsmith_ (1931). _Gone With the Wind_ wasn’t even the first Best Picture Oscar winner to use “damn” — _Cavalcade_ (1933) beat it by six years. As for nudity, in _Tarzan and His Mate_ (1934), both Maureen O’Sullivan and her stand-in, Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim, appeared nude. McKim does a long and lovely underwater swim totally in the nude, and O’Sullivan’s breasts are briefly seen when she surfaces. From the _American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures_, “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.” (McKim also played the mermaid-in-the-bottle in _Bride of Frankenstein_.) ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/15 "2005-05-27T22:21:28Z")
Selznick was fined $5,000 for the use of the word damn, incidentally. He paid it from his own pocket. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/16 "2005-05-27T22:21:59Z")
Marilyn Monroe actually wore a flesh-colored [bathing suit](http://www.geocities.com/melaniumom2/SGTG21.html) while shooting the swimming pool scene in _Something’s Got to Give_. She later [removed it](http://www.geocities.com/melaniumom2/SGTG28.html) to pose for still photos at poolside. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/17 "2005-05-27T22:40:10Z")
The first female Hollywood star to appear nude in a movie post-1934 was Jayne Mansfield in [_Promises! Promises!_](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0057428/combined) (1963). The first male Hollywood star to appear nude in a movie post-1934 was [Michael Parks](http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0662981/), as Adam in _The Bible_ (1966). ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/18 "2005-05-27T22:44:55Z")
While Michael Parks was a minor star in 1966, other major actors appeared nude in Oscar-nominated performances: Alan Bates in _The Fixer_ (1968), Jon Voight in _Midnight Cowboy_ (1969), and Ryan O’Neal in _Love Story_ (1970). Lew Ayres had a nude swimming scene as the star of the Oscar-winning _All Quiet on the Western Front_ (1930). ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/19 "2005-05-27T22:57:53Z")
First male star to do frontal nudity in a mainstream U.S. feature: [Robert Forster](http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0001233/) in _Medium Cool_ (1969). ---
**Author:** ![E.Thorp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@E.Thorp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E.Thorp)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2005, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795/20 "2005-05-27T23:06:22Z")
Not quite the earliest named in this thread, but I’ve seen nudity onscreen in [The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0012190/) (1921), starring Rudolph Valentino. It was in the studio of a dilettantish artist, IIRC. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankly-my-dear-take-off-your-clothes/305795.md?page=2)