The restored version of Metropolis (1927) has a nude scene. I saw it when it was re-released in theaters a few years ago. It’s in the “Pleasure Garden” scene; the woman isn’t actually nude, but is wearing a gossamer top thin enough that her breasts (including nipples, which are apparently the defining criterion) are quite clearly visible for quite a while.
Nice rack, too.
Nell Shipman famously had a nude scene in one of the movies she wrote/directed/starred in, but I can’t remember which one it was… IMDb lists the tagline for Back to God’s Country as “Is the Nude Rude?” but there’s no further info.
Anyone know anything more about Nell Shipman? I know I read a fairly lengthy article on this not too long ago, but I have no idea where it was.
With all due respect to your Geocities source, the photos there are not offered with any proof of context, and everyreputablesource I’ve ever consulted says the scene was nude. Some sources, like this one, say that she was offered a body suit, but declined. There is even footage in the movie of her ass crack. I suspect that the Geocities picture is one taken during a rehearsal or something, in the very early days of filming, or before she stripped for the scene.
I bow to your well-researched answer. So, what about the “outcry” about Rhett’s language? What made Gone With the Wind’s use of “damn” that made people notice? Was it simply hype for the movie?
But it wasn’t a Hollywood film; it was filmed in Berlin.
It was probably that it was the first major post-Hays film to prominently feature language that strong. It was also quite an event in its day. It was so heavily hyped that many people went to see it that otherwise did not regularly go to the theater exposing many who might have been shocked by it. Soon, however, war was to come and American mores were about to change more dramatically than ever before.
I was watching “Marihuana” the other day, and it had some nudity in it, IIRC. It was done in 1936 along with “Reefer Madness.” It’s not quite as funny, but it does come close.
According to Baxter Phillips’ Cut: The Unseen Cinema , Olympic diving champion Annette Kellerman appeared au naturel way back in 1916 in a film called “Daughter of the Gods”.
A lot depends on how you define nudity. There’s a topless whipping scene in the 1917 Italian epic Cabiria but the woman’s back is turned to the camera the whole time. There’s a scene in Roman Scandals of 1933 that has a bunch of nekkid cuties chained to what appears to be the second layer of giant three-layer cake, but they all wear falls that extend to their ankles, which hide their naughty bits while still revealing their womanly curves.
I think American cinema was moving toward acceptance of nudity in film back in 1933 but was arrested by the imposition of the Hayes Code as a result of a Catholic-led charge toward censorship. (By Catholic-led I mean exactly that – there wouldn’t have been much public interest in censorship, or the imposition of the Hayes Code, if it weren’t for leaders of the Catholic Church who whipped up outrage against film and then volunteered to censor it.)
There wasn’t an outcry. It’s an urban legend. I’ve read numerous books on the making of Gone With the Wind and its release, and none found any evidence of anyone other than the Production Code Office taking offense with the word “damn”, which as I said, was common in popular literature of the time.
Back to God’s Country (1919) is Canada’s oldest extant feature film. In one sequence, Nell Shipman is shown bathing in the nude. The movie is available on DVD and VHS from Milestone Films.
