I watched The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934, Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon) on TMC Sat night. In it, the SP, in his secret identity as fop Sir Percival Blakeney, loves to recite his little poem about the SP: “is he in heaven? is he in hell? That damned, elusive Pimpernel.”
Shouldn’t this “count” as the first instance of profanity in the movies? Beating out Rhett Butler’s 'Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn" by 5 years?
In one scene that I remember ‘Hell’ was implied but not said. I think there was a lady present. Is ‘Hell’ profane? Perhaps it was not used in polite company, but it seems to be different from ‘give a damn’.
Speaking of profanity, a friend of mine has lots of 'fuck’s in his films. This is the way, he says, people talk. The film I currently working on also has a lot of 'fuck’s in it. Now, ‘fuck’ is a perfectly good word. But it’s over-used. I don’t like saying it myself. I prefer ‘bloody’, since in the U.S. it’s not profane at all. I use ‘fuck’ for a specific (usually comic) effect, and not as a general intensifier or curse. Using the ‘F-bomb’ is not the way I was raised. I have an idea for ‘our next film’. (Use of quotes to indicate that I may or may not get round to writing it, and it may or may not actually be made.) I plan to shoot it ‘old school’ as an alternative to the heavy S/FX and rapid MTV editing that everyone is used to nowadays. (The director of our current film was over the other night and we watched The Mouse That Roared. He’s ‘a kid’ and he said, ‘Why don’t they shoot movies like this anymore?’) When and if I write the screenplay, I’m planning to have no profanity in it at all. Personally I think it would be refreshing.
Percy recites the poem 3 times in the movie. In one recitation there are ladies present, and he omits “hell” that time. But all 3 use “damned”. And Percy often starts some foppish declaration with “damme,…” (as an alternative to “sink me…”).
“damned” isn’t necessarily a curse either. A person could be said to be " damned to hell" for their sins, or something like that.
I’ve lost count of how many silent movies I’ve seen used “damn” or “damned” in the intertitles. In the 1930s, there are many examples:
• George Arliss’s closing line in The Green Goddess (1930) says that a woman who got away from him probably would have been a “damned nuisance” anyway.
• One scene in Blessed Event (1932) ends with Emma Dunn saying, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
• Glorifying the American Girl (1930) has a sketch with Eddie Cantor and Louis Sorin as a pair of kvetching Jewish tailors: “Vat’s der idea uff calling me a damn fool in front uff der customers?” “So, it’s a secret?”.
• Gone with the Wind (1939) is not even the first Best Picture Academy Award winner to use “damn”. Clive Brook says it in Cavalcade (1933).
• In Holiday (1938) Katharine Hepburn quotes Lady Macbeth: “Out, damned spot!”
Interesting! So the question now becomes, why is Rhett Butler’s line so famous?
Maybe “damn”/“damned” as a verb or adjective was nothing new, but “damn” as a noun was ground-breaking. :rolleyes:
I think it’s because the director decided to go ahead and pay the fine, instead of watering down the line. I don’t know if the other films were fined for their use of curse words.
Incidentally, in the book, there is no “Frankly.” It’s just, “My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
The war movie The Big Parade (1925) was one of the top box office pictures of the silent era, but it had odd choices about language. In the middle of battle, John Gilbert shouts (via intertitle), “Goddamn you!” to the enemy, but in another intertitle he calls them “b~~~~~~s”.
Bunnies? 
Maybe this falls under Baker’s hypothesis – expressing a wish that God send one’s enemies to hell is not profanity. Rude expressions about their legitimacy, though, are over the line.
And speaking of lines…to this day, “goddamn” fails some TV censorship rules – the “god” part will get bleeped.
Although the Motion Picture Association of America published a Production Code in March 1930 that among other things prohibited profanity, it had no effective system of enforcement. An amendment to the code, adopted on June 13, 1934, established the Production Code Administration, and required all films to obtain a certificate of approval before being released.
In 1939, producer David O. Selznick decided to pay the $5000 fine to the PCA and keep “damn” in Rhett’s farewell scene in Gone With the Wind.
Meanwhile, British movies throughout the 1930s used “damn” and “hell” as they pleased.
Going way back, we have the comedy shorts I.B. Dam and the Whole Dam Family (1905) and The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog (1905).
It isn’t often that a silent movie title makes me LOL.
Damn, I just mentioned this movie as one of my favorites in this thread a few days ago. When I first read this, I was disappointed that I hadn’t known it was on, because I’d’ve Tivo’d it, but knowing wouldn’t have mattered, since I don’t get TMC. However, on a hunch, seeing as how this movie didn’t seem to fit the format of TMC, I checked the website for TCM, and lo and behold, there it was. Sadly, it doesn’t appear that they’ll be rebroadcasting it any time this month or next, so I’m right back to my original disappointment that I didn’t know it was going to be on. 
That’ll teach me to check the schedule more often.
Yup; typo in my OP.
It was Alexander Korda Night on TCM – The Four Feathers, Scarlet Pimpernel and Thief of Bagdad.