The thought occured to me yesterday when I was rewatching Shakespeare in Love; I first saw it when it came out in 1998, and I was twelve and remember thinking “Whoa, boobs! And naked!” at the first Viola/Will sex scene.
Now I’m wondering if I was too young to be seeing that or if I’d been leading a very sheltered existence. Anybody?
I believe Steambath is generally citied as the first female breast display on American TV.
Steambath was produced for PBS in 1973 with José Pérez playing God, Bill Bixby playing Tandy, and Valerie Perrine as the blond bombshell, Meredith. Perrine made television history as the first female to have her nipples displayed (intentionally, rather than accidentally) on American broadcast television, though the programme was not carried by the entire network.
ETA - added “female” to breast.
I’ve told the story on this board several times- I bet several here could tell it before I do.
Hint: Ingrid Pitt.
When they published Steambath as a play (they used to publish – and sell – a lot of plays in popular paperbacks, back then) they put a cartoon cover on it with an almost-naked woman with strategic bubbles. They knew what sells.
After Steambath, you could catch lots of nudity on PBS. I remember I, Claudius and Candide having nude scenes.
When I was living in Salt Lake City, I learned to watch PBS on KUED, the University of Urtah station. If you watched PBS on KBYU, the Brigham Younf station, they’d censor any nudity (or, by their reckoning, offensive language) out. They even censored the PBS/WGBH episodes of Sherlock Holmes!
Morgan Fairchild in a bubblebath in some movie I can’t recall.
Wow. What a nipple.
“Rosemary’s Baby” - summer of '68.
Discussed in a similar thread here.
TV: Definitely Steambath.
Movies: Probably Ursala Andress’s boobs in The Blue Max (1966).
When I was a kid my parents would tape movies for us off of cable. It was years before I realized they were editting them, removing any nude or love scenes. I was in high school over a friend’s house watching Top Gun when the love scene with Kelly McGillis comes on. I had seen this movie 30 times, but never once saw this part. I asked my friend where he got the director’s cut, and he looked at me like I was a moron: he had taped it off of cable. I was really mad at the time.
I think the first nudity I saw on TV was when I was home sick from school watching some historical movie or something, and they showed a female member of royalty bathing.
Early 70s, when I was maybe 9 or 10. PBS was showing a show about breast cancer, and a woman gave a demonstration of how to do a self-exam. When she took her shirt off, my eyes popped out of my head. And my, ahem, popped out of, ahem…
My parents inexplicably dragged my sister and I to see The Last Married Couple in America in 1980. Since they didn’t bother to check the reviews and ratings beforehand, my mom (who is a bit of a prude) giggled uncontrollably when a full frontal female nudity scene came on the screen. I didn’t think the girl was all that sexy (I was 18) actually…
Does watching scrambled porn, muted, late at night, hoping for a glimpse of something identifiable count?
Also, on my friend’s satellite dish in the mid-80s, if you switched to the porn channels you could see them for about 1 second before they went scrambled. We would change the channel constantly and watch in 1 second bursts.
Jane Fonda; Barberella (1968).
The movie The Bible: In the Beginning (1966), directed by John Huston, had rear nudity in the Garden of Eden. My mother even bought us a souvenir book with photos. Here’s Michael Parks arising from his creation.
The movie was Trading Places; Jamie Lee Curtis’ breasts were prominent, but they weren’t the first bare breasts in the movie - some party guests of Eddie Murphy’s character stripped topless.
Midnight Cowboy, 1969. Not a good date movie, I discovered.
When I was in Connecticut in the middle 80’s, the UHF stations in Boston were pretty much showing movies in the evening with almost no editing. I saw boobs when they played ‘Slapshot’.
I almost exploded when they showed ‘Summer Lovers’. 
Don’t know if it was my “first”–but I definitely remember Women In Love.
Specifically, the nude wrestling scene featuring Alan Bates & Oliver Reed. In a study, dimly lit by firelight. Sweat glistening. Grunts.
I think I was too traumatized by looking at my parents copy of the book “A Child is Born” when I was like 8 or so. I can’t remember the first time I saw on screen nudity, but I’ll never forget the picture of that lady with the baby coming out of her.
Benny Hill, when I was about seven. I was never shocked.
Blue Lagoon.
