Self (archive footage)
Before the G, PG and R ratings system there was the Production Code, and before that there was, well, nothing. This eye-opening documentary examines the rampant sexuality of early Hollywood through movie clips and reminiscences by stars of the era. Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Marlene Dietrich and others relate tales of the artistic freedom that led to the draconian Production Code, which governed content from 1934 to 1968. Diane Lane narrates.
(archive footage)
Este perspicaz documental presenta algunas de las actrices más importantes y bellas que adornan la pantalla grande. Muestra cómo la industria del cine cambió su descripción de la representación del sexo y las actrices del sexo desde la era del cine mudo hasta el presente. Las escenas clásicas se muestran desde la película muda, True Heart Susie, protagonizada por Lillian Gish, hasta Love Me Tonight (1932), mezcla de sexo y sofisticación, protagonizada por Jeanette MacDonald (antes de Nelson Eddy) y Elizabeth Taylor en A Place in the Sun (1951), además de mucho, mucho más.
Loyette Merval
The marriage of a wealthy and frivolous member of French nobility, Loyette Merval, to an American aristocratic idler named Willard Standish, is a loving one, except for their mutual dissatisfaction with Willard's idleness. After Willard becomes a chauffeur, Loyette's subsequent disgust causes him to quit. When the war begins, Willard joins the French Secret Service, while Loyette continues her social life, upset about their separation. After Willard, wounded, hides in a convent, Loyette leaves to find him.
Ellen Neal
Marion Clark
Marion Clark, a manicurist, is unimpressed by the wealthy but dissipated men who frequent her shop, preferring city editor Dick Strong, who lives in her boardinghouse. Dick's sister Gladys, however, is intrigued by the wilder side of life in New York and allows one of the boarders to take her to a lively party.
Yuki
A Japanese girl becomes a Geisha in order to avoid marrying a dastardly baron.
Anna Mirrel
Anna Mirrel, a young Jewish girl in Czarist Russia, is forced to degrade herself in order to visit her father, whom she believes to be ill. She obtains a yellow passport, signifying that she is a prostitute.
Lorraine Roth
Despite her love for penniless Dirck Mead, Lorraine marries wealthy Aaron Roth to save her family from financial ruin.
Fidele Roget
Two playboys stumble drunkenly home, where the owner falls asleep and the other attacks the maid. The butler intervenes and a fight results in the death of the assailant. A French girl, escaping from a pimp who kidnapped her, witnesses the crime. The butler convinces his master he is the killer, and must flee. He joins the girl but is caught. She helps police expose the real killer by going undercover as another maid.
Edith Hardy
A venal, spoiled stockbroker's wife impulsively embezzles $10,000 from the charity she chairs and desperately turns to a Burmese ivory trader to replace the stolen money.
Katherine ''Kitty'' Silverton