Description
Book Synopsis From the first, brief moving images of female nudes in the 1880s to the present, the motion picture camera made the female body a battleground in what we now call the culture wars. Churchmen feared the excitation of male lust; feminists decried the idealization of a body type that devalued the majority of women.
This history of Hollywood''s treatment of women''s bodies traces the full span of the motion picture era. Primitive peepshow images of burlesque dancers gave way to the artistic nudity of the 1910s when model Audrey Munson and swimmer Annette Kellerman contended for the title of American Venus. Clara Bow personified the qualified sexual freedom of the 1920s flapper. Jean Harlow, Mae West and the scantily clad chorus girls of the early 1930s provoked the Legion of Decency to demand the creation of a Production Code Administration that turned saucy Betty Boop into a housewife. Things loosened up during World War II when Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth ruled the scre
Table of Contents
- Introduction 1
- Prologue 5
- 1. Not So Innocent: Controversy and Censorship in the Silent Era 9
- 2. Why Be Good? Flappers, Flaming Youth and an "It" Girl 29
- 3. Pre-Code, Post-Code and Non-Code: Before and After the Moral Crackdown of the 1930s 45
- 4. Something for the Boys: Pin-Ups and Love Goddesses of the World War II Era 62
- 5. "She came at me in sections": Women in Postwar Genre Movies 79
- 6. "Looking for trouble": Howard Hughes vs. the Production Code (Again) 95
- 7. Hollywood or Bust: Fifties Blondes and "Mammary Madness" 105
- 8. "Banned by Cardinal Spellman": Baby Doll and Southern Decadence 116
- 9. Bikini Beach: From the Fifties to the Sixties 122
- 10. The Nude Scene: Children Under 17 Not Admitted 148
- 11. Blue Movie: Coming to a Theater Near You—Pornography 176
- 12. Girls' Trip: The End of the Double Standard? 190
- Epilogue. The Reckoning: Weinstein and the #MeToo Movement 199
- Chapter Notes 209
- Bibliography 213
- Index 215
