History of Sex in Cinema:
The Greatest and Most Influential
Sexual Films and Scenes
(Illustrated)
Part 6
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History of Sex in Cinema: Part 6 |
See also the multi-part Sexual and Erotic Films in Cinema, The Most Controversial Films of All-Time and the Best and Most Memorable Film Kisses of All Time in Cinematic History. Key to Icon Symbol:
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| Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes (chronological order, by film title) - Part 6 Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 |
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| Movie Title |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
| Footlight Parade (1933) |
For the five years before the Hays Production Code of 1934 went into effect, Busby Berkeley featured barely-clad bathing beauty starlets (clothed to appear naked) in his extravagant productions; especially in this film, he was able to display the female form through kaleidoscopic abstract designs, many with legs wide open or body parts seen in close-up; teasing, gold-digging, scantily-clad smiling chorus girls and views of dressing rooms were also featured in other Warner Bros.' and Busby Berkeley musicals of the same time period, including Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), 42nd Street (1933) and Dames (1934); this film had the racy and naughty "By A Waterfall" sequence with dozens of legs of floating swimmers being unzipped and zipped; in the "Honeymoon Hotel" sequence, married (?) couples (all named Smith), along with honeymooners Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, had to put up with a lecherous baby (Billy Barty) who almost shared their wedding night - a segment that was heavily edited by censors |
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| Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) |
As in Footlight Parade (1933), Busby Berkeley featured opulent production numbers with barely-costumed chorines, in numbers such as "We're In the Money," and the naughty pre-Code "Petting in the Park" that featured straw-hatted men romancing chorines on a lawn - with the camera leering at their crossed legs and petticoats, followed by a drenching rainstorm forcing the chorines to provocatively strip in silhouette behind a transparent screen - as a lascivious, leering young boy (midget Billy Barty) pulled up the screen to peer at them |    |
This was large-breasted Mae West's next film after She Done Him Wrong (1933) and featured more of the same - smart, sexy and snappy dialogue, one-liners, and double entendres; in the film's opening on the midway on a raised catwalk, she paraded past a crowd of leering men in a sexy gown and purred to the spectators: "A penny for your thoughts. Got the idea boys. You follow me?"; she also said in the course of the film: "When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better" - and "Well, It's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men"; she portrayed a floozy lady lion tamer and carnival queen named Tira who made it big on Broadway and hustled men out of their money; while on the phone with millionaire leading man Jack Clayton (Cary Grant, reuniting with West in their second film together), she advised him, coyly: "Hey, you'd better come up and see me" in one of the film's oft-misquoted lines; West's films single-handedly saved Paramount Studios from financial ruin, although they brought intense criticism from the Catholic League of Decency |
 
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| This was the ultimate Beauty and the Beast monster film, extensively censored for its violence; the film's subtext was the introduction of the feminine into a man's world and into uncharted territory, and the release of the primal male beast upon the civilized world (NYC); the film was considered slightly scandalous for its inter-racial 'love story' of a giant black ape with a white blonde woman - their forbidden love resulted in Kong's subsequent punishment - death; sexy screamer Fay Wray (as Ann Darrow) was featured as the object of male affection and of the desires of the giant hairy Beast -- and the Empire State Building was the ultimate phallic symbol from which the beast was toppled; the white blonde woman was regarded as a more valuable virginal substitute for Kong by the natives of Skull Island who regularly sacrificed half-naked, garlanded black virgins (white woman Ann was worth the equivalent of six native women, acc. to the tribal chief); the film even contained sexual double entendres, as in the scene when film-maker Denham (Robert Armstrong) told First Mate Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) that he feared his crewmember had been emasculated and gone "soft" (or impotent) and "sappy" over Ann's Beauty, as the Beast would do later: "It's the idea of my picture. The Beast was a tough guy too. He could lick the world. But when he saw Beauty, she got him. He went soft. He forgot his wisdom and the little fellas licked him"; in addition, the film had some sex-related sequences: (1) a braless Ann went to costume herself for the screaming film-test with Denham, soon returning and wearing a revealing, off-the-shoulder "Beauty and Beast costume", and (2) after being looked at, smelled at, and bathed by the monstrous ape, Ann swam away after plunging off Skull Mountain and lost the top of her dress (in a split second shot); censors did away with other scenes of doomed sailors being eaten by giant spiders, of natives being crushed in Kong's mouth or trampled into mud, of a woman being snatched from her NY apartment's bed (and held upside down over the street and then released after being mistaken for Ann), and the scene of the ape peeling down the blonde beauty's clothing - these were all censored and cut; in the remake King Kong (1976), a curious Kong fondled a topless 'Fay Wray' character (Jessica Lange) - a scene which was re-instated |
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Ladies They Talk About (1933)
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This was an early 'women in prison' film, with Barbara Stanwyck as Nan Taylor, an imprisoned bank-robber at San Quentin, with a love-hate relationship for the reformed minded radio evangelist David Slade (Preston Foster) who turned her in when she confessed her guilt; Nan was forced to experience the brutality of prison life, implied lesbianism (as she was cautioned: "There's a lot of big sharks in here that just live on fresh fish like you", with her smart reply: "Oh yeah, when they add you up, what do you spell?"), and the presence of butchy prison guards |   
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| Mary Stevens, M.D. (1933) |
Based upon a novel by Virginia Kellogg, Kay Francis starred as the title character - an intelligent and strong female doctor who experienced professional prejudice based upon her gender and personal difficulties; in this pre-Code film that dealt with issues of alcoholism and single motherhood, Mary became pregnant with a married (but separated), alcoholic doctor named Don Andrews (Lyle Talbot) who had graduated with her from medical school years earlier; however, by film's end, she affirmed her dedication to medicine as a female physician | |
| Our Betters (1933) |
In this early George Cukor drawing-room comedy, the over-the-top character of Ernest (Tyrell Davis, uncredited) appeared with garish 'gay' make-up and his formal 'town clothes' to teach lecherous Dutchess Minnie (Violet Kemble) how to dance the tango -- this was a typical early example of how 'the movies' portrayed homosexuals as a 'sissy' stock character (or prissy dancing fop/queen), to provide extreme contrast with other males (and females), or a humorous element |  |
Penthouse (1933)
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In W. S. Van Dyke's mystery-crime drama, Myrna Loy starred as the intelligent, quick-witted, beautiful and charming Gertie Waxted - a high-class "call-girl" character (although never specifically labeled that in the film); in this pre-Code era film, she was regarded in a positive and sympathetic light; in the complex story, the mob framed "Park Avenue" man Tom Siddall (Phillips Holmes) for the murder of ex-moll girlfriend Mimi Montagne (Mae Clarke), so defense lawyer Jackson Durant (Warner Baxter) enlisted Gertie, Mimi's pretty apartment-mate, to help expose the real killer -- who was eventually revealed to be Tim Murtoch (George E. Stone), racketeer Jim Crelliman's (C. Henry Gordon) "finger man"; the film was marked by sexual innuendo and intimations that the 'call-girl' character was sexually free in a conversation with Jackson after spending the night in his apartment: "...last night. I didn't exactly have to fight for my honor. A few more weeks of this and I'll be out of condition. Say, are you still in love with someone, or are you just decent?"; in the film's last lines, Gertie was reluctantly planning to marry the lawyer: "I can't marry you. I'll ruin you with all your friends. Why, I'm not even a lady" to which he replied: "You're not, huh? Well, you'll do till a lady comes along" |  
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| The fact that the actual 17th century Queen Christina of Sweden was bisexual in orientation provided this Rouben Mamoulian-directed film with a pretext for its lesbian leanings; the film showcased the cross-dressing and gender disguises of the Queen, and specifically her romantic attraction to her own neglected, complaining lady-in-waiting Countess Ebba Sparre (Elizabeth Young) whom she affectionately kissed on the lips and promised more personal time after Ebba groused: "You're surrounded by musty old papers and musty old men and I can't get near you" - the Countess was assured by the Queen: "Today, I'll dispose of them by sundown. I promise you. And we'll go away two, three days in the country...Wouldn't you like that?"; she also expressed her professed desire to remain a bachelor (Chancellor: "But your Majesty, you cannot die an old maid." Christina: "I have no intention to, Chancellor. I shall die a bachelor!"), and made a cross-dressing announcement in the country inn while standing on a table about her assessment of the queen's highly promiscuous behavior ("The truth is that the queen has had twelve lovers this past year, a round dozen"); in the film's centerpiece sequence, she had a notorious overnight tryst and bedroom scene (before a roaring fire) in the inn with a Spanish Catholic emissary (John Gilbert) - the scene sizzled as she removed her outer garment and the emissary was surprised to realize that she had breasts under her thin blouse - in a double-take; later in the afterglow of heterosexual love-making (a scene considered offensive by the censors), a morning-after scene, she caressed objects in the room (she even caressed a phallic-shaped bedpost) and made sentimental joyous statements ("I have been memorizing the room. In the future, in my memory, I shall live a great deal in this room...This is how the Lord must have felt when he first beheld the finished world with all his creatures breathing, living!") - most of the film was troubling to film censors |      
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| Roman Scandals (1933) |
This escapist Eddie Cantor musical comedy wove several risque, pre-code Busby Berkeley choreographed numbers into the plot, including "No More Love" with the setting of a slave market in which scantily-clad Roman slave girls (one of whom was Lucille Ball in her screen debut), nude except for long blonde wigs that reached almost down to their knees, were chained to pedestals |  |
| This film deeply worried censorship officials and helped to speed the enforcement of the Code in the next year, with seductive Mae West ("Queen of the Sex Quip") as the liberated, racy character of Lady 'Diamond' Lou, who described herself as: "one of the finest women ever walked the streets"; she drawled a bawdy and carnally-suggestive one-liner to young handsome, psalm-singing Captain Cummings (Cary Grant): "I always did like a man in a uniform. That one fits you grand. Why don't you come up sometime 'n see me? I'm home every evening," and provided liberated quips - such as: "Men's all alike - married or single. It's their game. I happen to be smart enough to play it their way", and sang her suggestive, heavily censored "I Like a Man That Takes his Time"; she responded to Grant's query: "Do you mind if I get personal?" with: "Hmm, go right ahead, I don't mind if you got familiar" |   |
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| The Sin of Nora Moran (1933) |
The promotional poster for this "poverty row" Majestic Films melodrama was much more sensational than the film's actual content; the 'sin' didn't refer to a sex crime, but to the title character's (Zita Johann) degrading descent and execution for murder (told with flashbacks and flashforwards) after taking the rap for a murder that her lover committed |  |
| The Story of Temple Drake (1933) |
This was a tricky and daring film adaptation of William Faulkner’s notorious 1931 short story Sanctuary that required the re-naming of the film; the plot was about a young, upper-class, pampered, flirtatious and promiscuous 'bad-girl' southern belle named Temple Drake (Miriam Hopkins), the daughter of a Mississippi judge, who was kidnapped and then raped by ruthless, degenerate bootlegger-gangster Trigger (Jack La Rue) in a farmhouse and then taken to the city to serve as a kept woman (not completely unwillingly) in a house of ill repute; the actual rape scene was not explicit - basically communicated by a candle (in the original tale, it was a corncob) approaching Drake's bed followed by a scream and quick fade to black, but the film's taboo subject matter was considered so shocking in its day that it was attacked by the press even before its release; in the film's shocking climax in a courtroom, she finally admitted on the stand that she had killed Trigger; this film was responsible for spurring the rapid passage of the restrictive Production Code |
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| Torch Singer (1933) |
In this pre-Code baiting, irreverent melodrama with music, Claudette Colbert starred as a 'fallen woman' - an unwed mother named Sally Trent who was abandoned by the father, wealthy Bostonian Michael Gardner (David Manners); she gave up her illegitimate baby daughter named Sally for adoption at a charity hospital (and delivered this timely line: "Don't ever let any man make a sucker out of you. Make him know what you're worth. Anything they get for nothing is always cheap") to become Manhattan's most notorious, morally-loose and flirtatious café chanteuse renamed Mimi Benton; in one scene after being told that she was hard and disreputable, she replied: "Sure I am...Just like glass. So hard nothing can cut it but diamonds. Come around with a fistful sometime — maybe we can get together"; by film's end, she came to her senses and was reunited with her five year-old daughter and the biological father |  |
| Cecil B. DeMille's telling of this oft-filmed tale featured midriff-bearing Claudette Colbert as the Queen of Egypt's Cleopatra who would seduce both Caesar (Warren Williams) and Antony (Henry Wilcoxon); this film included the infamous barge/bordello scene which began with entertainment: near-naked dancing girls accompanying an ox (with a dancer riding upon it and stroking its side) - and the remarkable sequence in which 'clams' that were hauled up in a net were revealed to be more dancing-girls wrapped in seaweed, followed by leopard-skinned animals/girls led by trainers with whips - and more decadence! - as a prelude to her seduction of Antony |   |
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| George White's Scandals (1934) |
This pre-Code film starred Fox's resident queen of musicals in the 30s and 40s - Alice Faye, opposite Rudy Vallee. It was Broadway impresario George White's first film, as co-director, writer, and actor. The blonde vamp portrayed vulnerability, sweetness and sultry sexuality in this backstage musical film (her debut film) as Kitty Donnelly/Mona Vale, a vivacious aspiring singer with a velvety contralto voice - most noted for her lurid rendition of "Oh, You Nasty Man"; it was followed by a similarly-titled sequel in 1935 |  |
Hips, Hips, Hooray! (1934)
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This was an RKO slapstick comedy musical by director Mark Sandrich, featuring the team of W & W (ex-vaudeville and RKO radio stars, cherub-faced Bert Wheeler and cigar-chomping Robert Woolsey, who also starred in Diplomaniacs (1933) and Cockeyed Cavaliers (1934)) - they were hired as flavored lipstick salesmen or con-men named Andy Williams and Dr. Bob Dudley; the risque film opened with a live radio studio broadcast that featured naked models in bathtubs (they were discreetly shielded by foreground products or their hair), proving the old dictum in Hollywood that sex sells |   
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| Frank Capra's quintessential romantic screwball comedy regarding the battle-of-the-sexes was the first film to take all five top Oscars; after 1934, the Production Code required that sexuality had to be constrained so films sublimated touchy subjects into other plot elements (use of witty dialogue and repartee), particularly the scene of the bed blanket separating the two beds of an unmarried male and female (the "walls of Jericho" scene) -- Clark Gable (as Peter Warne) provided co-star Claudette Colbert (as Ellie Andrews) with privacy and respectability -- and the film's mischievously suggestive romantic climax - the toppling of the walls of Jericho; Gable's sexy revelation of a bare-chest under his shirt reportedly killed the T-shirt industry for awhile; another of the film's notorious scenes was the 'hitchhiking' technique scene in which Colbert showed her legs off to instantly stop a passing car | 
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| Men in White (1934) |
Sidney Kingsley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play was adapted into this Code-era story that was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency as being "unfit for public exhibition"; this gritty slice of life film starred Clark Gable as internist Dr. George Ferguson who was dedicated to saving lives; one of the more controversial aspects of the film was Gable's illicit sexual liaison (after a discreet fade-out) with student nurse Barbara Dennin (Elizabeth Allan), ending up with her becoming pregnant -- this led to the film's mostly-implied scene of abortion (without the explicit use of the word 'abortion' in the film, but alluded to with veiled dialogue about her dangerous condition: George: "Ruptured appendix?" Dr. Hochberg (Jean Hersholt): "More serious than that." George: "Why didn't she come to us?"); the young female patient, after having experienced an illegal, butchered back-alley abortion (or self-induced abortion, or suicide attempt?) to avoid shame, was rushed into emergency surgery; typical of films at this time, Barbara died following the operation - interpreted as divine retribution for her sexual transgressions |
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| Bette Davis played the role of a blonde, lower-class, slatternly and vulgar, Cockney-accented, illiterate tea-room waitress named Mildred Rogers, who used her sexuality to manipulate Philip Carey (Leslie Howard), a sensitive student of medicine; she was manipulative, repugnant, exploitative, two-timing, shrewish and cruel toward him when he expressed interest in going out, and self-centeredly and vindictively berated the crippled, 'hang-dog' Philip with nasty insults for becoming romantically-interested in her; however, the weak-willed Philip could not resist rescuing her and helping her to recover from two failed relationships (one of which resulted in a child) - things took a turn for the worse when Mildred moved in and turned abusive toward him, telling him at one point: "You cad! You dirty swine! I never cared for you, not once. I was always making a fool of you. You bored me stiff! I hated you! It made me sick when I had to let you kiss me. I only did it because you begged me. You hounded me! You drove me crazy! And after you kissed me, I always had to wipe my mouth! WIPED MY MOUTH!" |  |
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The Painted Veil (1934) |
MGM's soap-opera drama was based upon W. Somerset Maugham's
1925 novel of the same name and set in colonial China; early in the film,
Greta Garbo (as Austrian spinster Katrin Koerber) and Cecilia Parker (as
younger sister Olga Koerber) shared a lesbian kiss - although it was disguised,
due to restrictive Hays Code rules just put into effect, as an intense
series of multiple kisses between sisters on Olga's wedding day; a second
film adaptation was The Seventh Sin (1957) with Eleanor Parker,
and a more modern third version was made in 2006 with Naomi Watts and
Edward Norton |
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Introduction: In the following illustrated compilation are some of the most significant films in the history of sex on the screen. The influential film milestones and their memorable sexual/erotic scenes are thoroughly described. Including portrayals
of sex and/or nudity, these films were often considered quite erotic, groundbreaking,
unique and/or controversial at the time. The following listing of these influential, memorable and classic
sex scenes and films takes into account all of
the available surveys of this type of material, and attempts to provide
an informed, detailed, unranked, chronological (by film title) grouping of the
most influential and groundbreaking films and scenes. Some of the most notorious (or infamous) films are quite
mediocre, usually made as an excuse to display nudity or eroticism of a star performer.
- Milestone Films With Scenes That Were Especially Notorious, Infamous, Controversial, or Scandalous