Issue Date: December 10, 2006
Well, I never ... !
A censorship expert on the early scandalous print of "Baby Face"
The DVD, out now, is part of the Forbidden Hollywood Collection.
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THE PLOT: Lily (Barbara Stanwyck) ditches her steel-mill upbringing for a life in New York City, where she sleeps her way to the top of Gotham Trust and marries its president, Courtland Trenholm (George Brent). The DVD includes the 1933 "pre-release version," with scorching allusions to sex, adultery and divorce that censors eliminated.
GUEST COMMENTATOR: Garth Jowett of the University of Houston has spent most of his academic life researching movie censorship. His most recent book is "Children and the Movies."
OVERVIEW: "It was fascinating to compare the theatrical and 'pre-release' versions. What had always been a rather risqué film now becomes a more blatant and cynical examination of sex as a weapon."
Scene 7: Out of Jimmy's Class -- Lily uses her feminine wiles to advance her career at the bank.
"[Censors cut the line] when Lily's very close to her boss discussing a mortgage and he says, 'Stick around after 5,' a blatant attempt to seduce her. They also cut the line where two secretaries said, 'You'd never think he had a wife and three kids.' It implies adultery."
Scene 20: Lily in Love -- After realizing she loves Trenholm, Lily returns to him, only to find he has attempted suicide.
"The original has an enigmatic ending, with Lily in the ambulance, and you don't know if Trenholm survives. But the theatrical ending was the moral compromise where you [punish the evildoers]. Divorced people are never shown as happy. Lily and Trenholm end up penniless."
-- Ellen Durston
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