in their raciness, with open discussion of sex, drugs, interracial relationships, and homosexuality. All these subjects were banned once the code came in. For women, pre-code films offered interesting roles where they were more in charge of their sexuality.
One of my favorite of the pre-code films is Dorothy Arzner’s 1929 work The Wild Party. This was Dorothy’s first sound film, and also star Clara Bow’s debut speaking role. Clara was the original “It Girl,” a term given to her after she starred in a film called It and became the poster child for the flapper movement. Clara had had a tough life; she’d grown up with a father who had sexually abused her and a mother who tried to murder her (and was later institutionalized), and in Hollywood she’d often felt used by male directors on set. But with Dorothy, Clara was well cared for.
The Wild Party was a remake of an earlier silent film Dorothy had directed. Clara played a college student who loved to party and had a crush on her professor. It featured a largely female cast, and underneath its antics, it was really about female friendships and women choosing independence over a man.
While she was making The Wild Party, Dorothy noticed how Clara couldn’t move freely while worrying about the microphone, which was large and had to be hidden somewhere in clothing or furniture. Having to worry about talking directly into a stationary microphone greatly restricted where an actor could move, which was a distraction to their performance. So Dorothy had a brilliant idea. She asked her crew to put the microphone on a fishing rod, and dangle it above Clara, moving the mike as she moved. This worked, and the boom microphone was born.
The common theme throughout Dorothy Arzner’s work concerns the complexities of women and their relationships. Looking at her films now, they are a treasure trove of feminism, and it is absolutely astounding to think that she made them during the male-dominated studio system era.
One of the great examples of this is the 1933 film Christopher Strong, in which Dorothy cast Katharine Hepburn in a role that was perfect for (or perhaps, helped to create) Hepburn’s persona as an adventurous, strong-willed, independent woman. In a nod to the serial queens of the silent era, Katharine plays aviator Lady Cynthia Darrington who falls in love with a married man, the titular Christopher Strong, and in a reversal of the normal gender roles, seduces him in a very direct manner. When Cynthia falls pregnant, she realizes Christopher will never leave his family and that she doesn’t want to be the “other” woman. So she takes on the aviation challenge of breaking the record for flying the highest altitude, which she knows she won’t survive.
In the end, Cynthia chose to keep her own independence and to not hurt the wife any further. And though the title is named after the male character, the film is told from Cynthia’s perspective. This was noted by critic Pauline Kael, who wrote that Christopher Strong is “one of the rare movies told from a woman’s sexual point of view.” The costumes are wonderful too, with Katharine wearing pants and at one point, a magnificent metallic moth evening gown (which is never quite properly explained, but which should be Googled to be believed).
Dorothy’s most famous film is Dance, Girl, Dance starring Lucille Ball and Maureen O’Hara. It was made in 1940, but didn’t find an audience until decades later, when it was embraced by second-wave feminists in the 1970s. It was truly ahead of its time and made pointed remarks about the male gaze in entertainment, and how women are persuaded to be part of it.
Lucille and Maureen play two dancers, Bubbles and Judy, who are constantly dealing with aggressive male behavior, unwanted flirtation, and pressures to perform in a strip burlesque show. Bubbles agrees to do it, but Judy just wants to dance ballet. This causes tension between the two friends.
All of the dance scenes are shot from spectators’ viewpoints—whether it is Judy’s teacher watching her practice or the sleazy audience at the burlesque show.
In one remarkable scene, the crowd is heckling Judy to strip while she is dancing ballet; fed up, she walks to the edge of the stage and looks down at the audience. “I know you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your fifty cents worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you.” She continues angrily, “We’d laugh right back at the lot of you, only we’re paid to let you sit there and roll your eyes and make screaming clever remarks. What’s it for? So you can go home and strut before your wives and sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I’m sure they see through you just like we do!”
In response, one of the women in the audience stands up and gives Judy a clap, and slowly, the rest of the crowd joins in. It’s a triumphant moment, but as Judy leaves the stage, Bubbles slaps her in a jealous rage, claiming she stole her spotlight. Judy slaps back, and the two have a cat fight on stage, while the audience glares on.
This is a scathing message about women in film. By having Judy looking back at the audience and seeing their perspective, Dorothy reverses the power of performer and spectator, pointing out how women are seen as objects to be looked at, expected to shut up and strip. And then, Dorothy quickly returns the power to its usual place, as the two women degrade themselves and ruin their friendship in front of the crowd.
Sadly, Dance, Girl, Dance was Dorothy’s final film. While working on her next movie in 1943, she contracted pneumonia, and after directing sixteen feature films in total, decided to leave Hollywood. She found her place teaching film at UCLA, where she mentored a young director by the name of Francis Ford Coppola.
When she died in 1979, she had no Oscars to her name; but Dorothy Arzner nonetheless left a legacy, for when female filmmakers started to slip back into Hollywood in the 1970s, they looked to Dorothy for inspiration. She was someone who had everything working against her—a lesbian, a feminist, and a female director in the 1930s—but she was hugely successful. As Katharine Hepburn wrote to her in 1975, “Isn’t it wonderful that you’ve had such a great career, when you had no right to have a career at all?”
Mae West: The Sex Symbol vs the Code
In 1930s Hollywood, Mae West was a terrifying prospect. Here was a woman who really owned her status as a sex symbol, and used it to make pointed remarks about America’s fear of sex. And it was that fear which ruined her career.
From a young age Mae West was well aware of how she appeared. “I’d always look at myself in the reflection of the store windows to see how I’d look,” said Mae, “I never wanted to be seen carrying a big, ugly package—only pretty, little ones tied with ribbons.” Her father had been a boxer, and her mother was a corset model. The combination of those two things is exactly how I think of Mae: she was a fighter, dressed in a corset.
Mae performed from almost the very start of her life. At age five, she started winning amateur neighborhood talent shows, and by thirteen she was being paid to act on Broadway.
After years of performing, Mae decided to write her own play, under the pen name Jane Mast. She called it simply, Sex, being purposely provocative to grab attention. The play centered on a prostitute in Montreal, but it went deeper than that; it was a thoughtful look at how sex is treated as taboo. As if to prove her point, newspapers refused to run print ads for the play because of its title. But Mae was a smart businesswoman, and she went public saying that this was a form of censorship, knowing that the papers would cover her protest.
They did, giving her exactly the publicity she needed to engage audiences. The show was a hit and ran for 375 performances. But bowing to growing pressure from those who thought it was obscene, the show was raided by police in 1927. Mae West and around twenty cast members were arrested on charges of indecency. She refused to shut the show down, and in court, the judge
