Constance Allen naked in Elysia (1933)

Elysia is another film about nudist camps, and is available on the same Blu-Ray as Unashamed, which I covered earlier. It is a pseudo-documentary with a minor fictional overlay. It appears that Constance Allen plays the only fictional character in the film, “Prudence Kent.” If IMDb’s info is correct, the other characters play themselves. For example, the guy playing the director of the nudist camp is putatively the actual director of Elysia, and Elysia is an actual nudist camp.

As somebody noted in comments section of the Unashamed article, Elysia is in the public domain and most of it is online.

I collected some newspaper clips about the beautiful Constance Allen. You can read them all if you like. I placed them in a .zip file if you’re interested. The articles include some photographs.

Here is a quick summary of what the articles say:

• There is no information about her prior to November, 1933, when she won a beauty contest in the L.A., area.
• She was either 19 or 20 in November-December of 1933, when this film was released. (Sources vary. I assume 19 is correct, since that age is cited in legal proceedings regarding her contract negotiations)
• She promoted this film diligently, appearing live after screenings to answer questions, mostly about nudism and the camp, but also about beauty tips, and I suppose anything else she was asked about.
• The film was quite a cult hit, playing in a single theater, selling out every night for several weeks.
• RKO was impressed enough with her beauty and work ethic to offer her a one year contract for $300 per week, a lot of money in 1933, during the nadir of the Depression. According to the inflation calculator that’s equivalent to $7,000 per week in 2024. (And in terms of some buying power, it’s worth even more than today’s $7,000. For example, one could buy a brand-new Ford for $300 then. The average blue-collar worker made $21 per week. The average major league ballplayer made $6000 per year – less than half of Ms. Allen’s pay.)
• I hope she saved that money, because nothing came of her career. Per IMDb, she has no other film credits, and the only other mention of her after 1933 is a picture in July of 1935 that shows her as an extra in a cheesy pirate-themed festival in Santa Barbara. (Her RKO contract would have expired in December of 1934, and apparently was not renewed. I assume her 1934 work consisted of crowd scenes and other such insignificant assignments.)