AKA “The Unashamed”
As requested, I’ve updated this post with many film clips (most of the nudity including everything from the major characters), and the following captures:
Emily Todd
Lucille Shearer
Rae Kidd
Wikipedia notes:
Rae Kidd (June 15, 1917 – April 2, 1962) was an American film actress who played the lead role (of Rae Lane) in the controversial nudist film The Unashamed (1938). The film has been studied for its commentary on race, class and the possibility of idylls within 20th Century life. Rae claimed to be a descendant of the pirate William “Captain” Kidd.
F This Movie did a long article about this film. Excerpts follow:
Rae Lane (Rae Kidd) is concerned about her boss Robert Lawton (Robert Stanley) and his obsession with sickness. Robert has been to every quack doctor and taken every miracle cure, all to no avail. Rae harbors a secret crush on Robert and wishes he could overcome his hypochondria and his seeming aversion to her “dark-skinned features.” Benevolent Dr. Malvin suggests some time in a nudist colony would do Robert a world of good. Robert takes this advice and upon arriving at the camp is surprised to discover Rae, a longtime member. Free of the stress of the workaday world and all of his clothes, Robert abandons his many medications and begins to heal. Robert and Rae are the cutest couple in camp. They do everything together in the nude: swimming, golfing, playing volleyball, and practicing archery. Careful with those arrows, sister!
Heiress-on-the-run Barbara Pound (Lucille Shearer) hides in the nudist camp to escape police detectives. Barbara is blonde and pale. Robert develops a crush on Barbara, and they begin to swim, golf, volley, and archer together in the altogether. This literally leaves Rae out in the cold. How will this nekkid love triangle/early civil rights battle be resolved?
At the end of the film, the character of Rae Lane, distraught because she believes that she has lost Robert’s love for good, climbs to the top of the highest peak at the nudist camp—and JUMPS. This might just be the only “nudie cutie” film to end with the cutie committing suicide. And Rae, as the female lead, is arguably the most sympathetic and attractive character in the film! Talk about a good old-fashioned 1930s boner shrinker. (Or in the parlance of the time, “it puts the kibosh on the ol’ palooka-paddle.”)
85 years later and this would be scene of the year material.
This should get an honorary scene of the year award. She is a stone babe in any era. And six feet tall, too!
You’ll never go wrong with the classics. And could you even film this today?
Congrats on the most idiotic comment I’ve read today.
Finally, some recognition! Thanks, I do one thing, I like to think I do it well.
If you just looked around streaming, you’d find that there is a ton of this being filmed today. It’s just that it isn’t coming from big Hollywood studios, but neither were the nudist films made back then. Big Hollywood hardly ever makes stuff like this, it’s rare when they dabble in low budget sexploitation. Usually when they do sex-related stuff they have to make it seem serious and often not very sexy. They pull out the real sexy stuff when they either see a quick chance to make some big profits or they are scared of some new competition.
Now that the Fox corporation has a very small footprint in this country, they are doing some interesting things with Tubi. They bought it very cheap and it is growing very fast. Since Fox has nothing much to lose in the US at this point, they are free to be aggressive in new kinds of programming. They don’t create much original content on it, at least as this point, but they allow all kinds of productions to be put on there that Hollywood studios would not do. Amazon Prime allows a lot of productions that wouldn’t be picked by others as well. As time goes by, we will probably see more of these big players start allowing some things to be put on that “couldn’t be made in Hollywood today”. They are just checking their earnings reports to see when it makes the most sense. The biggest media companies will be the last to change as they still make very good profits off their existing customer base and don’t want to cannibalize that anymore than they have to.
There is a tone of this being filmed today on the streaming platform? Where? Which? I find that the new independent genre movies on the platforms are highly sanitized. Like, almost every single one of them. Where are you looking?
It’s funny who ends up in these early sexploitation movies. There’s one called “How to Undress in Front of Your Husband” which starred Elaine Barrie, who was then married to John Barrymore! Surprisingly, her co-star in the movie was noted vaudeville actress Trixie Fraganza, who was also a suffragette. There isn’t much in the way of nudity though. Elaine Barrie shows her bare back and wore a sort of see-thru negligee. Trixie, on the other hand, bares her breasts, which was fortunately (or unfortunately if you happen to prefer big girls) censored. You can watch the whole thing on youtube.
There’s also another sexploitation film called “Escort Girl” which starred former silent film star and Oscar nominated actress Betty Compson. It also happens to be the film debut of Cyd Charisse in an uncredited role as a flamenco dancer. Unfortunately, Cyd keeps her clothes on and the only sort of nudity is an uncredited pasty-wearing stripper. This is also on youtube.
Beautiful woman.. great nudity. Wow.
I love History
This is spectacular! Sounds like there could be more scenes worth seeing. Any chance of a link to watch the whole film?
I couldn’t find it on the web or the torrents, but I ordered a copy from Amazon, so I’ll cover it in the next day or two.
Wow. Great stuff. Never even heard of the film before. Rae is gorgeous.
She’s an absolute knockout, this is a great find
Stunning face and amazing body on her. She would definitely be conspired hot AF even today. Well made movie overall. Kudos to the director for making sure everyone in the film was attractive. Even the secondary players are nice to look at.
If anyone knows, if the hays code was in effect, I assume this was not distributed in the US at the time?
Without the seal of approval, I suppose it was distributed to independent theaters. The MPPDA supported the Code, and all the big studios agreed not to distribute films without the seal (and in 1938 the five largest studios also owned most of the theaters), but there were small arthouse and grindhouse theaters that survived outside the system, and some films traveled across the United States in “roadshow” fashion.
Remember, the Hays Code wasn’t a law, but a self-imposed industry guideline, so tiny film producers outside the industry umbrella could distribute films without the seal to independent theaters in states with liberal attitudes toward censorship. You can bet that Unashamed was not seen in many parts of the South, if any, given both nudity to offend the Baptists and miscegenation to offend the racists. I’d guess that it appeared in a small circuit of non-studio theaters in more tolerant states.
1934 was a benchmark year for censorship (Hays Code), but counter-intuitively, it was also a benchmark year for anti-censorship. It was the same year that the Supreme Court ruled that Ulysses was not obscene. Theoretically, therefore, films could not be prosecuted for obscenity if they had some redeeming artistic merit or social importance1. Thus, some nudity could appear in films distributed through producers and theaters functioning outside the industry agreement.
The eight major studios would not defy the Hays Code in either production or distribution, but there was still some activity elsewhere. I suppose the independent producers and theaters were not earning a lavish lifestyle, but apparently there was some money to be found under the industry’s seat cushions. There was SOME money, but I’d guess not very much because, because the nudist films disappeared just about completely for the entire decade of the forties. I don’t know the details, but I guess that the limited amount of money didn’t justify the constant legal hassles.
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Footnote 1 – Making it even more difficult to distribute nudie films, movies operated in a grey area of the obscenity laws from 1934 to 1952 because, despite the Ulysses ruling, many argued that the First Amendment didn’t give films the same protection as books! That seems difficult for us to believe in the 21st century, but it wasn’t until 18 years after United States v. One Book Called Ulysses that the Supreme Court finally stepped in to resolve the issue. In Burstyn v. Wilson, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that “motion pictures are a significant medium for the communication of ideas,” and thus under the blanket of the First Amendment.
Because the area was ill-defined, the nudist films were extremely cautious, as you can see in Unashamed, which shot and cut to prevent the exposure of genital areas, and avoided any overtly sexual contact. (I was surprised to see the scene where they fell asleep and she touched his hair while they were both naked. That must have been a shocker in 1938, even more so because she was a women of “mixed race” – or so her doctor told her!)
Thank for you this, Scoop. Now we have academic citations to use with the clips we’re downloading. (“It’s research, honey!”)
Great info, Scoop. Thanks for sharing this!
Somebody needs to colorize this film with the new coloring technology they now have. For reals!
Got a little obsessive and did a little research on Rae. She was 20 during filming, once divorced.She was involved with Rosslynn Cowen (who played the ventriloquist) and had been modelling for him. She was named in Cowen’s wife’s divorce suit, gave birth to at least one child before marrying him, finally stopping after 4 kids, then an early 50’s divorce. She died in a hospital after surgery at only 44. Her grave.
No results trying to find more on Lucille Shearer, though one article named her as Lucille Dickson.
A few years earlier,1933, another film was made at the same nudie resort, available online here.
I’m not sure why, but that version only runs 24 minutes and the film is 45 minutes long. (I have Elysia, but haven’t felt impelled to cover it. Maybe soon.)
For anyone interested, I colorized it.
FYI.. messing around with others, eg. Seydoux in French Dispatch. Requests are welcome.