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Interestingly enough, these “Baby Burlesque” films were the least of early Hollywood’s offenses. In fact, the US government came very close to forming a committee to begin censoring films if Hollywood didn’t clean up its act on its own accord.

So it cleaned up, mostly.

Prior to the Hayes Office enforcing its Production Code, however, silent films and talkies managed to get away with quite a few antics that public access stations would never think of broadcasting even to this day. Frontal nudity, rape, brutal murders, drug use, slavery, racism, child exploitation, you name it. One excellent resource for controversial pre-Code films is FilmSite’s “Sex in Cinema” series, which covers not only the obvious, but also other topics such as racism and prejudice in the early 20^th century.

This was, in part, a reflection of the Golden Age of Hollywood. In Brownlow’s “The Parade’s Gone By”, we see the factors that helped shape the industry as we know it. Realizing the potential for the budding industry of film, production companies moved its crews out to California in part for the optimal lighting conditions (with an average of 290 sunny days per year), but also to get away from Thomas Edison. During the turn of the century, Edison controlled nearly all the patents necessary to create a film. In order to avoid patent lawsuits, independent filmmakers simply put enough distance between the production sets and New York City that if they ever caught wind of Edison’s agents moving in to investigate, they would simply pack up and move the sets to Mexico until things blew over.

Once the money began rolling in, the industry needed to tap a talent pool. The most obvious candidates were vaudeville and stage actors from New York and Chicago. During that time, however, acting was frowned upon, especially for women. To put it delicately, it was seen as a prostitute’s day job. As such, actors were generally poor, lower class individuals with all the vices that generally come with such a crowd. Throw in ludicrous amounts of money and it’s a recipe for the type of debauchery that LA is famous for.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that goes on in Hollywood that would have caused a silent film star to bat an eyelash. No sex orgy too depraved, no drug that hadn’t been injected, and no murder too violent. This, of course, shocked good, God-fearing Americans from coast to coast. Apparently they were so shocked that they continued shell out money every week for the dirt rags that made William Randolph Hearst wealthy so that they could continue reading about the nearly-mythical behavior of their favorite stars.

Once again, it bears repeating: absolutely nothing has changed.

It’s the immediate protest of many people. We’re not necessarily even talking about children, either. Full grown adults forsaking a half century of cinema because they want pretty colors. Silver Screenings attempts to show that there’s more to black and white films than “Leave it to Beaver.” Each week will see two reviews of classics in genres ranging from drama, romance, crime, and others. The only criteria? They must be edgy and interesting, even by today’s standards.

Occasionally standing in for a review will be an essay concerning the making of early films and their impact on society. It will soon become quite evident that little has changed behind and in front of the silver screen in the past century.

Without any further delay, sit back and enjoy the show.