If anyone checked the credentials of Elliot Forbes, he would have discovered that the speaker was the busiest man in the history of the lecture circuit, appearing 78 times a day in cities scattered from Maine to Oregon. There were actually 26 Elliot Forbeses, one for each roadshow, and Babb hired most of them from the ranks of retired or underemployed vaudeville comedians. They knew how to work crowds with a combination of earnestness, humor, and downhome "just folks" patter that would always crescendo at the moment when they held up two paperback books -- one called Man and Boy, the other called Woman and Girl -- and made a spiel for "a set of these vitally important books to be read in the privacy of your own home." Two women in nurse uniforms -- supposedly stationed in the theater to take care of people who fainted or had heart attacks -- would then pass among the crowd collecting money and distributing the volumes.
The books themselves were rehashes of venereal disease and pregnancy information that could be obtained at any public health agency. The Elliot Forbes speech was what is known in the carnival world as a "blowoff," long used in 10-in-one freak shows to hustle additional money from people who had already paid an admission price. In any good blowoff, there's the constant implication that the "good stuff" is in the attraction you haven't paid for yet -- in this case, the book. Forbes' main job was to sell the books, which frequently augmented the box-office take by as much as 50 percent. In 1957, for example, at a four-week showing of Mom and Dad in Baltimore, the box-office gross was $82,000, but 45,000 copies of the books were sold, resulting -- after deducting printing and expenses -- in a $31,000 additional profit.
The Busybody Villainess
After Forbes had left the stage and the money had been collected, the film would resume with our heroine sick to her stomach, sleeping late, and discovering that her clothes no longer fit her. (The actors never use the word "pregnant.") After a few scenes of dramatic desperation -- including an off-screen suicide attempt -- Joan's brother forces her to tell him the truth. Knowing he can't trust their straitlaced parents, he seeks advice from Carl Blackburn, a kindly teacher who was fired from the high school for teaching sex education and now sells insurance. After a night of agonizing, Blackburn calls on Joan's mother and informs her that "your daughter is going to have a baby."
The mother has been the busybody villainess of our story all along. As the member of a women's club that constantly crusades against public lewdness and drinking -- the same club that got the science teacher fired -- she believes that sex should never be discussed in the home. Her reaction to the news: "Who was the boy? I'll have him arrested."
"They didn't tell me his name," replies the defrocked teacher. "After all, why blame the boy?"
The hysterical mother demand to know who Blackburn would blame. "I'd blame you, Mrs. Blake," he replies, "you and every parent who neglects the sacred duty of telling their children the real truth. Why were your children afraid to come to you in their trouble? Why did they have to come to me for advice? Remember this, Mrs. Blake, when your children have to go to someone else for advice, you've fallen down from your job."
In the next scene Joan and Mrs. Blake are riding the train to Boston, where Joan will finish her pregnancy in secret under a doctor's care, but the grim faces of mother and daughter tell us all too plainly that their lives will never be the same.
Pickles and Beaver
At this point the story is, for all practical purposes, over. There's one point of minor suspense -- will Joan be OK and what will she do with the baby? -- but very little is made of that. In fact, the whole first 90 minutes has been a set-up for three films-within-the-film that everyone will remember long after they've left the theater.
With wife and daughter packed off to Boston, Mr. Blake is suddenly roused out of his blasé attitude and tells Blackburn that he intends to go to the school board and get him rehired. Now more than ever, "They need that class in social hygiene!" Cut to the principal's office where, in one of the more forced segues in screenwriting history, the returning teacher tells the principal, "I was talking with Mrs. Hayworth yesterday. You know, she's the sister of the famous Chicago specialist Dr. Ashley. She tells me he has some wonderful films explaining childbirth. But best of all, she says he's due here for a rest in October!"
"Do you suppose we could get him to talk to a small group like ours?" asks the principal.
"Well, I'll ask her to write to him about it. You never know until you try!"
In the next scene Blackburn is introducing Dr. John D. Ashley, an obstetrician, to a class of high school girls. Dr. Ashley has been kind enough to bring along some films made in his hospital. The first one is called The Facts of Life: An Explanation of Sex Cycles. An authoritative narrator begins: "Every girl should know the functions of the female body." Charts are revealed, showing the female menstrual cycle, drawings of the genital organs, how ovulation occurs, how spermatozoa impregnate an ovary, time-lapse depictions of the growing fetus, and then suddenly -- almost without warning -- graphic footage of a live birth!
The umbilical cord has scarcely been snipped before the second film commences: Modern American Surgery, in which a "famous American Surgeon" will perform a Caesarian section on-camera. In an operating theater full of white-masked attendants and spectators, we watch as the incision is made ("from pubis to umbilicus"), as layer after layer of the skin and womb are cut open, as water and other fluids spray wildly, and then as the baby is removed with forceps. The film lingers for the sewing up and a few injections "to relax the mother," followed by an encomium to "one of the great miracles of modern surgery."
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.12.10 @ 9:53PM|#
ns
CHEAPWOMEN UGG BOOTS|11.22.10 @ 2:55AM|#
However, the treatment Ugg Boots Outlet boots appropriate assistance to ensure their place on the face to achieve industry-wide architecture. This Sheepskin Boots Sale margin year term architect little use to access through the bodies of all the many added
Sheepskin Boots Sale|11.22.10 @ 3:00AM|#
When the cut on Ugg Boots On Sale boots, which actively actually feel able and carefully. Therefore, it has to talk Ugg Classic Boots On Sale boots,
Sheepskin Boots Sale|11.22.10 @ 3:02AM|#
Classic Ugg Sheepskin Boots Alpine types of access endless colors, all are favored in the world. In my opinion, anticipating the appearance favored is brown. Is an acute form aces and flexible color. On Sheepskin Ugg Boots the anniversary and any woman's wardrobe
Sheepskin Boots Sale|11.22.10 @ 3:03AM|#
and anniversary, it has the color, and the achievements arising from the appearance is enough effort itself accoutrement. Ugg Boots Online Store issues in this affectionate big crave this winter that the acceptance of Ugg Sheepskin Boots is extremely remote a bit