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Pam's avatar

It makes me so happy to see that The Hays Code utterly failed you. And if it failed you, it's probably safe to say it failed a lot of people. I consider that a good thing. Will Hays' 36 rules for "decency" in cinema resulted in some nonsensical movies but for the most part, sharpened Hollywood writers' skill with double entendre...which was clearly not lost on the child version of you!

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Arnold Rosen's avatar

Pam, you obviously know all about this, have you written about it? It triggered another memory, which I just dated (via the Internet) to 1950. (The years, 1949-50, when I was 6 or 7, was clearly the height of my ‘movie impressionable’ period, and also a time when the ‘child version’ of me had no trouble understanding a writer’s double entendre.)

My brother Don, then about 15 or 16, who knew I always stayed for the regular feature, solemnly said to me, “Arnold, I don’t want you to stay and see so-and-so.” At the time, I forgot the name. A few weeks later, I noticed I was watching a black and white movie about women in prison. I had no trouble seeing the lesbian themes but found it rather unexciting overall. I remember thinking, “No, this couldn’t be the movie Don told me not to see. It’s too tame.”

Wikipedia pegged it for me: “Caged is a 1950 American women-in-prison film noir directed by John Cromwell and starring Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead… It was nominated for three Academy Awards… The studio had originally intended the film to be a vehicle for Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but reportedly Davis had said she did not want to make a ‘dyke movie’ (a film with lesbian content) and turned it down.”

I find that I can reconstruct my childhood using the Internet to unearth the movies I saw at the time. They may be fossils but they left their imprint. As a retired psychiatrist I cannot fail to be interested. Best to you, Mark and Jacob. Arnie

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