Was Norma Shearer really all that, though?

Mick Lasalle wrote a whole book about forgotten film actresses of the 30s, with a large focus on Shearer who was a HUGE star at the time. I've seen a fair number of her early films because the played them at pre-Code fests at the Roxie. They're mostly interesting for the kind of character she played, often a Divorcee, liberated, sophisticated etc.

I think that's my problem; I haven't seen very many pre-Code films. The few Shearer films I've seen have been from later in her career, and I just find that whole "elegant lady" style of performance unbearably stiff. I prefer the vitality of Bette Davis and Kate Hepburn.

I just netflixed The Women...next time I rent a classic, I might see if it's on cable first. I liked it, but did not feel the great LOVE of many movie fiends...uh, aficionados. But NS could be proud of that performance, though, I think. I like MD a lot.

I haven't seen very many pre-Code films

Kathy, pre-Code translates to roughly PG or PG-13 today. Very good at being risque without actually showing anything. (I've seen two recently, Bachelor Apartment and I think Christopher Strong, that imply nonmarital sexual relations by having the characters engage in an offscreen conversation while the camera holds steady on a lamp.)

Think early Mae West. Or anything with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

I mean, even adding Oliver Reed's face to Gladiator supposedly cost $3 million, and that was fake looking and in a couple scenes!

Note to producers: if you are going to create a freakishly creepy digital life mask of your recently departed elder statesman movie star and have it act in his stead, try to avoid doing so in scenes where his face will be shown in extreme close-up and therefore roughly the size of Godzilla's relative to the movie audience.

Oh, I'm familiar with the Code, but they just never showed that many pre-1933ish films on TV while I was growing up, and I really haven't taken that much of an effort to search them out. IIRC, the first Weismuller Tarzan film was pre-Code (wasn't Jane nude in the swimming scene in that film?), and I have seen that. (And, damn, did JW have a hot bod! My first exposure to what swimming can do for a physique.)

Take a look at some of the really early (19-teens) short films, and you'll see some pretty salacious stuff in comparison to later in the 1920s. The first Code in Hollywood, brought about by the Fatty Arbuckle trial (talk about a career that crashed and burned). When I was in HS, I read Moviola, which did a pretty good job of novelizing early Hollywood.

Oh, yes. Like the partial female nudity in Intolerance.

I just netflixed The Women...next time I rent a classic, I might see if it's on cable first. I liked it, but did not feel the great LOVE of many movie fiends...uh, aficionados.

I can vouch from personal experience that the proper way to view The Women is at the Castro theater with a crowd of very opinionated queens who hiss and holler during the opening credits. (Saving most of their ire for the child actress.)

I'll bet they are funnier than the movie! Which was pretty funny but gets less so as we come into the homestretch for the MGM Happy Ending. Maybe if I still believed in happy endings...

Also, I tend to think that Empire dresses are a lot more flattering to round people than to stick-shaped ones. If you dont't got no boobies, there's nothing else the dress shows off, you know?

From way back, because Jilli was not here to say it: empire dresses are not flattering to most round people. Empire dresses have the distinct habit of making round people look rounder, and possibly as if they're starring in the next round of Ready to Pop porn vids.

Slender women with a B or C cup can pull them off, but that's about it.