Damaged Lives
4.8 /10 1 Votes
Story by Eugene Brieux Language English | 4.6/10 IMDb Genre Drama Duration Country Canada, USA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Screenplay Edgar G. Ulmer, Donald Davis Cast Diane Sinclair (Joan Bradley), Lyman Williams (Donald Bradley Jr.), Harry Myers (Nat Franklin), (Laura Hall), Jason Robards Sr. (Dr. Bill Hall), (Elise Cooper)Similar movies All Ladies Do It , The Key , The Voyeur , Zandalee , The Boy Next Door , A Little Chaos Tagline His life of debauchery brought disease to his wife! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Damaged Lives is a 1933 Canadian/American Pre-Code exploitation film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. The screenplay is based on the French play Les Avariés (1901) by Eugène Brieux.
Contents
The film was shot at General Service Studios, Hollywood for the Canadian Social Health Council and premiered in Toronto.
Damaged Lives was initially released in Canada and a few cities in the United States but was stopped by censors in most American towns. In 1937 the film was re-released as The Shocking Truth with a 29-minute supplementary lecture on VD added onto the end of the film to satisfy censors. Most current video releases do not include this extra material.
Along with the controversial subject matter, the film is also noteworthy for containing one of the earliest filmed nude scenes in a sequence where a group of fun-loving women strip naked and go skinny dipping.
Damaged lives 1933 edgar g ulmer
Plot summary
The film involves an extramarital encounter that leads the wife of the main character into killing herself and her husband.
A boss insists that a young executive, with an important job and a long term girlfriend, go out with him to a party and while out at the party he sleeps with a young wealthy woman, Elise (Charlotte Merriam), and contracts a dangerous venereal disease from her. The girlfriend is so upset that she commits suicide.
Cast
Production
Filmed in 1933, this cautionary tale was distributed under the name Weldon Pictures, because Columbia did not want to be associated with the topic of the film. The end title of the Internet Archive print says the film was an Educational Film Exchanges, Inc. release.
Although some scenes in the film were cut by state film censor boards in Maryland and Ohio, it was still very popular in the United States. For example, in Baltimore 65,000 persons, representing approximately 10% of the population, saw the film.
References
Damaged Lives WikipediaDamaged Lives IMDb Damaged Lives themoviedb.org