Since my dissertation was on early sound comedy, I can't help but put my two cents worth into this discussion. There are many examples of truly remarkable sexual innuendos in the pre-code crackdown period. A few favorites of mine: In GOLD DUST GERTIE, there is a scene involving two couples sitting down on park benches, one single, the other married. They do not realize the benches are painted so that when they get up, the married couple has stripes of black paint along the back of their clothes. When the single couple get up, we see not only black paint but a hand print on the woman's butt. This joke thus leaves little to the imagination. In DIPLOMANIACS, six men and two women are seated on the branch of a tree when one of the woman proposes that they should all have sex. The mind boggles at the possabilities, many of which can not be seen in Madonna's new book. In SO THIS IS AFRICA, Wheeler and Woolsey are locked into a hut together. Wheeler is dressed in drag and the natives assume that they are a married couple. They demand that they have a "honeymoon together" and Wheeler glibly begins discussing "how far we should go" on our honeymoon. Of course, such jokes are not totally absent from later films. W.C. Fields made a carrier out of pussy jokes, calling the saloon in THE BANK DICK the Black Pussy and having a spate of kittens emerge from between the legs of a beautiful woman in INTERNATIONAL HOUSE. I can list more examples. We haven't even mentioned Mae West in this discussion but the point is made. Early sound films are far from innocent, filled with scatological references and more than a few jokes about homosexuality as well as straight sex. I find showing some of these scenes usually surprises my students who somehow got the impression that their generation invented sex or at least anything other than the missionary position. --Henry Jenkins