A very early example of what you descibed is included in a recently

discovered 1925 film called MOTHERHOOD: LIFE'S GREATEST MIRACLE directed by

Lita Lawrence, an otherwise unknown filmmaker.  It was discovered in a Waco

nursing home several years ago and restored by the Southwest Film/Video

Archives, an organization recently, and very unwisely, done away with by

Southern Methodist University.  It was screened at last month's SCS

Conference in Dallas.

 

It was a (fictional narrative) film designed to influence the attitudes of

American women about pregnancy and childbirth, specifically to encourage

them to go to the hospital to have their babies.  Obstetrics was becoming

more and more professionalized and hospitals were looking to capitalize on a

new form of service to women at a time when childbirth was still very risky

business.  Unfortunately, it was also a time when hospitals had not quite

come to grips with effective aseptic and antiseptic techniques that could

overcome the proximity of maternity wards to other areas of the hospital,

and maternal deaths from childbirth actually peaked in the 20s, usually from

infections brought on by operative interference in the childbirth process.

 

The film includes some footage of real hospitals, and according to the

archive's research, originally included a scene of actual childbirth.  This

reel was censored in the film's New York exhibition and has apparently been

lost.

 

To get to your point, however, the women in the film being wheeled into the

delivery room display no physical evidence of being pregnant.  Reminds me of

a Doris Day / Rock Hudson film I recently saw [LOVER COME BACK?] where they

were married as Day is being wheeled into the delivery room, also looking

decidedly not-pregnant.

 

Connie Shortes

University of Texas at Austin

Department of Radio-Television-Film

 

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