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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