Sex
About Sex
Adrienne Renault, star of the Midnight Follies, performs a Spider Dance for the married millionaire Philip Overman. His wife hires a detective, begs Adrienne to let him go, and then divorces him. Adrienne marries another millionaire, Dick Wallace, who leaves her for her protégée Daisy, the girl Adrienne had trained to chase rich husbands. Adrienne sails for Europe on the same ship as the Overmans, now remarried, and does not interfere.
Cast & crew
More about Sex
Fred Niblo directed. C. Gardner Sullivan wrote it. J. Parker Read produced it, with Thomas H. Ince also credited as producer. Charles J. Stumar photographed it. It opened on 29 March 1920 and runs 87 minutes. The Pennsylvania censor board would not pass it under the title Sex. In that state it was called Sex Crushed to Earth.
Themes
Background
A March 1920 drama released while state boards were still licensing pictures one title at a time.
Making
The title itself was the censor fight. Pennsylvania forced a new name. Read treated the objections as an attack on a whole line of his productions.
Look
Charles J. Stumar shot the Spider Dance, the party, and the ship.
Notes
- Louise Glaum plays Adrienne. William Conklin plays Philip Overman. Myrtle Stedman plays his wife. Irving Cummings plays Dick Wallace.
- The closing title reads: 'The standards of morality eternally demand that the naked soul of Sex be stripped of its falsehoods – which can only be atoned for through bitter tears.'
- Read had already made a run of films on sexual themes. He answered the row by saying that cutting sex out of pictures would cut out a part of life.
- A Hagerstown, Maryland, exhibitor defended the booking on the grounds of its social argument.
Scenes
- Adrienne dances in the spider costume for Overman in his box.
- Mrs. Overman asks her to give him up and is refused.
- Adrienne sees the Overmans together on the ship and leaves them alone.
Quotes
The standards of morality eternally demand that the naked soul of Sex be stripped of its falsehoods – which can only be atoned for through bitter tears.
