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Baby Face (film)
1933 film by Alfred E. Green / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Baby Face is a 1933 American pre-Code-enforcement drama film directed by Alfred E. Green for Warner Bros., starring Barbara Stanwyck as Lily Powers, and featuring George Brent. Based on a story by Darryl F. Zanuck (under the pseudonym Mark Canfield), Baby Face portrays an attractive young woman who uses sex to advance her social and financial status. Twenty-five-year-old John Wayne appears briefly as one of Powers's lovers.
Baby Face | |
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Directed by | Alfred E. Green |
Screenplay by | Gene Markey Kathryn Scola |
Story by | "Mark Canfield" (Darryl F. Zanuck)[1] |
Produced by | William LeBaron Raymond Griffith |
Starring | Barbara Stanwyck George Brent |
Cinematography | James Van Trees |
Edited by | Howard Bretherton |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
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Running time | 76 minutes 71 minutes (censored version)[1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $187,000[2] |
Box office | $452,000[2] |
Marketed with the salacious tagline "She had it and made it pay",[3] the film's open discussion of sex made it one of the most notorious films of the Pre-Code Hollywood era[4] and helped bring the era to a close as enforcement of the code became stricter beginning in 1934. Mark A. Vieira, author of Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood [5] has said, "Baby Face was certainly one of the top 10 films that caused the Production Code to be enforced."[6] In 2005, Baby Face was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures to be added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.[7][8]