1. Like you say, they never came out and said she was a prostitute.
2. John Ford had a lot of pull as a director.
3. Claire Trevor was (along with the rest of the cast) fantastic.
The censors were too busy with GWTW....Damn.
Similar to Marlene Dietrich in “Destry Rides Again,” with James Stewart. Same year. Must have been a good one for frontier ladies of ill repute.
Didn’t they similarly have Belle Watling in GWTW put in a positive light despite her obvious line of work ?
From the TCM website:
“The Breen Office [aka The Hays Office], the censorship watchdog in Hollywood, rejected Dudley Nichols’ treatment because of the story’s sympathetic portrayal of the prostitute Dallas, Doc Boone’s constant drunkenness, the Ringo Kid’s thirst for revenge and the marshal’s involvement in some deaths. Nichols’ first draft script took the Breen Office suggestions to heart and the production went ahead without further objections from the censors.”
Hmm, I was just watching El Dorado with JW, James Caan and Robert Mitchum a week ago on Blu Ray and EVERY woman in that movie was outrageously hot, including the mexican cantina girls.
I read that while filming the popular series, “Gunsmoke”, in the 1950’s, they had to stop showing the “girls” going up the stairs (in the Long Branch Saloon) with guys, because of the “optics” of it.
That was about 30 years after “Stagecoach”.
Of course, I’m sure the censors were a bit more strict for TV, than for the movie theaters.
1939, the best year for movies EVA!
They never said Miss Kitty ran a whore house inside the Longbranch but everyone knew she did.
The character was called a “floozy” in the TCM summary of the 1960’s remake when Ann Margaret played the part. And “dance hall girls” was the universal description in every cowboy movie I saw while I was growing up.
It never occurred to me that the girls were prostitutes. Boys were cowboys and the girls couldn’t all be schoolmarms, you know. Not enough school houses...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031971/trivia
“The Breen Office, the censorship watchdog in Hollywood, rejected Dudley Nichols treatment because of the story’s sympathetic portrayal of the prostitute Dallas, Doc Boone’s constant drunkenness, the Ringo Kid’s thirst for revenge and the marshal’s involvement in some deaths. Nichols’s first draft script took the Breen Office suggestions to heart and the production went ahead without further objections from the censors.”
Stagecoach has nothing on the 1961 movie The “Last Sunset” starring Rock Hudson & Kirk Douglas. Incest. Cuckoldry. Suicide. This movie really slipped by the censors.
Well, at least someone has found a diversion from the usual junk we are bombarded with every day. Why not?
Kind of like Kitty being a “madam” on Gunsmoke? Well, what else were the saloons for besides going there to get drunk and get shot? Never explicitly said but ~~~~~~~~~~!
The Hayes commission had very flexible rules
Moreover why do you care?
The oldest profession....
It's clear that Dallas is a prostitute, and that she's headed for the red light district, because she's convinced that she has nowhere else to go, when Ringo stops her and lets her know that he wants her for his wife. I'm sure that was shocking to 1939 audiences, but there was no explicit talk, no obscene language, no sex scenes. The subject matter was handled elegantly, as well as sympathetically. Maybe that's how they got it past the censors.
I love the way, as they traveled further westward, East Coast traditions and prejudices were one by one discarded until, at the frontier, her having been a prostitute was hardly even a consideration.
As I recall, she had been pressed into prostitution by circumstances. It think that was not uncommon in the Wild West.
If made today, Hollywood would make it a skin flick, with as much gross language and explicit sex as they could cram onto the screen. Hollywood is a cesspool today.
bump
Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the brief era in the American film industry between the widespread adoption of sound in pictures in 1929 and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines, popularly known as the "Hays Code", in mid-1934. Although the Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1, 1934, with the establishment of the Production Code Administration (PCA). Before that date, movie content was restricted more by local laws, negotiations between the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and the major studios, and popular opinion, than by strict adherence to the Hays Code, which was often ignored by Hollywood filmmakers.
As a result, some films in the late 1920s and early 1930s depicted or implied sexual innuendo, miscegenation, mild profanity, illegal drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, intense violence, and homosexuality. Strong female characters were ubiquitous in such pre-Code films as Female, Baby Face, and Red-Headed Woman. Gangsters in films like The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, and Scarface were seen by many as heroic rather than evil. Along with featuring stronger female characters, films examined female subject matters that would not be revisited until decades later in US films. Nefarious characters were seen to profit from their deeds, in some cases without significant repercussions, and drug use was a topic of several films. Many of Hollywood's biggest stars such as Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell, and Edward G. Robinson got their start in the era. Other stars who excelled during this period, however, like Ruth Chatterton (who decamped to England) and Warren William (the so-called "king of Pre-Code", who died in 1948), would wind up essentially forgotten by the general public within a generation.
The biggest audience for the more sexually lurid movies turned out to be women.