VI. CostumePart one of article six of the Production Code (that would be the ominous Costume section) states unambiguously that nudity is out. So don't get curious yellow, blue or any other colors of the spectrum. But before the Production Code nudity was most decidedly in. It wasn't rampant (hell it isn't now) so don't go expecting to find nests of naked bodies in pre-code cinema but it was shown occasionally and many movies even shot scenes twice, once with nudity, once without, depending on where in the country or the world the movie was being shown. The great documentary The Love Goddesses (1965) shows several scenes from films in the twenties that were shot this way, allowing the viewer glimpses at rare stills of stars such as Adolphe Menjou surrounded by topless waitresses in a casino.
In researching nudity in film one is well advised to take the entries of Wikipedia and IMDB 
with a grain of salt as both are slightly misleading with their information. The film most often given credit for being the first to show female nudity (that wasn't pornographic) is Inspiration, released in 1915. Oh I almost forgot - released November 18, 1915. Running a little under an hour in length and concerning the story of a sculptor seeking the ideal subject to model for him, it featured star Audrey Munson in the nude as that ideal model (she would go nude again as a model the following year in Purity). Wikipedia states, "It is notable for being the first American film to feature nudity" and IMDB tells us in the trivia section for Inspiration, "Generally cited as the first non-pornographic American film to feature nudity." There's just one problem with this. It wasn't. In another section of Wikipedia, dealing with the subject of nudity on film in general they get it right by stating, "Audrey Munson appeared in the first American film to feature nudity by a leading actor, Inspiration." The key word there being "leading." However, Wikipedia then fails to state (and IMDB too for that matter) what is the first non-pornographic film to feature female nudity period, whether by a lead or not. Don't worry, that's why I'm here. The first non-pornographic film to feature nudity was The Hypocrites, also released in 1915 but in January of that year, beating out Inspiration by a good ten months. It also ran for five reels and oddly enough also featured nudity in a sexless way - in the form of a nude used as a transitional motif within the film.
But no film of the period could beat an epic of nudity released in 1916, Daughter of the Gods. It used 20,000 extras, 220,000 feet of film and took eight months to shoot. It ran for over 
three hours and featured star Annette Kellerman (who Esther Williams would later play in Million Dollar Mermaid) in the nude during a waterfall scene. And it is now completely lost. Not partially lost like large segments of Greed (1924). Completely lost. There is no known print in existence. How the hell does something that big, that expensive, that notorious get lost? But I digress. In this case, IMDB's trivia page outdoes itself for inaccurate information with this doozy: The scene on the waterfall was the first in movie history to be done completely in the nude. The following year nudity in film was banned in the united states.
Why it's a veritable cornucopia of wrongness. Let's take it in two parts.
One, the nude scene was not the first in history to be done completely in the nude. If you can find any articles of clothing on the models in The Hypocrites and Inspiration please let me know. I must not be seeing them.
Two, nudity was not banned a year later. In fact, it was never banned. The Production Code was a self-imposed, self-enforced set of guidelines that the studios went along with starting in 1934. And the government certainly never banned it. Not even for pornography. The Supreme Court and Lower Court rulings that have stood on pornography in the twentieth century centered on distribution of obscene items through the mail and sales to minors - not the outlawing of pornography itself. So whoever wrote that little line of trivia is definitely someone you do not want on your team at the next All-Star Movie Trivia Challenge.
Later, stars like Clara Bow would appear nude in films (Hula 1927) and Hedy Kiesler, who would move to Hollywood and become Hedy Lamarr, would bare her breasts in Ekstase (1933) before Joseph Breen actually convinced the studios to start following the production code whereby it all came to a screeching halt.
Now I know what you're thinking. All this talk of nudity seems a bit gender biased. When was 
the first male nudity shown on the screen? To that I would answer, "You are aware that men ran Hollywood right? So lots of naked ladies, no naked men." Many films from the period featured the buttocks of actors (notably Lew Ayres diving into a lake in All Quiet on the Western Front) but there doesn't appear to be (outside of pornographic film, documented as far back as 1900) any full frontal shots of a lead actor or otherwise in a mainstream Hollywood production in the pre-code era. Sort of the opposite of a "members only" club. In fact, no members at all. I guess you could say the penis got the shaft (okay, I'll stop). After the code we would get male nudity in Women in Love (1969), Medium Cool (1969) and Zabriskie Point (1970) but during and before the code it just wasn't there.
So there you have it. The sexless, bland history of nudity in pre-code mainstream Hollywood productions. If you haven't seen any of the films I'm discussing, trust me when I tell you there is little that is titillating in pre-code nudity. It was always presented in tasteful and tactful ways. However, violence was presented then and now with an unbridled passion. But that never seemed to bother the censors as much. Mainstream Middle-America has always believed that showing a woman's vagina or a man's penis signals the end of the world for our wholesome family values while violence makes for pure red-blooded entertainment. There's a whole post that could be done on that alone. Is it because of repression, denial or just good old fashioned cowardice? Probably a little of all three but I'm with the group that thinks they're more afraid than anything else.
Curious. Yellow.
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