Baby Face (1933): The Film That Terrified Hollywood by Charity Bishop

Released at the height of pre-Code Hollywood, Baby Face (1933) shocked audiences with its unapologetic portrayal of a woman who uses sexuality and ambition to escape abuse and poverty. Starring Barbara Stanwyck in one of her most fearless roles, the film became so controversial it helped hasten the Hays Code. Nearly a century later, Baby Face remains a fascinating study of power, survival, and whether redemption must always come with punishment.

In Old Hollywood, things were getting rowdy in the late 20s and early 30s, until one film became notorious, caused a scandal, and brought on the Hayes Code, a moral censorship board that prohibited similar films from being marketed to American audiences, out of concern for its immoral decline.

Baby Face is the story of an ambitious, hard-as-nails girl named Lily who works at her father’s speakeasy and has an apathetic attitude toward her potential. One of their regular customers urges Lily to embrace the power she has over men and to use it to her advantage, by living according to Nietzsche’s principles of unabashed, unapologetic, guiltless pursuit of what you want. It is music to Lily’s ears, since she has hooked for her father from the age of fourteen, and when he calls her a “tramp” for refusing to sleep with one of his customers, she fires back that if she is, what of it? He started her on this path!

From that moment on, Lily takes her life and sexuality into her own hands. After obtaining a ride to New York alongside her friend and maid Chico, she uses her charms and feminine wiles and body to climb the social ladder, one floor at a time. She starts at the bottom and before she’s done, has reached the penthouse. At each stop along the way, she sets up a man for a fall that lets her leap to the next “score” and even bigger wealth. But the day of reckoning comes when Lily must choose between all she has worked so hard to get and… the man in love with her.

Though tame by modern standards, at the time of this film’s release the subject matter (a woman using her sexuality to get ahead, implications of seduction, and her unapologetic ownership of both) was scandalous. Even though the censorship board allowed its release, the film had to make notable changes before it could hit theaters, including removing an early scene in which Lily seduces the man who tries to throw her off the train car, adding a moralistic spin on the advice her friend gives her (one must have principles, and not simply pursue whatever one wants), and a different ending in which she has a change of heart.

For many decades, that version of the film was the only one available to watch until they discovered the original, uncensored version and restored it as an important film in Hollywood history. I watched the uncensored film, which is more unapologetic and shocking in its implications and the harrowing life that lead Lily to this point (her father forcing her into underage prostitution).

SPOILERS. The original scripted ending had the story conclude after she has had a change of heart, but found her husband dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The restored ending includes her change of heart and an ambiguous promise of his potential survival (at which point, they must fight the criminal allegations against him together). In the ambulance, clutching his hand, she looks down at her fallen case of jewels, watches, and half a million dollars, and says it no longer matters. She has chosen love over monetary gain. END SPOILERS.

Many things stood out to me about this film, including Chico. Though a maid to Lily, the “colored girl” is her friend. She is not dismissed even when Lily’s lover wishes she would go; she aids, abets, and helps Lily on her climb to power, admires that “you get whatever you set your mind to”; and she appears dressed in furs, about to go out on Christmas day to a party—an implication that Lily gives her the same luxuries she provides herself. For a movie made in the 1930s, this is surprisingly progressive in its treatment of Chico as an equal in her white friend’s estimations, and as more important than the men that parade in and out of her life (among them, a very young John Wayne!).

Though the subject matter is eyebrow-raising and bold, it’s discreet by modern standards. Lily’s conquests are shown through the camera zooming up to a different window and finding her at a new desk, in a new office, wearing new, better clothes or sporting a more expensive hairstyle. She smiles, she infers, leads men through doors, and the audience knows what happened. Frankly, it’s a relief to see an old movie hide nothing, but be classy about it.

The setting is gorgeous, as are the costumes. We see Lily go from rags to riches, one department at a time, as she adds a little more glamour and riches on each floor. A piece of jewelry here, a diamond bracelet there, until finally she is wearing fur coats and jeweled cuffs. Barbara Stanwyck is phenomenal in the role. All coldness and ambition in some close-ups, and tender vulnerability in others, but forever seductive and beautiful. One can see why men trip over themselves to fall for her schemes, while the story seems to take a poke at them (“Oh, men are all the same,” bemoan the annoyed secretaries watching her wrap them around her little finger).

It surprised me how much I rooted for Lily, despite all the broken hearts and ruined lives she leaves along the way. Lily intentionally destroys the men in her life, breaks their hearts, and callously abandons them, sometimes causing violence in the meantime (they do not always appreciate being replaced and may shoot each other). Yet, I wanted to see her change, hoped she would truly fall in love, and felt the need to see her give up her self-serving, callous lifestyle and find her heart. I owe all of that to Barbara Stanwyck, who plays the role so convincingly and deeply that I felt Lily was “real.” A real girl who had been hurt, who had been abused, who turned things around and got whatever she wanted, by whatever means available… but who doesn’t have to live that way. It spoke to the idealist in me. I like the story even more for having given me hope of a happy ending. Not that her husband will live, though I hope he does, but knowing she has, at last, found out that what matters in life is not riches, but the people who love you.