Review of War Babies

War Babies (1932)
Sex, Abstracted
24 June 2005
Yesterday, I commented on the first of this type of short: "Runt Page," which incidentally was Shirley Temple's first part. This is effectively the last baby one: they didn't seem to work that well with audiences and this one was hit by a child porn suit.

"Runt Page" was a takeoff of "Front Page," featuring 4 year olds in diapers as all the characters, except with adult voices.

In this case, we have no specific movie spoofed, the child voices are used and the girls aren't topless. Also there's the token "negro" kid (called "boy") who grins and dances.

The story is simple: Charmaine (Shirley) is a French tart in a bar at the front. A good half of the movie is her dancing suggestively, including a butt shimmy when ice cream is dripped down her back. A typical tart, she shifts her attention to the bloke with the most gifts, here lollipops.

Two soldiers vie for her attentions, shown by on screen kissing. The shocker comes at the end: all the soldiers are called away and the two have to say goodbye to their gal. They confront each other — after a scene where she is hugging one and secretly kissing the second.

Alert viewers will note that when she comes out to say goodbye, her diaper pin is missing.

The first says something to the effect that "she's my girl," and the second says "oh yeah?" and shows he has Charmaine's diaper pin. (All the pins in these are 8 inches or so big but hers is 12 inches and has a ribbon on it.) Obviously, he's "been in her pants."

Its pretty smarmy stuff that most of the audience would have thought merely cute at the time.

Now the question is: what are we watching now that we think is cutely funny that our grandchildren will consider repulsive?

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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