Baby Face (film)

Baby Face is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Alfred E. Green for Warner Bros. Based on a story by Darryl F. Zanuck, Baby Face is about an attractive young woman who uses sex to advance her social and financial status. The film’s open discussion of sex made it one of the most notorious films of the Pre-Code Hollywood era.

About Baby Face (film) in brief

Summary Baby Face (film)Baby Face is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Alfred E. Green for Warner Bros. starring Barbara Stanwyck as Lily Powers. The film’s open discussion of sex made it one of the most notorious films of the Pre-Code Hollywood era and helped bring the era to a close as enforcement of the code became stricter beginning in 1934. 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 in 2005. Based on a story by Darryl F. Zanuck, Baby Face is about an attractive young woman who uses sex to advance her social and financial status. Twenty-five-year-old John Wayne plays a supporting role as one of Powers’ lovers. It is strongly implied that she has sex with him to change his mind. Lily’s father is killed when his still explodes. She and her African-American co-worker and best friend Chico hop a freight train to New York City, but are discovered by a railroad worker who threatens to have them thrown in jail. She seduces the personnel worker to land a job.

Her subsequent rise through the building symbolizes her progress in sleeping her way to the top. Lily begins an affair with Jimmy McCoy Jr. , who recommends her for promotion to his boss, Brody. Brody and Lily are caught in flagrante delicto by a rising young executive, Ned Stevens. Lily claims Brody forced himself on her. Lily claims she had no idea Ned was engaged and that he was her first boyfriend. Lily seduces J. P., and he installs her in a lavish apartment, with Chico as her maid, but she spurns him. He later returns to her apartment to ask her to marry him, but finds J.  P. there. Courtland Trenholm, the grandson of Gotham Trust’s founder and a notorious playboy, is elected bank president to handle the resulting scandal. Lily tells them she is a victim of circumstance who merely wants to make an honest living. The board offers her USD 15,000 to withhold her diary, but Courtland instead offers her a position at the bank’s Paris office.