In an interesting post today over at The Verge about CGI nudity and digital stunt doubles, writer Lux Alptraum, drops an interesting little fact into her first paragraph. While addressing the long history related to nude body doubles, she mentions that “Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim stood in for actress Maureen O’Sullivan during a nude underwater ballet scene in Tarzan and His Mate.” I wasn’t familiar with the scene, so I checked out the link and was surprised at the beauty and technical achievement of the underwater scene from the 1934 movie — not to mention it contained five or six times the amount a nudity that would land an R rating by today’s MPAA standards.
The scene begins with Tarzan in full-on Alpha mode, tossing Jane into a river, her dress snagging on a branch and ripping off during her fall. Tarzan, in only his famous loincloth, dives in after his nude “mate” and the two have this playful swim, much of it underwater as they paw at each other’s feet and shoulders, eventually somersaulting through the water in lovely pirouettes, light from above reflecting off their skin against the murky backdrop of their bubbly stage. The scene could use some music, but otherwise it’s a perfect moment in what might be a terrible film — or maybe’s it’s great, I’ll have to find out. The nudity is there, and I’m sure you can see some more explicit bits if you freeze the video at the right moment, but it’s not tasteless or crude. Quite the opposite — it’s gorgeous. It’s easy to fall into that trap of “old movies are so conservative” routine, where we laugh at how wholesome and pure movies were before the mid- to late-1960s. That’s not always the case, as we see here with a scene that certainly defies puritan modesty, but also shows us something beautiful and not the least bit scandalous.
