Baby Face (1933)

Although the Production Code had not been enforced in 1933, the studios still had local censor boards to contend with. One of the most powerful was that of New York, who took one look at Baby Face and rejected it in its entirety. With Joe Breen’s assistance, Warners cut and partially reshot the movie, using out-takes to get out of Stanwyck’s unavailability. Gone were the references to Nietzche (“use men to get the things you want!”), gone was a scene where a lecherous speakeasy customer gropes Lily’s breasts before she clonks him over the head with a bottle, gone was the scene where Lily and former maid Chico (Theresa Harris) get a free ride in a box car by means of Lily’s offering sexual favours to a guard. In was a new, explicitly moralistic ending. Even this modified form, Baby Face was too much for the prudish, and along with Convention City and The Story of Temple Drake was one of the first films to be withdrawn from American cinemas the following year. (By contrast, all three were passed by the BBFC, albeit with cuts of an unknown extent.)

In 2004, Library of Congress curator Mike Mashon was requested to strike a new print for showing at the London Festival. To his surprise, Mashon discovered a duplicate negative of Baby Face that was several minutes longer than the existing one. And so the pre-release version of Baby Face was rediscovered. (The uncensored version remained lost until 2004, when it resurfaced at a Library of Congress film vault in Dayton, Ohio. George Willeman is credited with the discovery.)

Source thedigitalfix

Added to the National Film Registry in 2005