Down and Dirty in Gower Gulch: Poverty Row Films Preserved by UCLA
- Damaged Lives
- USA/Canada1933
- Edgar G. Ulmer
- 61 DCP
- NR
- Poverty Row Films
Screening Dates
- April 18, 2019 8:30
- April 22, 2019 6:30
“Shocking! Sinful! Scandalous!” The first American movie made by Austrian émigré and future Poverty Row auteur Edgar G. Ulmer (director of 1945’s B‑noir masterpiece Detour) did long service on the exploitation circuit as something of a venereal-disease counterpart to Reefer Madness. Ostensibly a sex-education film—and underwritten by the Canadian Social Hygiene Council, which touted it as the first Canadian picture produced in Hollywood—it tells the melodramatic tale of a young shipping tycoon who contracts VD during a debauched night on the town, and then unwittingly passes it on to his innocent new bride. Damaged Lives was banned or censored in many U.S. jurisdictions, and circulated in various versions and under different titles. UCLA has restored the original pre-Code release version.
Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and the National Archives of Canada
preceded by
Hearst Metrotone News, Vol. 4, No. 252 • USA 1933 • 9 min. Short newsreel
Dancing on the Moon • USA 1935 • Dave Fleischer • 8 min. Color Classics cartoon