All week we’ve been watching people disrobe without ever getting down to the skin. Today we’ll jump ahead to what happens once the clothing is removed–or, more accurately, what happens a couple of steps after the clothes have come off. It seems that in pre-Code era the act of taking a bath was considered to be either titillating or comedic. Since either of those feelings is good for movie scenes, there was plenty of bath-taking in late 1920s/early 1930s movies. Above is a dandy little compilation reel of women and men taking baths. Whatever your sexual preference might be, I think we can all agree that the women are more appealing than the men, largely because the men are always played strictly for laughs. And lets face it, women and baths go together better than men and baths. Just as men and large sandwiches go together better then women and…anway, the Production Code put an end to all such nonsense and bath-taking in movies became a thing of the past. Indeed, bath-taking in general went into decline as a result of baths disappearing from movies.. Now that I think of it, the only bath scenes I can recall post-Code are Joan Crawford being evil in a bath in ‘The Women’ and The Three Stooges somehow winding up falling into a bath with their clothes on. As I recall, Moe says: ‘Shouldn’t be a total loss!’ and picks up soap and a scrub brush. All three begin cleaning their wet clothing and on that note we fade out, both on the Stooges lousy two-reeler and on this weeks trenchant look at ancient views of people trying to get out of their clothing.