Universal almost immediately put another big budget Frankenstein sequel, Son of Frankenstein, on to its production schedule. in autumn 1938, a phenomenally popular theatrical reissue of Dracula and Frankenstein as a double bill offered evidence of continued high public demand for horror. However, in the spring of 1936, there was an abrupt hiatus in the horror cycle when, despite a number of recent successful horror films, Universal took horror productions off its schedule, and other studios followed. Over the first half of the decade, instead of petering out like many one-year cycles, horror became an increasingly stable niche market. James Whale) launched a fashion for horror films. Tod Browning) and Frankenstein (Universal, 1931, dir. The massive success of Universal’s Dracula (Universal, 1931, dir. The scene where Gillespie and his protégé initially discuss the case is illustrative of the way the script mines this scenario and the doctors' competitive natures for comedic purposes: The comedy comes from the fact that one sister is pregnant and the other is not. The script included a comedic storyline revolving around the characters of Dr Gillespie and Dr Red Adams mistaking twin sisters for the same person as they perform physical examinations on the women. In May 1944, Between Two Women was slated to be the next film in MGM's popular Dr Kildare series. But if pregnancy and childbirth were required then censors preferred mythic versions of motherhood instead of what they believed to be the sacred but horrific biological reality of human reproduction. Ultimately, I argue that censors believed that pregnancy and childbirth should be celebrated but not seen. In addition, I demonstrate how filmmakers overcame censors' strict prohibitions against abortion by utilizing ambiguity in their storytelling. They worried that realistic portrayals of pregnancy and childbirth would scare young women away from pursuing motherhood.

For censors, human reproduction was not only a private matter, it was also an unpleasant biological process whose entertainment value was questionable.

I find that censors considered pregnancy to be a state of grace and a holy obligation that was restricted to married women.

This article examines the negotiations between filmmakers and censorship groups in order to show the stories that censors did, and did not, want told about pregnancy, childbirth and abortion, as well as how studios fought to tell their own stories about human reproduction. In the mid-twentieth century film studios sent their screenplays to Hollywood's official censorship body, the Production Code Administration (PCA), and to the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency for approval and recommendations for revision.

On Whale Island by Daniel Hays