Guess What? Turner Classic Movies Showed Child Pornography

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—It was Superb Owl weekend, so of course we spent the time catching up on all the movies we'd DVR'd, and one in particular one caught our eye: Child Bride, which according to its Time Warner Cable guide listing was made in 1939, though the title card of the film itself gives 1942 (aka MCMXLII) for the release date. To confuse matters even more, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) says the movie was released in 1938! The film, which was produced by no one you've ever heard of—Raymond L. Friedgen, reportedly a scam artist who paid for the filming with rubber checks—was directed by Harry Revier, who'd been directing low-budget flicks and serials since 1914. It also stars no one you've ever heard of, and while it was shot in Columbia, CA, it appears to be set somewhere in Appalachia, since the subject matter involves older men who take young girls for their brides (hence the title) and reportedly was inspired by a real child-bride wedding in Hancock County, Tennessee in 1937. There's also the local school marm (Diana Durrell, reportedly Friedgen's mistress) who, though born in the rural area where the film supposedly takes place, somehow managed to escape the child bride fate and now agitates against the practice, aided by her boyfriend, who's some sort of politician. The protagonist of the picture is little Jennie Colton (Shirley Mills), who lives with her stay-at-home ma and her pa, who's partnered with another hill-dweller to run a backwoods still—and whose partner eventually kills him, frames Jennie's mother for the deed, and tries to take Jennie for his "child bride," over the objections of her sort-of boyfriend Freddie (Bob Bollinger). Mills, who went on to appear in a number of films, including The Grapes of Wrath and Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, was born April 8, 1926, according to her bio page on IMDB, and in Child Bride, she can be seen undressing in the woods, preparing to skinny-dip with Freddie because, "We've always gone in swimmin' together." The film clearly shows Mills' bare breast through the leaves of the bush she's using for cover—though the extensive shots of her bare ass while actually in the water were reportedly doubled by 13-year-old Bernice Stobaugh Ray who, according to ApocalypseLaterFilm.com, "looked different enough from Mills that her pubic hair had to be shaved for the scene," when it turned out that Mills didn't know how to swim. There's just one problem: Since Mills was born in 1926, the appearance of her bare tit in a movie that was released in 1938, 1939 or even 1942 is unquestionably child pornography; likewise the bare ass and tits-and-pubic-hair-through-the-water shots of body double Ray. Of course, it's likely that the programmers at Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which played the movie as part of its "TCM Underground" series on January 12, hadn't looked closely at its content—but under the law that's no excuse for broadcasting (cablecasting, actually) nude images of children. And while we're not about to report them to the FBI, it will be interesting to see what they do if someone does "drop a dime" on the cable company. (They might also want to drop a dime on Google Images, where a search for "Child Bride" brings up a large number of the offending images.) Pictured: A scene with Shirley Mills from Child Bride, which was also known as Child Brides of the Ozarks or Dust to Dust.