The Male Libido in Early American Movies

Valentino wanted sex, but had to behave first.

The motivation of most male characters in movies is either money, power or sex. Films have never been shy about showing mans greed. However, movies of the first half of the 20th century treated the male libido as a very delicate emotion not to be tampered with. According to the movies of the time, only men without morals had sex outside of marriage. Being horny was to be controlled, avoided and even condemned. A man who did get horny in early movies often lead him to a dramatic confrontation.

In 1915, Theda Bara played a maneater in A Fool There Was.  She flirted with men, using sex as a trap and then discarding them when she was done.  All the men who gave into their lust, met with a horrible fate. 

The films first male sex symbol, Rudolph Valentino, was horny for Agnes Ayres in The Sheik (1921).  Although he tried to satisfy his lust by abducting her and forcing her to submit, he did not get anywhere until he turned tender, and fell in love.  In Sadie Thomas (1928), a missionary man literally drives himself to death because he gets so horny over Gloria Swanson.

Men in early films often used excuses for having sex.  In Our Modern Maidens (1929), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. gets drunk at a party and impregnates someone. A sober man would never do such a thing. In White Heat (1931), James Cagney slaps an older woman after finding out she got him drunk and horny the night before, and had sex with him. He felt taken advantaged of.  In The Philadelphia Story (1940), a man blames his grown daughter's lousy attitude for him having an affair on her mother.

The only acceptable time a man was shown being horny in these early movie was in a comedic way. Fatty Arbuckle was often shown flirting with girls in his movies. Even when he played a married man he had a wandering eye. The Three Stooges always appreciated a beautiful girl. The Marx Brothers likewise made light of skirt chasing. The image of Harpo chasing after a girl while honking his horn speaks for itself. These men acting sex starved was acceptable because they were all idiots to be laughed at, not to be taken seriously. Even Mae West made fun of men getting turned on, "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

In Gone With the Wind (1939), when Scarlet drives Rhett Butler to such sexual distraction he forcibly carries her to bed and reminds her that a woman should not deny her husbands sexual needs. He sadly apologized the next morning.Rita Hayworth played the sexual aggressor in Gilda (1946). She commits the cardinal sexual sin of making her ex-boyfriend, Glenn Ford, so horny throughout the movie that he ends up slapping her at the end.

The one and only exception to a man looking for casual sex in movies was when it was a soldier trying to get laid. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) has a scene where Lew Ayres and two buddies exchange food for sex with three starving women they just met. In Battleground (1949) Van Johnson gets laid by an appreciative French woman when not fighting the Nazis. I guess men risking their lives in war were allowed to be horny and get sexual satisfaction without being condemned for it.

Marilyn Monroe based her entire career on playing roles that sexually teased men. In Niagara she plays a femme fatal who denies her husband sex. This causes the horny guy to mope around, acting suicidal. When she wants him to do something for her she gives him sex, causing him to react as a giddy school boy. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Monroe spends the whole time making her fiancee and an old millionaire as horny as she can, in order to get one to marry her and the other to give her a diamond tiara. The entire, thin, plot of The Seven Year Itch is that a married man is horny for Monroe.

By 1959, men in movies, most notably Tony Curtis, finally started to take control of their sexual desires. In Some Like it Hot, (1959) Curtis has to dress as a woman and pretend to be an oil tycoon, but he eventually gets some from Monroe on the yacht. Lemmon probably got blue balls spending the night with Monroe on the train. It is one of the funniest scenes ever, where the punch line is just how horny a man can get. The entire gimmick of Operation Petticoat (1959) is to put some women on a submarine with a bunch of horny sailors. Cary Grant makes it clear to a female officer that it is okay for his men to pursue the women under her, for sex, "When a girl is under 21 she's protected by law. When she's over 65 she's protected by nature. Anywhere in between, she's fair game." As such, Tony Curtis again gets laid in a movie before getting married.

Bond showed sex as recreation.

In The Magnificent Seven (1960), Horst Burcholz complains that the Mexican villagers hid their women because they thought the seven cowboys might rape them. The women come out of hiding and no virtues are stolen. In Pillow Talk, Rock Hudson spends the entire movie motivated by his need to get laid. Hudson plays the sexual aggressor and is unapologetic about it, even though he does end up married to Doris Day at the end.

The real male sexual revolution in movies became complete with James Bond in Dr. No (1961). Here was a man who used women for his sexual enjoyment, without any emotional attachment. Sure he treated the women as nice as they treated him, but once the sex was over, they became disposable. Bond made it acceptable, and cool, to be horny and have sex for sexual release alone. This may make some puritans cringe but with James Bond, many men finally found their view and desires for sex portrayed in film for the first time. Even though many men had already privately felt this way their whole life, James Bond made it openly acceptable for men to express their desire for sex without commitment. Being horny finally lost its taboo in American cinema