1940s
Women's Studies Videos at Lilly Library: A Selected Videography
- Angel and the Badman (1947)
- VC 8139
In this unusual western, a wounded gunman is nursed back to health
and subtly won over to a new pacifist faith by a young Quaker
woman.
- The Great Lie (1941)
- MP D98 LSC (16mm; request from Library Service Center)
Betty Davis plays a good girl Maggie, a genteel Southerner with
money, taste, and breeding. Mary Astor plays a bad girl Sandra, an
arrogant concert pianist who marries Maggie's one true love (George
Brent). When Brent is lost in an airplane accident, the two make a
pact that suits each woman's nature.
- The Hidden Army (1944)
- VC 3226
Using a mixture of dramatized events and newsreels, this film
extols the work of women in industry during World War II. It was
primarily made to get more women involved in the industrial sector
of war work, since the number of women factory workers had actually
declined in 1943.
- His Girl Friday (1940)
- DVD 2302 / VC 3781 / MP D17 LSC (16mm; request from Library
Service Center)
An unscrupulous newspaper editor uses every dirty trick in the book
to keep his ace reporter/ex-wife from retiring and remarrying in
this twist on The Front Page.
- Kitty Foyle: the natural history of a woman
(1940)
- VC 9400
An independent career woman's life becomes complicated when she
becomes involved with two men — one a wealthy Bostonian playboy,
and the other a poor doctor.
- Mildred Pierce (1945)
- DVD 4403 / DVD 2687
Mildred Pierce is a woman who will do anything to satisfy the
demands of her spoiled daughter Veda, including divorce, opening
her own business, and possibly murder.