Budgets surpassing $1 million and nudity are so common in films today that it’s easy to forget that there was once a time when both concepts were unfamiliar to filmmakers and audiences alike. In fact, both trends originated with a single film: the 1916 silent filmA Daughter of the Gods, directed by Herbert Brenon. Thethree-hour fantasy epicstars legendary Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman as a young goddess targeted by an evil witch and a grieving sultan looking to resurrect his son from the dead. In its most famous shot, Kellermann frolics naked near a waterfall. Even though her long hair covers most of her chest, it is nevertheless regarded as possibly the first “nude scene” in cinematic history.
Unfortunately, thefilm in its entirety has long been lost. Nevertheless, a selection of stills from the film, along with a trove of primary sources from 1916, provide a fascinating glimpse into the film’s production and reception. Ironically, its record-breaking budget seems to have caused greater controversy than its unprecedentedly explicit imagery.
Why Did the Film End Up Costing a Million Dollars?
A Daughter of the Gods
A Daughter of the Gods is a silent film directed by Herbert Brenon, featuring a sultan who makes a pact with a malevolent witch to resurrect his deceased son in exchange for the destruction of a mystical beauty. The film, which stars Annette Kellerman, explores themes of sacrifice and power.
The behind-the-scenes reporting onA Daughter of the Gods, which was shot primarily in Jamaica, depictsan extraordinarily expensive production.According to a November 1916 article inMotion Picture News,over 21,000 people were involved in making the film, many of them extras playing mermaids and harem dancers. William Fox, head of Fox Film Corporation, established a whole municipality in Jamaica to house the massive cast and crew. Furthermore, the crew spent months building an entire Moorish city, the construction of which cost $350,000 alone, that gets destroyed in the film’s climax.
Whether the film’s $1 million budget was planned in advance or had ballooned to that amount over the course of production is unclear. On the one hand,a Motography articlerecounts that the $1 million budget was Fox’s idea from the start. However, film historian Frank Thompson writes in his book,Lost Films: Important Movies That Disappeared(1996), that Fox was furious that the production costs had surpassed $1 million, to the point that he allegedly removed Brenon’s name from the film’s credits (although Brenon successfully sued to have his name restored). It therefore seems likely that the conversation between Fox and Brenon in theMotographyarticle might have been fabricated (either by the author or by the studio) for the film’s marketing.
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In fact, the production itself might not have cost $1 million in the first place. AVarietyarticle from 1925 clocks the film’s total production costs at only $850,000, only surpassing $1 million when including the distribution costs. In other words, just like Fox and Brenon’s possibly apocryphal meeting, the million-dollar figure might have also been made up for marketing purposes.
How Did People React to the Nude Scene?
Annette Kellerman was quite famous before she appeared inA Daughter of the Gods. At just 18, she was the first woman to swim the English Channel. She was also infamous for her endorsement of a new type of bathing suit that would liberate women from the bulky garments and pantaloons that they were expected to wear at the beach and while swimming. Kellerman pushed for the one-piece bathing suit, and there’s a story that she was arrested for wearing it in 1907 on Boston’s Revere Beach. Once these suits became socially acceptable, they were branded asAnnette Kellerman Sun-Kist swimsuitsfrom 1914 through the 1930s.
Kellerman’s persona was intertwined with water, and right beforeA Daughter of the Gods, she swept the nation with her performance in the titular role of the filmNeptune’s Daughter, also directed by Brenon. That film was made just two years earlier, in 1914, and had a budget of $50,000; it made more than $1 million at the box office. Thus, A Daughter of the Gods could be seen as building on this successful template, but throwing something new into the mix — nudity.
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One might expect that the first nude scene in a Hollywood film would have provoked massive backlash and censorship. However, that doesn’t seem to have been the case. In fact, according toMotion Picture News,not only did the National Board of Review approve the film without requesting any changes, they even sent Fox a letter praising him for adhering to their guidelines. (It’s worth noting here that the infamous Hays Code, which strictly prohibited overtly sexual content in American films, would not be formulated for another six years).
Furthermore, according toThe Moving Picture World,the film was viewed and enjoyed by many high-society figures, including then-President Woodrow Wilson and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who called it “a wonderful picture.” Given the lack of censorship and its distinguished viewership, it seems that, overall, the public was quite receptive to the film’s risqué content. WhileA Daughter of the Godswill likely remain lost for the foreseeable future, several stills and promotional materials for the film can be found online. You can watch some of it below:
