A poster for an anti-abortion film, Race Suicide, that was released and shown around the United States in 1938. The film’s title appropriated a 1900 term from eugenics, which defines what occurs when a “fit” racial group of people decides/chooses not to have children resulting in the birth rate being lower than the death rate for the “fit” racial group – thus the voluntary, eventual extinction, or “suicide” of the “fit” racial group. Birth control and abortion were seen as contributing greatly to this phenomenon. The film was aimed at “white” people of economic means, especially Protestants, to encourage them to have children so as to continue white dominance by the numbers.
According to Wikipedia:
Race suicide was an alarmist term used in eugenics, coined in 1900 by the sociologist Edward A. Ross. Racial suicide rhetoric suggested a differential birth rate between native-born Protestant and immigrant Catholic women, or more generally between the “fit” or “best” (white, wealthy, educated Protestants), and the “unfit” or “undesirable” (poor, uneducated, criminals, diseased, mental and physical “defectives,” and ethnic, racial, and religious minorities), such that the “fit” group would ultimately dwindle to the point of extinction.
Just four years before the release of the film, the German Third Reich, debated the framework for its Ayran Nation, and set to put what was then believed about its “Master Race” into law. The Nazis were impressed with how the Americans had achieved racial separation legally and socially, and the Nuremberg Laws that resulted from the 1934 debates drew heavily on historical as well as then-current U. S. laws. This topic is treated by Isabel Wilkerson in her book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random House, 2020):
The Nazis had been especially taken with the militant race theories of two widely known American eugenicists, Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant. Both were men of privilege, born and raised in the North and educated in the Ivy League. Both built their now discredited reputations on hate ideology that devised a crude ranking of European “stock,” declared eastern and southern Europeans inferior to “Nordics” and advocated for the exclusion and elimination of “races” they deemed threats to Nordic racial purity, foremost among them Jews and “Negroes….”
Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover converted [Madison Grant‘s] zeal for Ayran supremacy into helping enact a series of American immigration and marriage restrictions in the 1920s….
Grant went far beyond southern segregationists in his contempt for marginalized people. He argued that “inferior stocks” should be sterilized and quarantined in a “rigid system of elimination of those who are weak or unfit” or “perhaps worthless race types….”
Whether the film achieved its subtle propaganda message is not known. It did have short runs in several theatres in the Lykens valley area, including at the Hollywood in Elizabethville, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. As the newspaper ad (below) from the Lykens Standard from August 5, 1938 shows, the “sinsational” aspects of the film were featured:
Friday, August 5 [1938]
Forbidden Until Now!
See what happens behind Closed Doors!
RACE SUICIDE
A Sinsational Story of Shame, Suffering and Foolish Women
Note: Children unaccompanied not admitted. This is strictly adult Entertainment!
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Several reviews were published at the time the film was shown. However, none tackle the nature of the film’s title and its meaning in 1938. Instead they focused on “organized crime” and the “illegal operations” performed by “fake medical practitioners.”
From the Pottsville Republican & Herald, May 10 1938:
The intense interest of the public in crime, and the sinister developments arising from the prosecution of racketeers is reflected in screaming newspapers headings, magazine articles and current fiction. One of the most interesting and thrilling phrases of organized crime, the deadly work of fake medical practitioners who perform illegal operations, is vividly dramatized in Race Suicide, the sensational, true-to-life-film now playing at the Lyric Theatre….
The feature was directed by S. Roy Luby from an original story by M. K. Candler.
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From the Pottsville Republican & Herald, May 11, 1938:
Race Suicide, the sensational picture now playing at the Lyric Theatre, brings to the screen a smashing indictment of one of the world’s most vicious rackets. The story was taken from the files of the district attorney of one of our large cities.
Fake doctors and unscrupulous racketeers who prey on careless women constitute a real menace in almost every American city. Their nefarious activities do not present a pretty picture, but LeRoy Luby, who directed Race Suicide, has succeeded admirably in handling this delicate subject with finesse, at the same time he pulls no punches, but tells his story with a fine directness and conviction.
The picture will conclude its engagement tomorrow.
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One later review suggests there was a controversy surrounding the film and the difficulty in getting it past state censors – Pennsylvania included. The reasons for the difficulty were not mentioned in the review and should be a topic for further study. However, it would be surprising if these difficulties were due to the controversial policy implied by the title.
From the AFI Catalog of Feature Films (no date):
The film begins with the following title: “The story of Race Suicide as depicted in this Real Life Drama is based upon facts gleaned from newspaper reports of the smashing of a well-organized gang of illegal medical practitioners in one of our great American cities.” The word “abortion” is not used in the film. This film was rejected by the New York State censors in 1937. Ohio initially passed it in 1937 after ordering deletions, then revoked their approval of the film, which they noted had also been run under the title of What Price Passion, as of February 10, 1940. Pennsylvania passed the film in 1938 after ordering deletions.
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In a recent review (2021) by Michael Elliot wrote for Letterboxd:
A District Attorney decides to go after a doctor who is targeting young women and talking them into having illegal abortions.
Race Suicide is yet another exploitation movie that takes a controversial subject and tries to pass itself by the censors by claiming to be educational. This film here does play out more like a straight drama….
If it’s sleaze you want then you’re certainly going to find it here. Sleaze might not be an appropriate word but for 1938 this film is pretty naughty. The plot itself is something that a major Hollywood studio wouldn’t touch but this film takes that a step further and actually offers some nudity. The scene takes place inside the doctor’s office as a woman strips down. At first you just see her naked butt but then there’s another shot of her getting dressed where you see her breasts….
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The sensational (or as the newspaper ad suggests, “sinsational”) aspects of this film probably drew people to the theatre to see it more so than the fact that the film was anti-abortion and anti-organized crime. Nevertheless, the film remains as a piece of propaganda designed to promote the eugenicist view of protecting a “fit” race of people from committing “race suicide.”
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News articles from Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.