the first American feature-length sex film was Traffic in Souls (1913) (aka While New York Sleeps) - it was a "photo-drama" expose of white slavery at the turn of the century in NYC, although the film exploitatively promised steamy sex in its advertisements; this was one of the first films to understand that 'sex sells' although its producers worried that a 'feature-length' film wouldn't be successful; another vice film with the same historical theme of revealing the world of prostitution was The Inside of the White Slave Traffic (1913); Damaged Goods (1914) and The Sex Lure (1916) were similar melodramatic, "exploitation" films advertised as containing the "Shocking Truth"
A Free Ride (1915) (aka A Grass Sandwich) was reportedly the earliest-known US silent stag ('men only') or pornographic film - with explicit sex scenes of a wealthy man picking up two females with his model-T and then having sex with his hitchhikers by the side of the road. Its comic titles foretold its plot: Directed by A. Wise Guy, Photographed by Will B. Hard, and Titles by Will She. Because these kinds of films (with increasingly explicit amounts of nudity and sexuality) were completely illegal, they were shown in all-male locations, clubs, etc., not in mainstream theaters
# Australian-born swimming and diving champ Annette Kellermann (the "Esther Williams of the silent era") caused a stir when she was seen naked with her flowing hair under a waterfall in director Herbert Brenon's and Fox's fairy-tale Daughter of the Gods (1916) - she was the first major female star to appear nude on screen (see also the next item)
# in the same week, another female lead appeared nude for the first time in a feature film on screen - 16 year-old blonde starlet June Caprice (a Mary Pickford look-alike), in Fox's melodramatic Cinderella tale The Ragged Princess (1916), who appeared in a prolonged, nude swimming sequence
director D. W. Griffith threatened virginal and innocent Lillian Gish's defilement in the controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915), and his extravagant set of Babylon in Intolerance (1916) included half-naked, lightly-draped women in love temples
in Jack Conway's The Penitentes (1916), fanatical Roman Catholics staged actual crucifixions on Good Friday, with one crucifix holding a nude girl
director Richard Oswald's film Anders als die Andern (1919, Germ.) (aka Different From the Others) was reportedly the first representation of male homosexuality ("the third sex") in a feature-length film, and the first screen depiction of a gay bar (with gay males and butch females); the two ill-fated lovers were prominent pianist Paul Korner (Conrad Veidt) and his young music student, Kurt (Fritz Schulz); the film had a tragic ending (suicide for Korner) due to the effects of blackmail (threats of exposure), jail time for violating anti-homosexuality statutes, and the social stigma of being outed
Cecil B. DeMille's Male and Female (1919) included Gloria Swanson's notorious, half-clad disrobing scene in preparation for a lavish bath in a sunken tub
Yvonne Gardelle appeared naked as temptress demon-wife Lilith to Adam in a pantomimed Garden of Eden prologue sequence in The Tree of Knowledge (1920), directed by Cecil B. DeMille's brother William; press kit materials tauted: "An old legend says that the tempter in Eden was not a serpent, but a beautiful women, Lillith, the demon wife of Adam before Eve was created"
nude bathing/swimming scenes were evident in The Isle of Love (1918) (recut and re-released in 1922) and The Branding Iron (1920)
