Saturday Night Cinema: The Outlaw

 

Tonight's feature film, "The Outlaw" is a 1943 classic Western directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jane Russell. The supporting cast includes Walter Huston as Doc Holliday. Hughes also produced the film, while Howard Hawks served as an uncredited co-director. The film is notable as Russell's breakthrough role, turning the young actress into a sex symbol and a Hollywood icon.

The Outlaw gained worldwide notoriety, stemming from an obsession with Jane Russell's ample assets.

Jane Russell won the lead role after Howard Hughes conducted a nationwide search for a curvaceous actress, eventually finding her working in his dentist's office. The film caused a storm of controversy, due primarily to the amount of cleavage shown by Russell onscreen, and, after brief releases in 1941 and 1943…

Although the movie was completed in 1941, it was released to only a limited showing two years later. It did not see a general release until 1946. The delay was a result of Hughes defying the Hays Code, which set the standard of morally acceptable content in motion pictures. By showcasing Russell's breasts in both the movie and the poster artwork, The Outlaw became very controversial.

In 1941, while filming The Outlaw, Hughes felt that the camera did not do justice to Jane Russell's large bust. He employed his engineering skills to design a new cantilevered underwire bra to emphasize her assets. Hughes added rods of curved structural steel that were sewn into the brassiere below each breast. The rods were connected to the bra's shoulder straps. The arrangement allowed the breasts to be pulled upward and made it possible to move the shoulder straps away from the neck. The design allowed for any amount of bosom to be freely exposed.

The emphasis on her breasts proved too much for the Hollywood Production Code Administration, which ordered cuts to the film. To obtain the Boards' required Seal of Approval, Hughes reluctantly removed about 40 feet, or a half-minute, of footage that featured Russell's bosom. He still had problems getting the film distributed, so he schemed to create a public outcry for his film to be banned. The resulting controversy generated enough interest to get The Outlaw into the theaters for one week in 1943, before being withdrawn due to objections by the Code censors. When the film was finally released in 1946, it was a box office hit.

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