Tarzan of the Apes (1918)

In this ten-reel silent film - the first screen version of Edgar Rice Burrough's jungle character, Tarzan at ten years old (Gordon Griffith as younger ape-boy Tarzan, Elmo Lincoln as adult) was almost nude for much of the first third of the film.

Then, he abruptly thought to himself: "Clothes! At the bottom of his little English heart survived a longing for them" - and adopted clothes to cover himself.

The breasts and buttocks of African natives (called "negroes" in their camp were also briefly shown.

Anders als die Andern (1919, Germ.) (aka Different From the Others)

Director Richard Oswald's silent film (only half of which survives) 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). It was also notable for sympathetically portraying homosexuality.

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) when he was blackmailed (threats of exposure) for being homosexual, and facing jail time for violating anti-homosexuality statutes, and the social stigma of being outed.

The controversial film was banned by the Nazis and all prints were ordered destroyed, although one incomplete print surfaced in the Ukraine. The film's themes were repeated in Victim (1961, UK), with Dirk Bogarde.

Back to God's Country (1919, Can.)

This exploitative melodrama, by actress/writer/producer Nell Shipman (and directed by David Hartford), was probably the most successful Canadian silent feature film. It was taglined: "Is the Nude Rude?" - and due to its lurid advertising, it became the highest-grossing Canadian film made during the silent era.

It featured the first full-frontal female nudity of a "star" in the history of cinema (in a nude-swimming scene, although she was covered by a flesh-covered leotard of some kind).

Male and Female (1919)

Since this was a Cecil B. DeMille production (a silent adaptation of the play "The Admirable Crichton" by J. M. Barrie), it was bound to contain lurid or sensational scenes - typical of DeMille's brash and extravagant Biblical epics that always found an excuse to combine religion with sex. It was the biggest Paramount Pictures hit of its year, and notable for screen siren star Gloria Swanson, at the height of her popularity, displaying many elaborate and elegant costumes.

This film, suggestively titled, featured a contrived plot that starred Gloria Swanson as snobby, pampered and spoiled socialite Lady Mary Lasenby (the female of the title) who engaged in a restrained and short extra-marital love affair with her respectful and dutiful butler (the male of the title), Crichton (Thomas Meighan). Their improper relationship occurred when they had become shipwrecked on a deserted South Seas tropical island where roles were inverted, and she learned lessons about class differences and the social hierarchy.

Swanson was seen in a half-naked risque bathing scene in a sunken marble bathtub (filled with rosewater) in the film's beginning. Later in a fantasy and dreamy "King of Babylon" sequence, the leads were recast as a haughty monarch and feisty slave. Swanson was portrayed as a Christian slave girl in a leopard-print dress - including her sentencing by the king to descend into a Babylonian lion's den as "The Lion's Bride" (with "sacred lions of Ishtar") wearing a gown of pearls with a feathered headdress.