Mom and Dad (1945) review

This early sexploitation movie by producer/huckster Kroger Babb (his wife Mildred Horn wrote the screenplay) is about teenager Joan Blake (June Carlson) and how she's seduced by womanizing pilot Jack Griffin (Bob Lowell), becomes pregnant, is terrified to tell her puritanical mother Sarah Blake (Lois Austin) and then learns that Jack perished in a plane crash.  The fictional component is of the typical after-school special variety with its stiff presentation and mundane dialogue, although it's all a set up for the end, in which "physicians" show the girls actual medical footage of a natural birth (and then a C-section) and then the boys get a close up look at individuals with gonorrhea and syphilis.  This is rather tame for today's crowd - you can easily find pictures and videos of STDs on the 'net - but at the time Babb had to market it as an "educational" picture involving "personal hygiene" to bypass the censors ... and apparently it was a financial success (and was permanently archived by the Library of Congress!).  The message regarding practicing safe sex will always be important (wrap it up, lads), but what I'd like to point out is that the kids' "disgraced" teacher, Mr. Blackburn (Hardie Albright), becomes the real hero as a champion for "scientific truth."