Damaged Goods

Although DAMAGED GOODS is one of the 50% of films made before 1950 to be lost, it is worth commenting on it here to express its importance in telling about venereal diseases before film and literature dealt with that subject regularly. The film deals with Sexually-Transmitted Diseases as contacted to a young student by an older girl. The story deals with a young college graduate who doesn't know what to do with his future. He is applauded by his parents and their friends at their Los Angeles home. One night, he meets an older woman who is a friend of his parents. Since the woman's husband is not home, the graduate drops her off at her house, then she ends up inviting him inside and seducing him. (Sound familiar?) The film could be entertaining today...if it survived. Richard Bennett stars as the college graduate(yes, that is the same Richard Bennett who played Major Amberson in Orson Welles' THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS [1942]). Anyhow, don't despair film buffs! Preservationists like Brownlow, Shepard, and the UCLA film preservation committee have salvaged hundreds of films once thought lost. One day, this artifact might turn up in somebody's basement or some long-forgotten film vault in some old forgotten Hollywood studio. One can only hope...