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Motherhood, the 1927 Lita Lawrence maternity childbirth sex education documentary ("The picture you have been waiting for"; "The world's most human photoplay"; "Showing why women should no longer fear maternity"; "Dedicated to the women of the world"; "The story of woman's supreme attainment"; "A picture no man or woman can afford to miss"; "The first film to face seriously the problem of modern maternity"; "The mighty drama of the miracles of birth"; "Produced with the co-operation of Knickerbocker, Bellevue and Allied Hospitals of New York"; produced, directed, and written by Lita Lawrence). Oddly, we found many 1927 and 1928 newspaper ads showing that it played in those years, but we found no ads from 1925 or 1926, which is when the movie is supposed to have been made (according to the IMDb). The movie dealt with what was apparently then believed to be a growing problem, which was that upper class women were intentionally choosing to not have children (likely through the use of birth control), while lower class women continued to have many children, and there was a growing fear that, if this continued, the upper class would vanish over time! They believed that what was causing this was that upper class women did not want to have to go through the pains of childbirth (and the risk to their life if there was a complication), and so this movie showed two parallel stories, one of an upper class woman who was pregnant and dreading it, and the other of a lower class woman who was pregnant and happily expecting the birth! The movie showed that "modern medical techniques" eliminated the fears of the upper class woman, and it ended right before the two women gave birth, following them right to the delivery room, and reassuring all women that childbirth was no longer anything to fear. We believe that the movie was in continual release from 1925 through 1928, and that it was then re-released in the 1930s and possibly in the 1940s, because we have seen posters that seem to date from those years, but beyond the above, we know nothing more. If anyone knows more about this movie, please e-mail us and we will post it here.

If you know who did the art (if any), please let us know.

Important Added Info: Note that it is very difficult to date posters from movies like this, which surely played in "roadshow" engagements around the country. This one has a date of Monday, February 13 at the top, which could be from 1928, 1933, or 1939, and any of those are possible. We would tend to think it is from 1928, which would make it from the continuous first release, but it is also quite possible it is from 1933 or 1939, so, to err on the side of safety, we are calling it R30s, as we have also called a similar re-release one-sheet that had no date at all. If anyone knows more about this, please e-mail us and we will post it here.

Finally, note that ANY movie paper from this movie is incredibly rare. We have only previously auctioned a 1930s re-release one-sheet and two 1940s re-release one-sheets from this movie (and NO other movie paper) until we received this window card!

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