{"id":38164,"date":"2022-11-18T18:55:38","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T23:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=38164"},"modified":"2022-11-18T18:57:01","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T23:57:01","slug":"the-bootleg-files-easy-to-get","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/18\/the-bootleg-files-easy-to-get\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Easy to Get"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 819:<\/strong> \u201cEasy to Get\u201d (1947 U.S. Army educational short). <\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: <\/strong>None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> The film has some serious issues.
\n
\nCHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Perhaps in an anthology of military-produced films.<\/p>\n

You may have noticed that there are relatively few films beyond the pornographic genre where men freely and fully exposed their penis on camera. One of the first \u2013 if not the first \u2013 non-pornographic films where the penis gets front-and-center exposure is a strange short educational film called \u201cEasy to Get,\u201d which was produced by the U.S. Army in 1947 for exclusive screening for its Black soldiers.
\n<\/p>\n

Back when this film was made, the U.S. military was still racially segregated \u2013 it wasn\u2019t until a year later when President Harry S Truman signed the executive order to end the disgraceful practice of separating military personnel on the basis of race. While the military created educational films designed exclusively for its armed forces, it was rare for productions to be aimed solely at the segregated Black fighting forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cEasy to Get\u201d was about venereal disease and was part of a wide campaign designed to educate soldiers on how to avoid coming down with syphilis and gonorrhea \u2013 this film represented a segment of that campaign designed to illuminate the Black soldiers on how easy it was to fall contract venereal disease.<\/p>\n

However, the film offers a bizarre consideration that clean-cut, good-looking Black soldiers should stay away from all women when they are off-base and at liberty \u2013 in this film, a soldier who hooks up with a pretty and seemingly innocent young girl (played by Ruby Dee in her first film performance) and another soldier who unapologetically hires a prostitute both turn up in the physician\u2019s office with the same dismal diagnosis.<\/p>\n

Mikita Brottman, one of the few film scholars to consider \u201cEasy to Get,\u201d considered the hideous fate awaiting those who ignored the Army\u2019s warning to stay away from all women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe horror show that follows \u2013 the film\u2019s superego \u2013 displays the consequences of such undisciplined behavior,\u201d Brottman wrote on the Medicine on Screen blog. \u201cOne soldier, a former athlete, now has knees like basketballs; another collapses and dies suddenly at a luncheonette counter; a third can\u2019t remember three words in a row because \u2018the syphilis germs got into his brain.\u2019 In close-up we see the swollen, oozing genitals of a guy who \u2018rubbed whiskey on his rod after a pickup.\u2019 Nastiest of all, one man passes the disease to his wife, who gives birth to a monster spawned from undisciplined desire \u2013 a cretinous gargoyle with a misshapen skull, half a nose, and eyes rolling back in its head.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEasy to Get\u201d also offers in-depth views of both a healthy Black male penis being disinfected against venereal disease with a prophylactic treatment and the members that become infected and worse once that nasty disease takes root.<\/p>\n

The film wraps up by reminding its Black male soldier audience to live up to the inspirational examples of boxer Joe Louis (seen in newsreel footage from his fight against German box Max Schmeling) and the Olympic track stars Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe (seen in footage bootlegged from Leni Riefenstahl\u2019s documentary \u201cOlympia\u201d). And for a complete out-of-nowhere denouement, the film offers Paul Robeson in a dramatic plea for the Black soldiers viewing the film to avoid the temptations could lead to lethal infection.<\/p>\n

Aside from Robeson and Dee, \u201cEasy to Get\u201d features Hollywood character actor as an Army doctor. The film was directed by Joseph Newman, who would go on to helm the 1955 sci-fi classic \u201cThis Island Earth\u201d along with a host of entertaining B-grade movies and episodes of \u201cTwilight Zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEasy to Get\u201d fell out of favor due in the late 1940s as the military began to desegregate and Paul Robeson was blacklisted for his espousal of Communist principles. As a government film, it is in the public domain \u2013 but its frankness in detailing venereal disease treatment and its misogyny in insisting women are solely to blame for soldiers getting sick has made it one of the least popular titles in its genre.<\/p>\n

For the curious, there are multiple postings of the film across online video sites. If you must see it, proceed with caution \u2013 and keep your pants on, too!<\/p>\n