''Black Market Babies'' is a 1945 American

crime drama film Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but al ...

directed by

William Beaudine William Washington Beaudine (January 15, 1892 – March 18, 1970) was an American film director. He was one of Hollywood's most prolific directors, turning out a remarkable 179 feature-length films in a wide variety of genres. He is best know ...

and released by

Monogram Pictures Monogram Pictures Corporation was an American film studio that produced mostly low-budget films between 1931 and 1953, when the firm completed a transition to the name Allied Artists Pictures Corporation. Monogram was among the smaller studios i ...

. The film has been released on DVD.Warner Bros. Entertainment film summary
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Plot

A small-time hood teams up with an alcoholic

obstetrician Obstetrics is the field of study concentrated on pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. As a medical specialty, obstetrics is combined with gynecology under the discipline known as obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), which is a surgi ...

to set up a private maternity ward, where the expectant mothers' expenses are paid by the "donations" of "adoptive" parents. The racket goes wrong when one of the previously sold children is

stillborn Stillbirth is typically defined as fetal death at or after 20 or 28 weeks of pregnancy, depending on the source. It results in a baby born without signs of life. A stillbirth can often result in the feeling of guilt or grief in the mother. T ...

, which means the hood has to come up with a replacement baby.

Cast

Production

The

Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, the mini-major Amazon MGM Studios, as well as the video streaming services Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Fo ...

, which enforced the

Hays Code The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as th ...

at the time, did not allow films to show that pregnancy, if shown at all, resulted in any visual changes to a woman's body. After reviewing the script for ''Black Market Babies'', it cautioned that actresses were not to use any padding to simulate pregnancy.

References

External links

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Review by Dymon Enlow on Blogspot (2013)
1945 films Films directed by William Beaudine Monogram Pictures films 1945 crime drama films American crime drama films American black-and-white films 1940s English-language films 1940s American films English-language crime drama films {{1940s-US-drama-film-stub