Kroger Babb's roadshow: how a long-running movie walked the thin line between exploitation and education

Reason, Nov, 2003 by Joe Bob Briggs

Vices for Squares

By the time Kroger Babb came along, the formula for a sex hygiene movie was so well established that all he did was incorporate every element of every sex hygiene movie in history into a single film. But in search of even better profits, he changed the rules slightly. Many of the old sex-hygiene films had played in grindhouses or marginal theaters or even bars and restaurants. He wanted to break through to the biggest theaters in the country.

Howard W. Babb had gotten the nickname "Kroger" from the name of the grocery store where he worked as a boy growing up in Lees Creek, Ohio. Born in 1906, he was a sportswriter, a newspaper reporter, an ad manager, and, by his late 20s, publicity manager for the Chakeres-Warners theater chain, where he distinguished himself with publicity stunts such as having a man buried alive in front of a theater. He got the exploitation roadshow bug when he hooked up with an outfit called Cox and Underwood, which was peddling an aging sex hygiene film called Dust to Dust that was actually a 1935 film called High School Girl with a live-birth reel slapped onto the end. Proving that he was born to be in the business, it's the same plot Babb would use in Mom and Dad. (The Forty Thieves frequently quarreled over territories, but they never sued for copyright infringement. Of course, many of them were carnival men, who regarded all cons as ancient and passed down from generation to generation, but they may also have simply sold stories the same way they occasionally sold sideshow acts.)

Anxious to go out on his own, Babb got 20 investors to put up the money to make Mom and Dad. The script was written by Mildred Horn, who would later become his wife, and who would also write Mart and Woman and Boy and Girl. To direct he hired William "One Shot" Beaudine (so named because he never did a second take), who dated back to the Bowery Boys serials and had made over 200 B movies. He made the whole film in six days in 1944.

Perhaps the most revolutionary thing Babb did was to give his film such a bland and praiseworthy title. Who could object to a movie called Mom and Dad? This wasn't a movie about crazed sex maniacs or loose women or pregnant girls or the vice rackets. It was a movie about the education of all the moms and dads in the world, and, in fact, he wanted every mom and every dad to see it. His principal weapon, when he came under attack, was the very ordinariness of his story.

End of the Hygiene Era

Babb was not just prepared for the inevitable censorship battles he would face. He egged them on. He stirred up the Catholics at every opportunity, capitalizing on the church's "C" rating (for "condemned") of his film. He wrote fake letters to the editor in advance of the film's arrival in town, hoping there would be controversy. His most successful letter was supposedly written by the anonymous mayor of a small town. The "mayor" explained that he had opposed the showing of Mont and Dad in his town, too, but then the 17-year-old daughter of a local churchgoing couple found herself "in trouble." He saw Mom and Dad with a friend, and as a result had the courage to tell her parents about her predicament. They were shocked, but forgave her. The girl gave birth to a healthy boy, which was adopted by a childless couple. The girl then completed high school and is now engaged to a fine young man. The mayor goes on to thank Babb for having the courage "to tell young people what their parents didn't." And the letter ends: "P.S. That girl was my daughter."