I forgive you for wondering if Escort Girl isn't from this Earth at all, but an artifact from a parallel universe that fell through a gap in the space-time continuum into our dimension-or, barring that, is at least a hoax. There is nothing about this film that seems consistent with its alleged 1941 date of manufacture. Its sexual content prefigures the rise of sexploitation films for the raincoat crowd in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before true porn appeared, yet its two biggest stars are relics of the silent era, and the majority of people listed in the credits have no other credits to their "names," strongly suggesting they are pseudonyms. And, in a film industry ruled by the Production Code Administration, how would something this bluntly adult ever get made, much less shown?

To unravel our mysteries, we have to start with the Production Code itself. A series of embarrassing sex scandals throughout the early 1920s stirred up some public animosity towards Hollywood, arousing the national Puritanical streak. As people started to complain to their congressmen that something had to be done about the movie colony, Hollywood producers realized the situation was giving lawmakers an excuse to start regulating their industry. To forestall government interference, the heads of the studios got together and created a voluntary organization to self-censor-a bone to the Puritans to get them to shut up. But it didn't take long for those Puritans to notice that the films coming out of Hollywood were getting increasingly ribald and sensational, not less, so in 1934 there was a revision to the Production Code Administration that amounted to the inclusion of a clause, "We mean it this time."

From 1934 onwards, the PCA reviewed scripts and finished films to keep Hollywood on the up and up. The thing of it was, though, that this was a voluntary organization, not a legal mandate. The studios had all signed onto the PCA and were bound by their agreement, but smalltime independent producers in the margins were not-and while the main distributor and exhibitor chains were also honor-bound to show only PCA-certified releases, there were loopholes for the intrepid.

The "states' rights" distributor chains were independent outfits with limited reach across spotty patches of the South, flea-bitten theaters run by disreputable operators, but such were the hazards of working outside the purview of the PCA.

The "Forty Thieves" was a colorful nickname given the group of independent producers who made their money touring PCA-forbidden exploitation fare around the country as roadshow attractions. The Thieves included Dwain Esper, Louis Sonney, Steamship Millard, Pappy Goldin, and J.D. Kendis. Over the thirties and forties, Kendis cranked out a dozen tawdry B-pictures like Secrets of a Model (1940), Youth Aflame (1944), and Hollywood Burlesque (1949). Kendis started to develop his own pool of stock players - including Wheeler Oakman, who played crooks for Kendis in Slaves in Bondage (1937), Gambling with Souls (1936), and Escort Girl.

Over the years Kendis worked with such luminaries as Sam Newfield and Edward Dmytryk (whose screen debut The Hawk (1935) was distributed by Kendis in its 1937 re-release), but for Escort Girl he hired a film industry veteran who was not known as a director. Edward Kaye had uncredited appearances on camera in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and the serial Drums of Fu Manchu (1940), and was the script supervisor for various 1940s era productions. Few other names in the production are identifiable as actual names of real people, but two stand out: cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh and editor Holbrook N. Todd. These two occasionally worked in tandem on low-budget quickies throughout the 1940s and 50s. Greenhalgh was the youngest member of the American Society of Cinematographers at the time, and in his time photographed Robot Monster (1953), Lost Continent (1951), The Mad Monster (1942), The Flying Serpent (1946), and Edgar Ulmer's Tomorrow We Live (1942). Todd edited Ulmer's Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957), collaborated with Greenhalgh on The Flying Serpent and Murder Is My Business (1946), and edited The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956).

by David Kalat

Sources:
Greg Merritt, Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film