No, it's not a religious Nativity epic, but instead what film historian Jeanine Basinger described as "a prenatal Grand Hotel" -- a maternity ward bustling with pregnant women and their colorful back stories. The mommies-to-be include an ailing female felon (Geraldine Fitzgerald) transferred from jail to deliver her kid, a six-time mother (Spring Byington) preparing for Baby Number Seven, a vaudeville hoofer (Gladys George) who worries the twins she's carrying will bust up the song-and-dance act she has with her husband, and a pregnant teen (Nanette Fabray) -- don't worry, Hays Office, she's secretly eloped! The film was banned in Ireland, New Zealand and British Columbia, on grounds that the dramatic perils endured by some of the women "might create fear in the minds of expectant mothers", but to modern eyes it's a window on another generation's childbirth rituals, with fathers shooed away from the delivery rooms by no-nonsense nurses, and cigarettes and liquor smuggled in as pre-delivery treats. Hollywood's squeamishness about pregnancy is also on full display, as evinced by the conspicuously flat-stomached cast.

By Violet LeVoit