This black and white 1946 theatrical short-subject film, directed by H.A. Spanuth and narrated by Virginia Gregg and Ann Tobin, surveys changing representations of women in post-war world society. This episode, Volume 1, number 4, features footage of African women’s hairstyles, Hollywood fashion, Jiu Jitsu classes, swimming races, and Russian ballet with female narration (TRT: 10:17).

Opening credits. Title over the Statue of Liberty: “Still holding the main bastion in that fortress of the nation, the home, now in fields once strange to her– Woman Speaks” (0:20). Our host invites us to “go backwards in time.” A crude map of Africa demarcates “The Congo” (0:35). African native villagers. Montage: African women with braided hair, necklaces, earrings, coiled wire adornments and bracelets, anklets (0:53). A painter’s palette, with a title: “Artistic Coiffures by Jean Ball.” A portrait artist sporting a 1940’s American style updo sketches a glamorous visage. Montage of Jean Ball hairstyle portraits (1:41). Women wearing smocks sit in a hair salon under hair dryers, reading magazines, crossing their legs. Three women rise to their feet. Their smocks fall away, revealing a printed two-piece bathing suit, a shoulderless black dress, and a more modest outfit. Closeups of their complex, “dramatised coiffures” (2:02). A woman in a necklace and undergarments poses in front of a patterned curtain. She winks in a closeup (2:32). The woman in the black dress models a multi-stranded pearl necklace and earrings by Eugene Joseff of Hollywood, “jeweler to the stars,” best known for his costume work on “Gone with the Wind” and “Cleopatra” (2:42). The models recline. The model in black lifts her dress to reveal strappy shoes. A woman modeling many rings and bracelets shows off her anklets. The fashionable coterie is identified as “students of, or associates of Jean Ball” (3:18). A women’s Jujutsu or Jiu Jitsu class. Women pin and flip one-another on a mat while a male instructor wearing a black belt supervises. A Jiu Jitsu Institute logo is seen behind the students as they repeatedly flip the instructor to the floor (4:09). Various methods of disarming an assailant with a handgun are demonstrated (3:46). The instructor, posing as a purse-snatcher or pickpocket, is grabbed by the chin from behind (5:01). Women swimmers wearing bathing caps dive from numbered starting blocks into an outdoor swimming pool while men watch a 100-meter freestyle race. Champion Anne Curtis smiles in a closeup (5:09). Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper presents a trophy, wearing a floral hat (6:10). Stage scenery swans. Reflections of ballerinas on rippling water, distorted and upside down. Ballerinas of the Bolshoi Theatre wearing tutus dance in pointe shoes during a performance of “Swan Lake” (6:18). Pull back to reveal the full ballet ensemble and scenery with doric columns (6:56). Closeups of the ballerinas and their ruffled costumes (7:58). Soviet-trained prima ballerina Marina Semyonova dances an extended solo under a spotlight (8:14). The ensemble returns. Swans and a punched hole cue mark (9:50). Title: “The End” with Lady Liberty (10:05).

This was the fourth release in a series of six shorts released 1946-1947, produced by the Film Studios of Chicago and distributed by independent producer H.A. Spanuth, who was best known for his films of vaudeville performances. The “Woman Speaks” series was also broadcast on midwestern television stations until 1949. While some segments were shot by Spanuth, others were sourced from contemporary newsreels.

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