history of film question

[briefman14867]

I have a trivia question. Sorry, it's the most annoying kind--I actually don't know the answer. If anyone does, I'd be very interested.

I was watching an old movie today called Cry Tough. The young and HANDsome John Saxon was the star. He's down to his undershorts in a few scenes. There are a handful of other actors in their underpants as well. All are boxers.

I thought "Damn! I would have loved to see him in briefs, but it was probably made too early..." According to IMDB, it was released in 1959.

It got me wondering about briefs on men in film. I know to this day many (most?) movies with men in unders the guys wear boxers, but in different eras the likelihood of the guy being in briefs has fluctuated. But the question: When was the first man in a movie shown in briefs?

The earliest I can think of is from 1953: Yves Montand in "Le salaire de la peur" [aka The Wages of Fear (UK) (USA); aka Il salario della paura (Italy: alternative title); aka Vite vendute (Italy)]. By the way, the underwear scene is scorching hot, AND it's a great, tense, powerful movie.

If Montand could be in briefs in 1953, why the hell did Saxon have to wear those dern boxers in 1959??

Now that I'm thinking of it, back to pretty early days of film there were men whose briefs were visible, often very visible, under something else they were wearing--Tarzan with the nut-huggers under the loincloth or gladiators (or ancient Greeks or Romans or whatever) with snug shorts under their little skirts (LOVE those movies! see http://www.youtube.com/user/peplumz for lots of good clips)... but that's not what I mean. I do think those movies were made to appeal to homosexual men (among others) before the modern concept of "gay" existed and before it was OK to show scantily-clad men on film in modern settings, but it was OK for costumers...

But I digress.... Counting only men who are in modern dress in films with contemporary settings relative to the year the film was made, when was the first time a man was out of his outerwear and in only his underwear, and the underwear was briefs? Maybe too obscure, but if anyone knows...

History and underwear fans, any ideas? And if you don't know the first, any examples you can think of that beat "The Wages of Fear"?

[SweatyAussie]

I can't answer the question, sorry...

I do know that being caught with pants down, or having the pants come down for one reason or another, used to be a frequent theme in slapstick comedy. Invariably the underwear was boxers, even at a time when most men in the audience would have been wearing briefs. My guess is that this was a form of self-censorship. The object of the exercise was to raise a laugh, not to get people randy after all. The boxers were no more revealing than normal shorts, so there was no sexual element, but it was clear they were underwear because you saw the pants being removed, or the guy dashed out of a room in response to a fire alarm or something. They served the purpose of vicarious embarrassment, which is the core of much of that type of humour.