The mystery of the mystery of life

I saw this posted on Tumblr and it got me intrigued:

This is an ad for an apparently lost film called The Mystery of Life that came out in 1930. I also found this poster for it on IMDB:

But, to be honest, it’s the ad that interests me more, cos that makes the film sound, frankly, like a nudist film… but with dinosaurs? Cos I know nudist films were a thing even that early in the game, they may not have really taken off until the ’60s but they were around by the 20s. And I can kind of envisage a film like that masquerading as a serious documentary about evolution (which this purports to be) in the later manner of “white coaters”. The thing that perplexes me, though, isn’t even the presence of Clarence Darrow, which actually would kind of make sense in a film about evolution (the Scopes trial having been just a few years before), it’s the fact that Universal evidently distributed it.

The actual production company was one Classic Pictures, whose sole IMDB credit is this thing, so they must’ve sold it to Laemmle… which is the detail that puzzles me. The new enforcement of the Production Code from 1934 onwards drove this sort of production semi-underground to independent exploitation companies that weren’t signed up to the Code, and I feel like Classic Pictures could’ve been one of these dodgy mobs… but then selling it to an actual Hollywood major for distribution? I can’t imagine Universal in 1930 or ’31 being interested in a probably shitty nudist exploiter… Assuming, of course, that it was in fact a shitty nudist exploiter. I’m basing all of this on the assumption that it was, in fact, what that ad seems to be selling it as. Maybe it was a perfectly respectable and artistic film. I suspect not, but maybe I’m wrong. We don’t seem to have the film any more to tell us what it actually was.

But the dinosaurs. I think that’s ultimately what REALLY drew me to this ad. Drama in the nude? Cool! Clarence Darrow? Fine! FUCKING DINOSAURS? What the Christ were they doing in an apparent nudist film? And co-existing with humans? Apparently the theme was too “delicate” for kids to see the film cos they wouldn’t understand it, but I feel like the artist (or possibly the filmmaker) didn’t exactly understand it either…