There’s nothing noteworthy about on-screen nudity now, but things were decidedly different in the earliest days of movie-making.

At the start of the 20th century, even a brief glimpse of sideboob could cause a scandal. Censorship tightened even more when the Hays Code — named after Republican William Hays — was introduced in 1934, banning on-screen depictions of boobs, drugs and basically anything good in life, for more than three decades.

That’s not to say there was no nudity in early Hollywood; horny sleuths have spent years uncovering on-screen rack flashes. But someone had to be the first to flash their tits on screen — so who, exactly, earned this prestigious honor?

Seemingly, the 1915 silent movie Hypocrites was the first American movie to feature full-frontal female nudity, showing glimpses of a ghostly apparition in the form of a naked young woman, the uncredited actress Margaret Evans.

There are earlier examples, like the racy strip-down scene in the 1897 movie Après Le Bal, but a) there were no boobs shown; and b) the (again, uncredited) actress was actually wearing barely-visible underwear.

Hypocrites then was the first movie to go all-out and cast a woman in a fully nude role. Directed by Lois Weber, it takes aim at hypocrisy in organized religion and the policing of morality, so it’s fitting that Evans’ character is known only as “The Naked Truth.” You have to really pay attention to notice the bare flesh, as Weber used a double-exposure technique to make Evans’ naked breasts, which were filmed independently from the rest of the cast on a closed set, look genuinely ghostly. The movie’s legacy lives on, though. As one Letterboxd reviewer writes, “i know that william hays would have fucking died if he ever saw this film.”

Nudity occasionally popped up in silent movies, but the early 1900s also saw the production of some of the earliest porn films, known as “stag” or “men-only” movies. These grew steadily more explicit as the 1920s got more hedonistic, but you had to know where to look (underground bars, clubs) if you wanted to see on-screen fucking. Today, there are handy online databases available to find them.

The ‘20s were a riot of jazz, sex and decadence, but the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a new age of austerity. And if that weren’t depressing enough, the government issued a swift crackdown on glamor and vice, in the form of the aforementioned Hays Code.

The years between 1930 and 1934 were known as the Pre-Code Era. Censorship had increased, but directors during this period used a few workarounds to get boobs on-screen. No nudity allowed? Okay, we’ll have our lead starlet frolic in a hot tub with a see-through top on. Hollywood legends like Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow cropped up in barely-there bras, flashing the occasional glimpse of nip in defiance of Republican moralists like Hays. It wasn’t just tits, either; movies packed with sex, violence and alcohol  — like Baby Face, Scarface and Freaks — also hit screens nationwide.

But the fun ended for good in 1934, when the Hays Code was officially — and strictly — enforced until 1968. There were some feminist directors, like Dorothy Arzner, who hinted at queerness and transgression in their work. This was known as “code-stretching,” or dropping tiny crumbs of subversion in the hopes of avoiding mass censorship.

It wasn’t until 1963 that sex symbol Jayne Mansfield — a former Playboy bunny — flashed her famous rack on-screen in the movie Promises! Promises! A year later, another nude scene slipped through the cracks in Pawnbroker.

Thankfully, on-screen nipples have been free pretty much ever since.