Not Wanted

"Not Wanted" stands out not only for its bold subject matter at the time but also as the unofficial directorial debut of Ida Lupino. Initially helmed by Elmer Clifton, Lupino took over the project just three days into shooting after Clifton suffered a heart attack. Even though she allowed Clifton to retain credit, Lupino exhibited exceptional narrative control, foreshadowing her subsequent influence as a director in Hollywood.

The film follows the story of Sally Kelton (played by Sally Forrest), a 19-year-old waitress caught between the social taboos of her era and her own desires. Sally falls for Steve Ryan (Leo Penn), a charismatic and ambitious pianist. After a brief night together, Steve leaves town, and Sally follows, rejecting the affections of a wounded war veteran (Keefe Brasselle), who represents a more stable, conventional choice. When Sally discovers she's pregnant, she faces internal and external conflicts that highlight the social constraints on women in the 1940s.

One of Lupino's greatest achievements is her ability to tackle issues like unwanted motherhood, social guilt, and the limited choices available to women with a sensitivity and realism unusual for the time. Instead of resorting to conventional melodrama, Lupino adopts a near-documentary approach, using tender, intimate close-ups to capture Sally's vulnerability and impractical passion. One of the film's most memorable sequences takes place in a hospital where Sally's hallucination becomes a low-budget masterpiece of expressionism, reflecting her confusion and distress.

Sally's transition from a small town to the big city symbolizes her struggle to break free from social restrictions and the expectations of her former life. However, this pursuit of freedom also exposes her to society's harsh judgments and stigma against women who challenge established norms.

"Not Wanted" is also notable for its brisk pacing and sensitive direction of actors, who bring nuance and humanity to their roles. Sally Forrest's performance is particularly moving, conveying her character's internal struggle with an authenticity that elevates the material.

To dismiss Not Wanted (alternate title: Shame) as a dated glimpse into the socio-sexual mores of the bad old days is to forget how revolutionary it was. Ida Lupino – one of the first women to make the break from glamorous stardom into the male preserve of directing – co-wrote and co-produced this movie about what we would now call single motherhood but was then whispered about as illegitimacy. (Tellingly, though Lupino took a reportedly large hand in directing as well, she spurns the credit, leaving it to Elmer Clifton.)

Sally Forrest plays a scatterbrained young woman who can't even remember to bring home duct tape for the leak her dad's trying to fix or potatoes for mom's stew. She slings hash by day but at night dreams moonily of a lusher life, as represented by the hot piano-man at a night club (Leo Penn). She throws herself at him, and he catches (his flicked-away cigarette drifting slowly down a stream encodes their rapture). But, footloose and fancy-free, Penn packs up to try his luck in that provincial Paris, Capitol City. In a huff, Forrest packs up, too, and follows him there, only to be brutally blown off.

She takes a job as a gas jockey at a station managed by lame veteran Keefe Brasselle, but resists his tepid approaches at first (scant wonder: he plies her with his model trains.) But joining him at an amusement park, she swoons; a doctor called in diagnoses her as pregnant, much to her surprise. Without a word to her family back home or to Brasselle, she packs up yet again and checks herself into The Haven Hospital, a home for either (take your pick) unwed mothers or wayward girls. Much as she'd like to keep the baby, it's an unworkable option, so she grudgingly gives it up for adoption. But soon she's wandering the streets eyeing other women's babies a little too loonily. Next, the police are involved....

A more or less `happy' ending – undoubtedly the only condition under which the picture got made at all – can't compromise Not Wanted's unblinking look at what pregnancy without a wedding ring spelled for women who proved less than vigilant about their chastity. It's a compassionate (if melodramatic and sentimental) assault on a complacent mind-set that, disrupted by the exigencies of wartime, was striving to reassert itself (and strives still). Whatever else may be said about single parenthood, it's no longer a cause for scandal and indignation. Lupino can take at least a little of the credit for that.

This was the first of Ida Lupino's magnificent efforts to use the power of the screen to tackle desperately important but socially taboo social issues between 1949 and 1953. Although Elmer Clifton is credited as director, he had a heart attack during production, and most of the film was directed by Ida Lupino herself, who also produced and co-wrote this powerful drama. It was her first directorial effort, was completely successful, and launched her brilliant directing career. The 'social films' which she made during this period dealt with unwed mothers (a totally taboo issue at that time), rape, physically handicapped people, and even the extraordinary subject of bigamy ('The Bigamist', 1953). Ida Lupino pulled no punches, she was right in there, and got straight to the point, with the most overwhelming scenes of intense drama. The choice of Sally Forrest for the lead in this film about an unwed mother was perfect. The feckless fellow she falls in love with is played by Leo Penn, father of Sean Penn, and the likeness of father and son is clear, but then so is the type of character played! Leo Penn is very good, and plays the piano extraordinarily well in the film, where he is an emotionally disturbed and embittered failed pianist (but Sally Forrest does not know that, as she is only 19 and thinks he is Vladimir Ashkenazy.) Keefe Brasselle is superb in the touching role of the man who loves Sally despite all, the 'really nice guy', from whom she must run away because she is 'fallen'. Younger people today may find all of this incomprehensible, but that shows how quickly everyone forgets. If we think the Muslims are strange for killing their daughters for falling in love, try 1950s America. It was only better in that they didn't actually kill them, they merely disowned them and left them on the streets. Lest we think we are morally superior, we should remember that Ida Lupino did not make her films for their shock value. She was no sensationalist. She was addressing serious social wrongs being done by the majority of the population to unfortunates who strayed, and she took her social compassion far enough actually to make a film about a perfectly nice man who merely happened to have two wives. Shocking? Well, how about the hypocrisy then: in Utah there are admitted to be thousands of practising polygamists. Where's the shock? If only Ida Lupino were with us now, what would she be showing us about ourselves? She was a heroic figure, and this film was merely the first of a series of dramas that will tear your heart out, if you have one.

This is the first of Ida Lupino's social conscience films that also includes Outrage (1950) and The Bigamist (1953). Here she deals with the problems that a wedlock baby presents to a young mother (Forrest). It's a topic studios at the time were loathe to touch because of the tricky moral implications. Fortunately, Lupino deals with the topic in realistic and affecting fashion, and from the girl's pov.

Forrest shines as Sally the wedlock mother. As the innocent young woman, Forrest has to act out the many changes in the unwed mother's life, which she does in sympathetic fashion. Then too, Forrest looks the everyday part, petite, pretty, but hardly glamorous. Her hollow look as she roams the forlorn city streets remains unforgettable. (Note the use of ordinary downtown locations as background that helps identify Sally as an everyday person. Then, for contrast, catch how Sally's abruptly thrust into an urban jail cell, which comes across like an urban shark tank.)

Still, I'm really impressed with Leo Penn as Steve the moody pianist who can't seem to find himself. Sally's enthralled with his tempestuous music that suggests a darkly romantic soul underneath. At first, Steve resists her too youthful advances. But then he succumbs, leaving her pregnant (a word never used). Note too how carefully that romantic night is finessed, a Code requirement for the time. Anyway, Steve's not so much a selfish villain as a lost soul. This is an interesting twist since it's really she who presses the relationship instead of the man. And even though he terminates it rather cruelly, Sally is really the author of her own situation. This first part is handled extremely well and in generally non-Hollywood fashion.

The second part involves Sally leaving home and trying to deal with independence in a new town, while coping with a pregnancy that only emerges over time. However, Keefe Brasselle's gas station owner, where she goes to work, smacks of Hollywood contrivance. In short, he's an attractive, idealized bachelor, which means from that point on, we know how the story will end. I guess that even for the gutsy Lupino, the offbeat could only go so far. This second part, though affecting, comes across more conventionally. For me, the high point comes in the unwed mothers home. There a real pathos emerges between Joan and Sally as they ponder what the future holds for them.

Still and all, it's unfortunate actress-producer-director Lupino never got her due from the industry. She should be remembered as a pioneering woman on the production end as well as also being a fine performer. Too bad her gutsy social conscience films, such as this, were ill-timed. As early TV took over popular viewing habits, audiences for these small b&w's dwindled, soon causing them to drift into obscurity. At the same time was the cultural chill set off by HUAC and the McCarthy hearings of the early 50's. As a result, flirtation with touchy topics like this one gave way to the safe entertainment of I Love Lucy and The Ten Commandments. At the same time, screenwriters such as Not Wanted's Paul Jarrico would be blacklisted.

Nonetheless, Outrage remains a sensitively affecting story with continuing relevance even to our own more free-wheeling day. It also remains a lasting tribute to the boldly enterprising Ida Lupino.

The Wrong Rut (1949)

What a bizarre movie with a really strong female lead doing her best with an overly emotional part. The title alone is a goofy thing, meant to preach a little to the poor youth of the country who get pregnant out of "wedlock." The other title, "Not Wanted," has far more meaning and none of the insouciance.

There are two surprises to this tale of a young woman frustrated at home, meeting a man (a piano player, no surprise) and getting knocked up. The first is the leading female, Sally Forest, who has to run through a huge range of emotional situations, from giddy to superficial to terrified to worn out to enamored to simply being a heartbroken would-be mother. This is her first credited role in a movie, and she did appear in a number of decent early 1950s films (including one directed by Ida Lupino) before switching to t.v. (I have seen only "Mystery Street" which was quite good.)

The other surprise might a reason to either watch this film or run far and fast. It's a fifteen minute insert in badly faded (but once vivid) color of a C-section birth. It's clearly a medical short inserted, not relating to the plot, and it cuts in badly with in intertitle card and then is as gruesome as possible. Then it flips back to the nicely filmed black and white narrative, which is a huge relief. I found the documentary aspects interesting on some level, but was so put off by the apparent shock tactics of it I got a little miffed. The idea, it seemed to me, was to shock the young women in the audience, so they wouldn't dare get pregnant, since having a baby was really a cold, violent, bloody affair.

Of course, this has nothing to do with much here. We don't even know if Forest's character has a caesarian (we assume so, of course), and what about women in marriages who want their babies who have to have a caesarian for health reasons? Furthermore, why go along with the horrors of being pregnant at all, in this way? Did anyone mention condoms? It's just a crude painful propaganda piece, on some level.

And yet most of it is a pretty well made mini-drama, an hour long (minus the color insert), and quite well filmed and edited. You might enjoy it, but be forewarned.