Not Wanted

Sally Forrest's mother harps on her constantly, so when she develops a crush on piano player Leo Penn, she follows him to the big city. Sally gets a job at an all-service gas station run by Keefe Brasselle. He likes her a lot, but it isn't until Penn blows town, saying no promises had been made, that Sally gives Brasselle a chance. She's happy for the first time, but discovers she is pregnant by Penn.

It's a powerful and moving film about unwed mothers, with a definite message to offer, and Miss Forrest gives a fine performance as the young girl trapped in a situation she does not know how to deal with. All the situations in which she is happy hark back to carefree childhood: at an amusement park, riding the merry-go-round, or playing with Brasselle's immense model train layout. It is the adult world which she is incapable of dealing with.

It was co-written, co-produced and co-directed (uncredited) by Ida Lupino, her first time wielding the megaphone. Director Elmer Clifton's career had been in free fall for a quarter of a century. One of D.W. Griffith's acolytes, he was the first director to cast Clara Bow in a major role. A couple of years later, his leading lady on a film for Fox was injured on set and, his career left him working for Poverty Row producers. Of course, this film was intended for that market, but with a good script and sympathetic directors.... it's hard to tell who directed what at this distance, after Clifton had a heart attack, and Miss Lupino took over the uncredited directing. I think it highly likely that Miss Forrest's performance was aided immeasurably by Miss Lupino, but it lacks the semi-stylized notes that her other movies of this period showed.

In any case, the movie, as it exists, is a fine one. Perhaps it is enough to admit that, note that film is less an individual auteur's work and more a highly involved collaboration. The finished result allowed Clifton's career to end well -- although others of his films were released later, this is the last he worked on -- an provided Miss Lupino the credentials to make some entertaining and didactic movies.

Ida Lupino was a very gifted actress, but unlike the vast majority of actresses in the Hollywood jungle, she was able to go toe to toe with any man for both direction and production. She was a wily, knowledgable veteran of film and film production, and had nothing but successes behind the camera (which, quite frankly, she had grown accustomed to with successes in front of it as well). The lead actress Sally Forest does an admirable job with an emotionally difficult role. The opportunities for Lupino to get preachy in this film were numerous, yet her careful hand kept an even keel on the flow of the film. One has to decide these issues for themselves. Is abortion right or wrong? Is taking a child to term right or wrong? Is giving up a child right or wrong? The answer is always the same. No one can say if any of these things are right or wrong; only the woman involved can make that decision. It is easy to spout platitudes when you do not have to live with them yourself. A very good film with sobering content.

Ida Lupino after a successful career as actress, settles work behind the cameras, even uncredited as director it was her first film debut as producer and director as well, she was one of the first women that took over a field strictly mastered by men only, she made several thematic movies touching in neuralgic subject as "Outrage" "The Bigamist" and "Not Wanted", if today it's quite usually on the late forties was a taboo, be an unmarried mother in those time was a sentence of death for women and upcoming marriage, this small docudrama portraits this matter sharply, narrating a moving story of grow up girl around eighteen Sally Kelton (Sally Forrest) that caught in love by a restless pianist Steve Ryan (Leo Penn), after a couple months of affair, he disappear to another town, Sally follows him, soon she understood that Steve hasn't any feeling over her, too late, meanwhile she receives a fresh approach of courtship of a fine guy Drew Baxter (Keefe Brasselle), haplessly she already was pregnancy of Steve that no longer stays around, Karen hasn't no money to afford himself on those hard days, the ill-fated girl there no choice and is admitted at those charity hospital allowed for those spurned girl, Karen having a little boy, then came up the defining moment , keep with a child to raise in harsh conditions or release him to adopting process, a movie that blow the whistle and berate about the social rejection over the unmarried women, fine subject lifts by the great Ida Lupino!!

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First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7

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.

Depending on how old you are, you will understand why this film is very unusual and a taboo subject for the year 1949 in which it was made. Ida Lupino, although not taking credit, basically directed this film about an unhappy girl who gets mixed up with a loser who gets her pregnant and then leaves her hanging. Since this isn't a taboo subject today in society's eyes, a lot of people will probably miss the whole point of the film. Lupino was a genius--an accomplished actress, a producer, writer and screenwriter and director. She made this film, I believe to bring attention to all sides of the story about an unwed mother not knowing what to do. In my book I rate this film highly.