Not Wanted

Moviecut—Not Wanted

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!! Thanks for reading. Resume: First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7

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.

Ditsy and naive teenager Sally Kelton (a sound and appealing performance by Sally Forrest) falls for sullen and rootless itinerant piano player Steve Ryan (smoothly played by Leo Penn). Steve runs out on Sally, but only after he impregnates her first. Ashamed and abandoned, Sally checks into a home for unwed mothers and gives her baby up for adoption. Directed with commendable taste, restraint, and sensitivity by Elmer Clifton and Ida Lupino (who also co-wrote the thoughtful script with Paul Jerrico), this engrossing and affecting drama thankfully avoids any heavy-handed preachiness or lurid sensationalism considering its subject matter. Instead this film displays a genuine compassion for its wayward, yet still sympathetic protagonist while illustrating the strict mores of the era as well as serving as an effective cautionary tale on the perils of falling for the wrong person. Moreover, it's exceptionally well acted by an able cast: Forrest brings a winningly scatterbrained charm to her character, Penn makes for a suitably moody louse, and, best of all, Keefe Brasselle delivers an excellent, engaging, and delightfully energetic portrayal of helpful and goodhearted disabled nice guy war veteran Drew Baxter. Henry Freulich's stark black and white cinematography makes artful use of fades and dissolves. The score by Leith Stevens does the dramatic trick, too. Worth a watch.

Not Wanted (1949) The draw here is not the plot (which is a somewhat worn story, today, of a woman falling in love with the wrong guy and getting pregnant) and not the director (Ida Lupino) but the leading actress Sally Forrest. She plays with conviction the simple girl with dreams of something better, caught up in misleading romance, and elegantly embroiled in a real romance after all. Lupino of course is the famous hook, and this is her first directorial role (and she is uncredited, mostly because she stepped in for a man who had just had a heart attack). The film is sharp. It's no brilliant mostly because of the writing, in my view-it gives what seems like the obvious plot turns for a girl caught up between the lover who doesn't love her and the man who really does. And she can't quite see which is which. I rather liked the movie, but mostly because it's crisp, well photographed, and dealing with a real predicament. "You know what the real trouble is." She demurs. "You're going to have a baby." And there it is. Her life turns over and over. The key here for contemporary audiences, which might not connect at all to the social service attitudes here, is whether the expectant woman might want to keep her baby. The scenes with the woman in a supportive institution surrounded by other women in the same situation make it a bit superficial, but the problem is real. The sincere man in her life is a bit of a likable guy, simple, probably not a great actor but I liked him a lot here. (His name is Keefe Brasselle, and he had a small role in a number of decent low budget movies at the time like "Railroaded!" and "T-Men" as well as "A Place in the Sun"). There are the usual glosses over reality in a movie from this period, like when the woman has her baby, she is wheeled down the hall in a kind of passive stupor. Where is the screaming that is part of childbirth? (That was forbidden by the all male Hays Code people.) That's only the most obvious of the lack of actual reality in the film. It comes off as a pleasant metaphor, stripped of something deeper. And that sadly is despite the really sincere, moving depiction of her character by Forrest. It's for her this movie remains. And perhaps that reminder of how difficult it was to be pregnant out of wedlock in that era, which in many ways seemed so modern. As a photographer, I'll add the small footnote: the cinematographer, Henry Freulich, also shot "It Happened One Night," and that film is of course a classic, and this one is also very well shot. Which boosts it a notch all through.

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.

The version of this movie that I saw was the one titled, "The Wrong Rut", which has color birth-of-a-baby footage VERY crudely tacked in around two- thirds in. Needless to say, I found this footage very out of place in a movie that's otherwise a sober and surprisingly compelling tale of a once taboo subject. We may not know for sure which parts of the (original) movie were directed by Lupino once she took over, but there is a constant feeling of sympathy and compassion towards the main female character. Unlike other movies of the time dealing with unwed mothers, the movie does not condemn her - she is seen as a victim, and that it's society that is to be slammed for how it treats her. The ending feels a little too happy, and it doesn't explain how the male figure in that ending somehow changed his mind from how he felt about the main female earlier in the movie. But other than that the movie is very well done. Just make sure you see the "Not Wanted" version and not "The Wrong Rut" version, unless you absolutely can't find the original version to watch.

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.

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.

A gripping drama of motherhood when complications without end set in. Sally has a relationship with an irresistible pianist, he actually plays quite well, but he is too occupied with his work and problems to be able to provide Sally with any proper support. He gets away, and Sally finds herself in the hands of a garage worker with a passion for toy railways. When she is pregnant from her former relationship, she runs away and ends up in a home for unwed mothers. The film is mostly remarkable for being Ida Lupino's debut as a director, and at the time the subject was etremely sensitive and taboo and could not be discussed openly. This taboo situation has in an interesting way marked the film like in a haze of mystery, and you get insights in the lives of unwed mothers and their tough luck that shine with fascinating intimacy. This is a women's film about women made by a woman, and as such it is precious, to say the least. Sally Forrest makes a tremendous performance, she is just a common woman, this part would have been ideal for Susan Hayward, and Sally actually reminds of her, but she is practically as good as Susan, with her weakness, her fits, her tensions and uncontrollable impulses, it's all perfectly real. The music is also quite good, and the piano scenes touch on great romanticism. It's a minor film, but the smallest jewels can sometimes be the most precious ones.