Wild Weed / She Shoulda Said No (1949)
On September 01, 1948, starlet Lila Leeds gained notoriety for being arrested together with Robert Mitchum on charges of marijuana possession. Following a trial on January 10, 1949, they served 60 days in jail. Mitchum’s career wasn’t hurt either by the scandal or by his sentence; Leeds’ miniscule career, however, was nearly over by the time she was offered the starring role in what became known as Wild Weed.
Wild Weed was the first film of Franklin Productions, with Richard Kay producing. Kay, who later produced the added U.S. material for Godzilla (1954), gained much press coverage with an AP story dated April 15, 1949:
Actress Lila Leeds, who co-starred in that famous marijuana melodrama, is in a hospital today suffering from shock, bruises and a broken right arm suffered in a collision of two expensive cars.
The 21-year old blond actress is scheduled to begin work May 5 on a film titled “The Devil’s Weed” dealing with traffic in marijuana. (…)
It did not take long for newspapers to start complaining: In the Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia) from April 19 1949, J. Shenton Lodge mentions the forthcoming film:
It is already apparent (…), that the motives in Hollywood in this instance are more mercenary than moral, having already announced that the star of the production will be an actress recently released from jail after having served a sentence there on a narcotics change (…) a male companion served a like sentence. The ensuing publicity was nauseating, elevating as it did the convicted culprits to a place of almost hero-worship, and engineered by publicity agents of the accused (….)
Something seems to have happened to our American culture that is not good. Somewhere along the way our morals have become muddled.
Cut to a semi close-up of Kay in his office, gleefully rubbing his hands.
Kay seems to have been either quite ambitious or quite naive, for on the same day filming was supposed to start, May 5, 1949, he submitted a screenplay of the film, then called Evil Weed, to the Breen Office. None too surprisingly, six days later Breen replied in the negative, pointing out that the “basic story is in violation of the Production Code”, namely:
The illegal drug traffic must not be portrayed in such a way as to stimulate curiosity concerning the use of, or traffic in, such drugs; nor shall scenes be approved which show the effect of illegal drugs, or their effects, in detail.
Meanwhile, according to a Pittsburg Post-Gazette article from April 27, 1949, Lila Leeds had decided not to do the film at all. She was to receive 2.500 US$ for shooting, but “her big money — $750 a week — was to have come from the P.A.’s she was to have made with the finished picture.”
However, come May 23, 1949, a Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) article by Aline Mosby describes the film as already in the can, “shot in seven days on a budget the director prefers not to remember”. Leeds is quoted: “I helped with the script and told the writer what happens at a marijuana party and about jail regulations.” The article goes on to describe the shooting of the jail scene and the efforts of the press agent (“who, in true quickie style, was hired for only the last two days of the picture”):
Miss Leeds started wild-eyed and flung her hands over her haggard face while the cameras ground away. She said the jail set was authentic. The scene had one take.
“Such intensity she gives her scenes!” said the press agent. “It’s beyond acting. It’s like she’s living her life all over again.
“The musical score will get the same treatment that Selznick gave ‘Spellbound,’” he added. “We’re trying to get the same composer, Miklos Rozsa. We want the film to have the ‘Spellbound’ feeling.”
Director Sherman Scott, however, prefers it to have “’The Lost Week End’ [sic] of marijuana feeling.”
“We really show her beat-up, no glamour,” he said. “Her kid brother commits suicide when he finds out she’s smoking marijuana, and that gets her. The drip of a faucet, the turn of a mop-wringer sound like ‘kid-killer… kid-killer…’”
Alas, they didn’t get Rozsa (and I’d be surprised if they even approached him — his fee would probably have exceeded the budget for the whole film), but they did hire Samuel Hoffman and his theremin.
The Daily News from New York, July 12, 1949, announced:
Samuel Cummins of Eureka Productions says that movie with Leila Leeds is titled Wild Weed and that Bob Mitchum’s brother doesn’t appear in it. Cummins opines that the picture is not only entertaining but has constructive and educational value.
(John Mitchum appeared in the other 1949 drug exploitation movie, The Devil’s Sleep, instead, playing a doctor and leaving no impression.)
Wild Weed was originally released in July 1949, despite the Breen Office restating that it was “unable to issue you the Association’s certificate of approval” on July 20. Undaunted, Kay went on, though apparently without too much success.
Even with it’s “star”, Lila Leeds, appearing on the stage along with it, the picture “Wild Weed”, which shows the evil of marijuana smoking, is laying a great big egg in Los Angeles. Lila gives a 5-minute talk at each showing — and will go on tour with this little epic to several cities.
(Wisconsin State Journal, September 14, 1949)
On September 16, members of the Breen office met with Kay, Cummins and a Harry Rebnick “of Fox West Coast”. An internal memo stated:
The burden of their request was that they must find some way of getting a certificate for this picture, otherwise they will not be able to get out from under the negative cost. They state that the picture is not sensational enough to play the Main Street theaters and houses of that type.
They suggested that they had in mind making certain minor cuts in the picture, having to do largely with the actual smoking of the cigarettes, and wondered if this would remove the Code objection. I explained that the basic Code objection lay in the fact that it showed in detail the effects of drug addiction. These, they admitted, they could probably not delete from the picture. After some discussion they inquired as to the possibility of taking an appeal to the Board of Directors.
Indeed, Franklin Productions Inc. did appeal, but on November 4, after screening the picture on October 4, it was unanimously voted “to sustain the decision of the Production Code Administration in declining to issue certificate of approval”.
Soon afterward, Kroger Babb’s Hallmark Production Inc. (in the business of producing and distributing “enlightening, educational, and entertaining motion pictures”, according to their letterhead) picked up the film. Hallmark didn’t care to bother with the MPAA, retitled the film to She Shoulda Said No! (it also ran as The Devil’s Weed) and presumably, made some changes. The ending has Lila Leeds delivering a long monologue in close-up. However, in the Hallmark version, Leeds’ voice is removed from the soundtrack: All we get is music and a long, superimposed text crawl behind which we can see Leeds talking desperately, but inaudibly — perhaps the film’s clumsiest moment. A prolonged battle with the Pennsylvania state censor ended in 1956 when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in “Hallmark Productions, Inc. v. Carroll”, ruled that the state’s censorship was unconstitutional. Cut to a semi close-up of Kroger Babb in his office, gleefully rubbing his hands. Hallmark continued to peddle She Shoulda Said No! for over 20 years; it was shown at least until 1971.
The film sold well enough internationally. Foreign titles included Dem Rauschgift verfallen (Germany, 1955), Duivelsgif (Netherlands, 1952), Beyaz Zehir Kurbanlari (Turkey, 1952), Erva de Diablo (Brazil, 1953), Plaisirs Interdits (France, 1954), Djævelen skriver recept (Denmark, 1955), Lyfseðill Satans (Iceland, 1957), Beyaz Zehir Kurbanlari (Turkey, 1952) and Narkotikagangster (Sweden, 1956). The British Board of Film Censors gave it an “A” certificate; however, the London, Middlesex and Surrey County Councils banned the film.
Meanwhile, Lila Leeds strutted her stuff. The Star-Gazette (Elmira, New York), December 03 1949, tells us that she had
peddled a newspaper serial titled “Hollywood Exile” for $1.500, based on her experiences in the celluloid colony, from which she was exiled by the authorities. The story blasts practically everyone she knows in Hollywood except Robert Mitchum, whom she tags “a great guy”.
Later, the serial — to be written by a ghostwriter — grew into a proposed book with the promising title “Sex, Marijuana and Me”. The Mercury (Pottstown, Pennsylvania), December 15, 1949, announced that “it will be illustrated with photos showing Lila in the company of such celluloid citizens as Sonny Tufts, Orson Welles and Steve Crane”. Alas, it was not to be, although Leeds’ further misadventures would make news from time to time. Her later history, with scenes of jail, prostitution and the finding of God, would make an exploitation film by itself.
Wild Weed’s plot follows the traditional tropes of drug scare movies, but is happy to go the extra mile: After the requisite dire warnings (smoking dope becomes “an invitation to your own murder”) and a Breen-defying montage illustrating how dope cigarettes are passed (Aztec Tomato cans are a swell hiding place), the film introduces ruthless peddler Markey (Alan Baxter) and wastes no time in illustrating the eventual fate of his victims: A couple of youngsters drive out to lover’s lane, get all high and giggly, and end up in an efficient off-screen car accident. We only hear the crash while the camera focuses on a road sign “Drive Safely Today — And Drive Tomorrow”, and it’s to the director’s credit that this cost-saving device doesn’t reek of sheer desperation. In the emergency ward, a disheartened mother tries to pet her daughter, only to find that she has both her legs amputated; the scene fades out on the mother’s scream.
After a short scene of cops discussing the case, we are introduced to dancer Anne Lester (Leeds), a good girl, which makes her all the more interesting for Markey. Fate takes its course. Dope makes people giggle, become uninhibited and freak out in scenes which are slightly more realistic than their equivalents in Reefer Madness. Still, a fantasy sequence has Rudolf Friml jr. in the role of a wannabe pianist who can’t even perform “Chopsticks”, imagining himself at the Hollywood Bowl. Anne’s brother kills himself, the cops close in and Anne is taken on the traditional cautionary horror tour to the morgue, the jail and the psychopathic ward. (“This girl was lucky. She committed suicide.”) There is actually a happy end.
Nobody could reasonably expect Wild Weed to be anything more than another exploitation quickie, haphazardly put together outside the Hollywood system, the kind of film acted out by non-actors who, perhaps fortunately, were rarely given close-ups, and scripted only to allow some glimpses of barely-clad females.
But despite ridiculous moments and dull spots, Wild Weed is actually a better film than such drug-scare oddities as Reefer Madness (1936) or The Devil’s Sleep (1949). It could be the best film directed by Sam Newfield (here working under his “Sherman Scott” alias). This may be small praise, but it is real praise — the film is better-made, and scarier, than, say, The Mad Monster and Dead Men Walk. Cheap and exploitative it is, but made with a sure hand, decent acting, workable dialogue and some stylish photography: It manages moments of sheer “B” eloquence, and if you’re used to the Sam Newfield of drab PRC fillers, you are in for a surprise.
Lila Leeds may not have been a great actress, but she is still beyond average for this type of movie, as are reliables like Alan Baxter, Michael Whalen and, in a small role, Jack Elam.
Screenwriter Richard H. Landau, a graduate of the Yale school of drama, spent most of his career writing less than illustrious fare like Pharao’s Curse (1957) and Voodoo Island (1957). The most prestigious film he was involved with was probably Back to Bataan (1945); he also adapted Nigel Kneale’s teleplay into the film version of The Quatermass Experiment (1955). By changing the original’s voice recording and flashback depicting the fate of the astronauts into the screening of a film taken with an onboard camera, he might have fathered the “found footage” sub-genre.
The score, credited to Raoul Kraushaar, not a composer himself, is melodramatic but serviceable: It’s certainly less obtrusive than a Miklos Rozsa score would have been. Whoever wrote the actual score — there are a few moments which sound like the work of Mort Glickman (cf. Invaders from Mars, also credited to Kraushaar) — was decent enough to keep the theremin in check.
I wish I knew more about d.p. Jack Greenhalgh, whose credits range from Reefer Madness to Robot Monster (1953), his last movie, with the occasional minor cult item in between (Tomorrow We Live (1942), Hitler’s Madman (1943), Fear in The Night (1947)). Just as Newfield rose above himself, Greenhalgh’s work for Wild Weed is much above average for the budget level (i.e. it looks like a well-made “B”). Just why everybody bothered to rise to this less than promising occasion is as praiseworthy as it is mysterious, unless you want this comment to end with a dope joke. No, better read some reviews:
Chicago Tribune (by “Mae Tinee”): Clumsily directed, with an extremely ordinary cast, the film is definitely second rate.
Variety: Scenes at reefer parties are different if nothing else, but even the so-called “tea” adherents overact. Sherman Scott’s direction is generally very routine. (…) Jack Greenhalgh, who photographed, has some excellent camera effects but sometimes overdoes it with weird lens tricks.
New York Times: Never did vice seem so devoid of enchantment.
Los Angeles Times: A very sane, yet very absorbing story of drug addiction. Methods of both law enforcement agencies and purveyors of drugs — especially marijuana — are shown, without over-sentimentality and scenery-chewing dramatics on the one hand or preachiness on the other. (…) Some of the marijuana orgies are wild enough to satisfy the thrill seekers and the showing of dope addicts is dramatic; yet the sensational is not exploited at the expense of the truthful balance of the tale’s lesson. Sherman Scott has directed well, and the musical score by Raul Krauschauer [sic!] is effective.
Showmen’s Trade Review: Tabloid material has been given a surprisingly good production and, until late in the proceedings, restrained direction by a small company, but sensationalism is finally allowed to enter in scenes of hopeless addicts that are much too strong for any audiences and may meet with some condemnation.
