Not Wanted (1949): Revisiting Ida Lupino’s progressive agenda 70 years later
Multi artist Ida Lupino has paved the path for ground-breaking artists even decades after her death. Her maverick spirit remains inspiring to those who dare to break taboos with their art. Imagine, then, more than 70 years ago, an actress almost in her 30s, unsatisfied with the roles she was offered due to the lack of character development, turning down Warner Brothers and immersing herself in an unusual era for women. Ida was way ahead of her time when she pursued a career as a film director (she was the second woman to be accepted in the Directors Guild of America and the only one to direct films in Hollywood in the immediate post-war era). Regarding her ambition as a filmmaker, she said: “someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work.”.
The reason why I am writing this explanatory paragraph about Lupino is that female directors have always been neglected. According to Women and Hollywood site: “Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to ever win the Academy Award for Best Director. Only five women have ever been nominated (Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Bigelow, and Greta Gerwig)”. There are more upsetting statistics regarding women in cinema and that’s why it’s so important to watch and talk about their works. When director Elmer Clifton had a heart attack and couldn’t finish his film Not Wanted, in 1949, Ida Lupino took over directing the script which marked her debut behind the cameras. Alongside her husband, Collier Young, Ida founded The Filmakers, an independent company which was responsible not only for her first production but also for bringing new faces into the spotlight, such as actress Sally Forrest, who stars in the same movie.
Despite completing Not Wanted, Ida Lupino didn’t want to take credit. However, it is impossible to disassociate her from the movie production once she played a major influence on it. The narrative tells the story of a young girl around her 20s called Sally Kelton. She is the daughter of a housewife and a working man and can’t seem to help them out with household chores. Sally prefers, instead, to hang out with friends to jazz clubs. Her mother warns her that women who don’t find respectable men to stick with, will end up being with those who trap them inside a kitchen. That was pretty much of the mindset in the north-American post-war period.
During World War II, the US government encouraged women to work in different jobs and stay single. There was a loosening of gender roles, however, after the war (after 1945), when men returned home, the roles were redefined, and this caused anti-conformism regarding social roles. There were many outsiders, including Ida Lupino herself, who refused to fit the norm and had something to say about it: “ Life doesn’t give us the means of finding love without the bounds of our conventions and many of us will find it outside”. So, when the mother and daughter initial dialogue alludes to a break from gender expectations, it is Lupino’s resistance in accepting institutional sexism once again.
Sally attends a jazz club where the piano player Steve Ryan (Leo Penn) performs and the pair engage in a conversation about music and future. Steve expressed a huge will to pick up and hit the road to seek meaning beyond traditional values. His character reflects the spirit of the Beat Generation writers who were highly influenced by jazz music and its improvisational structure — they would only be recognized in the following decade, but whoever constructed the film’s characters was pretty aware of the social changes at that time. It is interesting to notice that Sally also had a free spirit and this can be perceived in small details like when she wore an off shoulder shirt, which was considered vulgar, but that was for sure Ida’s attempt to portray the female character as one who is rebellious, however, that teased the Production Code Administration (PCA).
The PCA was responsible for the approval of films taking into consideration what would affect the image of the North-American traditional family. The movie censors first considered Not Wanted to be a “sex problem drama” due to the Sally’s relationship with Steve, concluding with her pregnancy. They were also opposed to a seduction scene of the couple, but Ida Lupino would show up in person during the negotiations and was determined to display a progressive agenda in her movies. If we reflect upon Ida’s efforts, as a woman in the 1940’s, to convince powerful men of her cinematographic ambitions, we can say that not only she was way ahead of her time but she was also aware of the power dynamics in society that undermined women, and did what she could to fight against that. She definitely opened the doors for female directors to become such and to boldly address relevant social issues in their works.
In those days, for young girls to be unwed mothers meant that they could not be real mothers as they had no control over their reproductive lives. It also meant that institutions like church and state decided what would be their destiny. In other words, if they chose single parenthood, they would have to face social stigmas and thus having less opportunities in society. This coercive action led women to reflect upon their lack of decision over their bodies and the social implications behind it. Sally claims that raising a child without a father would result in rejection and that she would have no one to take care of him while she’s at work. Although we notice that Sally wanted to keep the child after birth, she is conscious about her marginalized position in society. To think of Ida’s willingness to portray unwed mothers of multicultural backgrounds and that she could not do so because of the movie censors, brings to light the humanizing nature of the director as well as her commitment to expose the failure in the “American Dream”.
“[…]the way people actually live in the world and the problems they must meet and overcome.”
Many critics found the portrayal of Sally as mentally ill unnecessary, especially when she is caught stealing a baby, believing it was her own. However, this might be interpreted as the confinement of women’s individual exploration which was suppressed by the oppressive capitalist system. Sally’s mental state reminded me of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elise Cowen, and other post-war authors who penned the sense of being caged and tormented. Sally is arrested in a prison cell and meets women from different backgrounds whose “crimes” are unknown to the audience. “How did I get here?” wonders Sally with a lost look. Many women never knew why they were considered guilty or ill because that conception is, most of the times, a social construct. Plath and other writers tried, metaphorically, to answer Sally’s question whereas men like Steve could walk free from the torment they caused to women.
Not Wanted ends with Sally running from her destiny when she is found powerless against Drew’s (a friend who is as hurt as she is)efforts to have her. Their final kiss disappoints those who object to boy-gets-girl at the end formula. However, we have no clue of what their future might have been like. Ida sends a message that both of them were tormented souls who treated each other equally regardless of their past. It always seemed hard to me to know if the female character is really in love or just coerced into men’s kindness but this doesn’t undermine the relevance of Not Wanted as the first of a series of movies Ida directed under progressive lens.
Resources:
Facts to Know About Women in Hollywood. Women and Hollywood,2018, accessed 14 September 2019. < https://womenandhollywood.com>
Grisham, Therese, and Grossman, Julie. Ida Lupino, Director: Her Art and Resilience in Times of Transition. Rutgers University Press, 2017.Accessed 14 September 2019.
Orgeron, Marsha (2008). Hollywood Ambitions, pp. 170–179. Accessed 14 September 2019.
Other reviews I did on Ida Lupino’s movies:
Ida Lupino’s Outrage (1950) : How Society Dealt with Sexual Assault Back Then
Ida Lupino: The Trouble with Angels And Also with Female Representation in Cinema
