Not Wanted (DVD)

Hollywood legend Ida Lupino makes her directorial debut in this ahead-of-its-time shocker! Naive teenager Sally Kelton falls for womanizing jazz pianist Steve Ryan. When the struggling musician suddenly leaves town for another gig, the lovestruck girl runs away from home to find him. But Steve rejects her, leaving Sally to fend for herself on the street. She is taken in by kindly Drew Baxter, a shellshocked war veteran. Love begins to blossom between the two, but Sally cannot let go of her obsession with Steve. Discovering she is pregnant with the piano player's child, Sally makes a last desperate attempt to make Steve love her...one that may end in tragedy for everyone...

Not Wanted inadvertently started the directing career of Ida Lupino. Films like They Drive By Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941) had made the actress a star, but Lupino was unsatisfied with merely being in front of the camera. She became interested in Not Wanted, a screenplay whose frank subject matter had scared off the major studios. Deciding to produce it independently, Lupino hired Elmer Clifton, a veteran of exploitation pictures, to direct. Several days into filming, he suffered a heart attack, leaving Lupino to finish the movie on her own. (She would give sole screen credit to Clifton, who died shortly afterwards.) Not Wanted features many of the dark, dreamlike touches that would define Lupino's future film noirs such as The Hitch-Hiker and The Bigamist (both 1953). For her leads, Lupino chose relative unknowns Sally Forrest and Keefe Brasselle. Forrest would work again with the director on Never Fear (1949) and Hard, Fast, and Beautiful (1951), and with Fritz Lang on While the City Sleeps (1956). She is best remembered, however, for her skimpy costume in Son of Sinbad (1955). Keefe Brasselle would later be the star of The Eddie Cantor Story (1953). Leo Penn, who plays Steve, is the father of actor Sean Penn. His acting career was cut short by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but he would become a successful television director in the 1960s. Not Wanted made something of a sensation upon its release in 1949; Lupino was even asked to discuss the film's controversial content in a radio interview with Eleanor Roosevelt.

• drama