She Shoulda Said No!
Encyclopedia
"She Shoulda Said 'No'!" (also known as Wild Weed; Marijuana, the Devil's Weed; The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket; and The Devil's Weed) is a 1949 exploitation film
that follows in the spirit of morality tales
such as the 1936 films Reefer Madness
and Marihuana
. Directed by Sherman Scott
and starring Lila Leeds
, it was originally produced to capitalize on the arrest of Leeds and Robert Mitchum
on a charge of marijuana
conspiracy. The film was issued under many titles; it struggled to find a distributor until film presenter Kroger Babb
picked up the rights, reissuing it as The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket. Its relative success came only after the promotional posters were redone and a story fabricated that the film was being presented in conjunction with the United States Treasury
.
Anne's drug use results in the loss of many of her inhibitions, and the film shows her actions under the influence, including scenes implying sexual promiscuity. As the film progresses, she is fired from her job and begins selling drugs for Markey. Her brother hangs himself when he learns of her new job, and she is arrested and given a tour of the various psychiatric ward
s and jails that drug users end up in. Finally, after 50 days in jail, she is released, cleaned up and ready to cooperate with the authorities regarding Markey.
The film itself is semi-biographical
, its story following what Leeds herself experienced. The film was inspired by the highly-publicized arrest of movie stars Robert Mitchum
and Leeds for marijuana possession. On September 1, 1948, the actors, along with two others, were arrested after being caught smoking marijuana at the home of Leeds in the early morning, and were charged with the felony of narcotics possession. Public empathy for Mitchum resulted in the charge being downgraded to the lesser one of conspiracy to possess marijuana, and his sentence of sixty days in jail was set aside in 1951. Leeds, however, was sentenced to sixty days in prison and placed on probation for five years.
Upon her release, Leeds struggled to find work in Hollywood, and signed on to star in Wild Weed, a film that was, according to producer Richard Kay, "based on the circumstances of the arrest of Lila Leeds and Robert Mitchum." During publicity for the film in 1949, Leeds, who had been 21 at the time of the arrest, said that appearing in the picture would keep other people her age from trying drugs, but in 1952 she confided in Collier's
that she "only had one offer . . . which was an obvious attempt to capitalize on the Mitchum case notoriety. I took it. I was broke." The film gained approval from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics
to use the drug references, a standard practice at the time even though the Bureau had no power to censor the films. The film used its plot to push many of the beliefs of the time: that drug-using youth would turn to crime and the theory of "marijuana as a gateway drug
". The latter was a leading argument for drug prohibition
during the era, and an argument that Leeds herself made, based on her own history with marijuana and heroin.
Via Franklin Productions, Kay filmed the production in six days, a common occurrence given that most films of the era were shot with a quick turnaround. Eureka Productions initially distributed the film, but it struggled to find an audience until Kroger Babb's Hallmark Productions acquired the rights for distribution. Babb initially marketed the film under the title The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket, but failed to achieve success with that title and eventually changed it to "She Shoulda Said 'No'!". He pushed the sensuality of Leeds with new promotional photographs and a new tagline
: "How Bad Can a Good Girl Get...without losing her virtue or respect???", while sending letters to local communities falsely claiming that the United States Treasury Department implored Hallmark to release the film "in as many towns and cities as possible in the shortest possible length of time" as a public service. The square-up
misleadingly stated that the producers wished to "publicly acknowledge the splendid cooperation of the Nation's narcotic experts and Government departments, who aided in various ways the success of this production. . . . If its presentation saves but one young girl or boy from becoming a 'dope fiend' – then its story has been well told."
Babb, who gained notoriety for his various marketing gimmicks, occasionally had Leeds make appearances and give lectures at showings of the film. Babb often booked the movie as a midnight presentation twice a week in the same town; David F. Friedman
, who would later use the film in his own double-billings, attributed the distribution plan to a film that was so low in quality that Babb wanted to cash in and move to his next stop as fast as possible.
titled The Marihuana Story
. That film, about a doctor who goes undercover into the world of drug addicts to learn about his wife's death only to become addicted to marijuana himself, was not as successful as other exploitation-style efforts as the public was more concerned about drug use by younger people.
"She Shoulda Said 'No'!" was not well-received critically upon its initial release, with The New York Times
saying "[n]ever did vice seem so devoid of enchantment." Production and distribution of drug films slowed considerably following the film's run until Frank Sinatra
's The Man with the Golden Arm
forced changes to the Production Code
, which was a studio-based system which regulated various aspects of objectionable content in films.
The film achieved some attention due to its B movie
status over the years, being featured in a number of film compilations while continuing to focus on the salacious material as a selling point. In 1993, a VHS
version was released as part of "David Friedman's Roadshow Rarities", the twenty-ninth volume in the Something Weird
video series. In 2006, Alpha Video Distributors produced the first stand-alone DVD
release of the film, which continued to include exploitation-style advertising.
Exploitation film
Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. These films then need something to exploit, such as a big star, special effects, sex,...
that follows in the spirit of morality tales
Morality play
The morality play is a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme. Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of...
such as the 1936 films Reefer Madness
Reefer Madness
Reefer Madness is a well-known 1936 American propaganda exploitation film revolving around the melodramatic events that ensue when high school students are lured by pushers to try "marijuana" — from a hit and run accident, to manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, and descent into madness...
and Marihuana
Marihuana (film)
Marihuana is a 1936 exploitation film directed by Dwain Esper, and written by Esper's wife, Hildegarde Stadie.- Pot :Burma is a confused girl who likes to party. One day, she meets some strangers in a bar who invite her and her group to a party...
. Directed by Sherman Scott
Sam Newfield
Sam Newfield, born Samuel Neufeld, also known as Sherman Scott or Peter Stewart, was an American B-movie director, with over 250 feature films to his credit, and a large number of shorts, training films, industrial films, TV episodes, and pretty much anything anyone would pay him for...
and starring Lila Leeds
Lila Leeds
-Early life and career:Born Lila Lee Wilkinson in Iola, Kansas, Leeds ran away from home as a teen. She worked as a dancer in St. Louis before moving to Los Angeles. While working as a hatcheck girl at Ciro's, she met and married actor, composer, singer and conductor Jack Little. The marriage was...
, it was originally produced to capitalize on the arrest of Leeds and Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
on a charge of marijuana
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
conspiracy. The film was issued under many titles; it struggled to find a distributor until film presenter Kroger Babb
Kroger Babb
Howard W. "Kroger" Babb was an American film and television producer and showman. His marketing techniques were similar to a travelling salesman's, with roots in the medicine-show tradition...
picked up the rights, reissuing it as The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket. Its relative success came only after the promotional posters were redone and a story fabricated that the film was being presented in conjunction with the United States Treasury
United States Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government. It was established by an Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue...
.
Plot
Leeds' character is "Anne Lester", a young orphan who is trying to pay for her brother's college education. After meeting Markey, a drug dealer, Anne begins to believe that she must smoke marijuana to fit in with her friends. She then goes to a "tea party", where she tries the drug for the first time. She is unaffected by the initial experiment, and loses her fear of drugs as she continues to smoke.Anne's drug use results in the loss of many of her inhibitions, and the film shows her actions under the influence, including scenes implying sexual promiscuity. As the film progresses, she is fired from her job and begins selling drugs for Markey. Her brother hangs himself when he learns of her new job, and she is arrested and given a tour of the various psychiatric ward
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
s and jails that drug users end up in. Finally, after 50 days in jail, she is released, cleaned up and ready to cooperate with the authorities regarding Markey.
Production and marketing
Biographical film
A biographical film, or biopic , is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s life story or at least the most historically important years of their...
, its story following what Leeds herself experienced. The film was inspired by the highly-publicized arrest of movie stars Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
and Leeds for marijuana possession. On September 1, 1948, the actors, along with two others, were arrested after being caught smoking marijuana at the home of Leeds in the early morning, and were charged with the felony of narcotics possession. Public empathy for Mitchum resulted in the charge being downgraded to the lesser one of conspiracy to possess marijuana, and his sentence of sixty days in jail was set aside in 1951. Leeds, however, was sentenced to sixty days in prison and placed on probation for five years.
Upon her release, Leeds struggled to find work in Hollywood, and signed on to star in Wild Weed, a film that was, according to producer Richard Kay, "based on the circumstances of the arrest of Lila Leeds and Robert Mitchum." During publicity for the film in 1949, Leeds, who had been 21 at the time of the arrest, said that appearing in the picture would keep other people her age from trying drugs, but in 1952 she confided in Collier's
Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
that she "only had one offer . . . which was an obvious attempt to capitalize on the Mitchum case notoriety. I took it. I was broke." The film gained approval from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics
Federal Bureau of Narcotics
The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury. Established in the Department of the Treasury by an act of June 14, 1930 consolidating the functions of the Federal Narcotics Control Board and the Narcotic Division...
to use the drug references, a standard practice at the time even though the Bureau had no power to censor the films. The film used its plot to push many of the beliefs of the time: that drug-using youth would turn to crime and the theory of "marijuana as a gateway drug
Gateway drug
The gateway drug theory is the hypothesis that the use of less deleterious drugs may lead to a future risk of using more dangerous hard drugs and/or crime...
". The latter was a leading argument for drug prohibition
Prohibition (drugs)
The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent drug use. Prohibition of drugs has existed at various levels of government or other authority from the Middle Ages to the present....
during the era, and an argument that Leeds herself made, based on her own history with marijuana and heroin.
Tagline
A tagline is a variant of a branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create a memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of a brand or product , or to reinforce the audience's memory of a product...
: "How Bad Can a Good Girl Get...without losing her virtue or respect???", while sending letters to local communities falsely claiming that the United States Treasury Department implored Hallmark to release the film "in as many towns and cities as possible in the shortest possible length of time" as a public service. The square-up
Square-up
A square-up was a common feature of exploitation films in the 1940s and 1950s. With the exception of most burlesque features during the 1950s, the films would begin with a written message about what social or moral issue the film was planning to address...
misleadingly stated that the producers wished to "publicly acknowledge the splendid cooperation of the Nation's narcotic experts and Government departments, who aided in various ways the success of this production. . . . If its presentation saves but one young girl or boy from becoming a 'dope fiend' – then its story has been well told."
Babb, who gained notoriety for his various marketing gimmicks, occasionally had Leeds make appearances and give lectures at showings of the film. Babb often booked the movie as a midnight presentation twice a week in the same town; David F. Friedman
David F. Friedman
David Frank Friedman was an American filmmaker and film producer.-Life and career:Friedman first became interested in entertainment after spending part of his childhood in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama, traveling carnival sites. He met exploitation film pioneer Kroger Babb during his stay in...
, who would later use the film in his own double-billings, attributed the distribution plan to a film that was so low in quality that Babb wanted to cash in and move to his next stop as fast as possible.
Reception
According to Friedman, Babb's presentations of the film made more money than any other film the same theater would showcase over a typical film's full booking. While actual dollar figures are not available because of the nature of the genre (which was known for poor record keeping and unconventional distribution practices), the general financial success of "She Shoulda Said 'No'!" prompted producers, in 1951, to import a similar film from ArgentinaArgentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
titled The Marihuana Story
The Marihuana Story
The Marihuana Story is a 1950 Argentine film directed by León Klimovsky. It was entered into the 1951 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Pedro López Lagar – Dr. Pablo Urioste* Fanny Navarro – Marga Quiroga* Golde Flami – Aída* Nathán Pinzón – Sopita...
. That film, about a doctor who goes undercover into the world of drug addicts to learn about his wife's death only to become addicted to marijuana himself, was not as successful as other exploitation-style efforts as the public was more concerned about drug use by younger people.
"She Shoulda Said 'No'!" was not well-received critically upon its initial release, with The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
saying "[n]ever did vice seem so devoid of enchantment." Production and distribution of drug films slowed considerably following the film's run until Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
's The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 American drama film, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren, which tells the story of a heroin addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world. It stars Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold...
forced changes to the Production Code
Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...
, which was a studio-based system which regulated various aspects of objectionable content in films.
The film achieved some attention due to its B movie
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
status over the years, being featured in a number of film compilations while continuing to focus on the salacious material as a selling point. In 1993, a VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
version was released as part of "David Friedman's Roadshow Rarities", the twenty-ninth volume in the Something Weird
Something Weird Video
Something Weird Video is an American publisher of video tapes and DVDs, based in Seattle, Washington. They specialize in exploitation film, particularly the works of Harry Novak, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. SWV videos are available on demand to Comcast subscribers...
video series. In 2006, Alpha Video Distributors produced the first stand-alone DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
release of the film, which continued to include exploitation-style advertising.
Cast
- Alan Baxter – Markey
- Lyle TalbotLyle TalbotLyle Talbot , born Lisle Henderson, was an American actor on stage and screen, best known for his long career in movies from 1931 to 1960 and for his frequent appearances on TV in the 1950s and '60s, including his decade-long role as Joe Randolph on television's The Adventures of Ozzie and...
– Captain Hayes - Lila LeedsLila Leeds-Early life and career:Born Lila Lee Wilkinson in Iola, Kansas, Leeds ran away from home as a teen. She worked as a dancer in St. Louis before moving to Los Angeles. While working as a hatcheck girl at Ciro's, she met and married actor, composer, singer and conductor Jack Little. The marriage was...
– Ann - Michael Whelan – Treanor
- Mary Ellen Popel – Rita
- Doug Blackley – Lieutenant Mason
- David Holt – Bob Lester
- Don Harvey – Lieutenant Tyne
- David GorceyDavid GorceyDavid Gorcey was an American actor and comedian best known as being a member of the comedy team of The Bowery Boys. He was the younger brother of Dead End Kids member Leo Gorcey.-Career:...
– Ricky - Jack ElamJack ElamWilliam Scott "Jack" Elam was an American film actor best known for his numerous roles as villains in Western films and, later in his career, comedies .-Early life:...
– Raymond - Dick Cogan – Edmunds
- Knox ManningKnox ManningKnox Manning was an American film actor. He appeared in 94 films between 1939 and 1956.He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.-Selected filmography:...
– Narrator