1946 / 110 mins / b/w
Dir. Charles Vidor / Sc. Jo Eisinger, Marion Parsonnet, Ben Hecht / Cine. Rudolph Maté / Prod. Virginia Van Upp
Cast: Glenn Ford, Rita Hayworth, George Macready
Based on a story by E. A. Ellington
DCP courtesy of Sony Pictures

Introduced by Ann Douglas, Columbia University

“I was true to one man once… and look what happened!”

Few films illustrate the value of looking “beyond the femme fatale” more than Gilda. Rita Hayworth’s performance in the titular role is of course iconic, equaled in the pantheon of femmes fatales only by Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944). But the hold that Gilda exerts over the men in her life achieves a deeper resonance once we view the film in the light of the woman who produced and co-wrote it: Virginia Van Upp.

Van Upp worked in Hollywood for nearly fifty years in every corner of the industry, beginning as a child actress and working her way up in brief stints as a casting director, agent, secretary, film cutter, and script assistant. Her writing career started at Paramount Pictures and flourished at Columbia Pictures, where studio founder and head Harry Cohn promoted her to executive producer in 1945. 

Her skill in this role lay in amplifying women’s stories as a writer and producer, resulting in such notable films as the romantic comedies The Impatient Years (1944) and She Wouldn’t Say Yes (1945), and a noir adaptation of Lenore Coffee’s The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947). Upon Columbia’s announcement of Van Upp’s new role, Fred Stanley wrote for the New York Times that “Miss Van Upp’s new berth is considered to be the most important executive position yet for a woman at a major studio. … Working under her will be several associate producers – all men.” She would be the only woman to serve as a producer at Columbia for another thirty-one years.

Van Upp’s relationship with Hayworth goes back to the 1944 musical Cover Girl, which Van Upp co-wrote. Van Upp became personally invested in Hayworth’s stardom, even to the point of organizing the actress’s costumes on that film. For Gilda, meanwhile, Van Upp brought in another female talent, screenwriter Marion Parsonnet. The film is, accordingly, a hallmark of postwar film noir with women at the controlling center both of the narrative and of the production process.

– Paige Wills