Doris Wishman (June 1, 1912 August 10, 2002) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. She is credited with having directed and produced at least 30 feature films during a career spanning over four decades, most notably in the
sexploitation
A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit se ...
film genre.
A native of New York City, Wishman began her film career as a hobby after the death of her husband in 1958. She made her feature debut with ''
Hideout in the Sun'' (1960), and went on to direct numerous
nudist and sexploitation films, such as ''Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls'' (1963), ''
Behind the Nudist Curtain
''Behind the Nudist Curtain'' is an American 1964 nudist film produced and directed by Doris Wishman and starring Sandra Sinclair.
See also
*List of American films of 1964
A list of American films released in 1964.
''My Fair Lady'' won the ...
'' (1963), and ''
Bad Girls Go to Hell'' (1965). In the 1970s, she made her first foray into directing
pornographic film
Pornographic films (pornos), erotic films, sex films, and 18+ films are films that present sexually explicit subject matter in order to arouse and satisfy the viewer. Pornographic films present sexual fantasies and usually include erotic ...
s.
In 1979, Wishman filmed her first and only feature
horror film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apo ...
, ''
A Night to Dismember
''A Night to Dismember'' is a 1983 American slasher horror film, produced and directed by Doris Wishman. The film stars pornographic actress Samantha Fox as a psychotic young woman, recently released from a psychiatric institution, who is drive ...
'', which she spent several years editing after multiple reels were destroyed during post-production.
She made a further three films in the early 2000s before dying in 2002, aged 90.
Life and career
Early life
Doris Wishman was born on June 1, 1912, in New York City.
[ Her father was a hay and grain salesman; her mother died when she was still a child.]
She was raised in the New York City borough of the Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New ...
, where she graduated from James Monroe High School. After graduating from high school, Wishman claimed to have taken acting lessons at the Alviene School of Dramatics in New York City in the early 1930s, where she was a classmate of Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters (born Shirley Schrift; August 18, 1920 – January 14, 2006) was an American actress whose career spanned seven decades. She appeared in numerous films. She won Academy Awards for ''The Diary of Anne Frank'' (1959) and '' A Patch ...
. She later studied at Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also adm ...
.[ ]
She later worked as a film booker for her cousin Max Rosenberg, an independent film distributor who handled both art films and exploitation film
An exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content. Exploitation films are generally low-quality "B movies", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become hi ...
fare during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Wishman also worked as an actress in New York City throughout the 1950s, and for some time worked with Joseph Levine. During this same period, she was married briefly to advertising consultant Jack Abrams and resided with him in Florida until his death in 1958 due to a heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which m ...
at age 31,[ being widowed only five months after their marriage.] By her own account, Wishman began her film production career after Abrams' untimely death, as she felt she "needed something to fill my hours with."[
]
Beginnings; nudist films
Her first films are called nudist camp films or nudist romances. In 1957, a New York Appeals court ruling allowed films depicting nudism
Naturism is a lifestyle of practising non-sexual social nudity in private and in public; the word also refers to the cultural movement which advocates and defends that lifestyle. Both may alternatively be called nudism. Though the two terms ar ...
to be exhibited in movie theaters in New York State. Wishman was familiar with the appeal and potential of nudist camp movies due to her acquaintances with Walter Bibo, whose film ''Garden of Eden'' gained notoriety due its influence of swaying censorship laws for filming nudity. Inspired by this development, Wishman claimed in several interviews to have borrowed $10,000 from her sister to produce her first film, ''Hideout in the Sun'', a nudist film
In film, nudity may be either graphic or suggestive, such as when a person appears to be naked but is covered by a sheet. Since the birth of film, depictions of any form of sexuality have been controversial, and in the case of most nude scenes ...
, shot in late 1958 and released in early 1960. Her next film, ''Nude on the Moon
''Nude on the Moon'' is a 1961 science-fantasy nudist film co-written and co-directed by Doris Wishman and Raymond Phelan under the shared pseudonyms "O. O. Miller" and "Anthony Brooks". The film was produced in 1960 and theatrically released in ...
'', released in 1961, was a science-fiction nudie. The film was banned in New York after the New York State Censorship Board
The Motion Picture Division of the State of New York Education Department, also known variously as the New York State Censorship Board, New York Censor Board, and New York Board of Censors, was an organ of film censorship in the Pre-Code film era. ...
ruled that films featuring nudity in a nudist colony were legally permissible, but nudity in a fantasy film set in a "nudist colony on the Moon" was not. Her fourth nudist film, '' Blaze Starr Goes Nudist'' (1962), starred legendary burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. performer Blaze Starr
Blaze Starr (born Fannie Belle Fleming; April 10, 1932 – June 15, 2015) was an American stripper and burlesque star. Her vivacious presence and inventive use of stage props earned her the nickname "The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque". She w ...
.[ Wishman produced eight nudist films in total between 1958 and 1964. After the popularity of the genre began to wane, she decided to abandon nudist exploitation films and transition into the new ]sexploitation
A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit se ...
genre. Doris Wishman had produced, directed, and written more films in the nudist-film genre than anyone else at the time, when she decided to switch direction.
Sexploitation films
Wishman began to produce and direct sex-exploitation or sexploitation features in 1964, which were often called "roughies". Censorship at the time would allow very little, meaning Wishman and other sexploitation directors used different tactics to portray eroticism and excitement, using melodrama, cutaway, soft-core sex talk, and suggestive nudity that just skirted under the law. This put Wishman at odds with censorship law. In this genre, Wishman also used a different style of filmmaking in which she would cut to objects or scenery not in the scene, similar to Soviet montage
Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing (''montage'' is French for "assembly" or "editing"). It is the principal contribution of Soviet film theorists to global cinema, and broug ...
. Moya Luckett considers that the cutaway style Wishman used was possibly to disrupt male gaze and incorporate a feminine gaze.
Her second release in this genre was ''Bad Girls Go to Hell'' (1965), Wishman's first collaboration with her long-time cinematographer C. Davis Smith. During this period, she frequently worked under the pseudonym "Louis Silverman", the name of her second husband. She also directed ''The Sex Perils of Paulette'' (1965), which featured Tony Lo Bianco in his film debut. ''The Sex Perils of Paulette'' was heavily censored by the New York Censor Board.
All of Wishman's sexploitation work was shot in black and white until the release of her first soft-core
Softcore pornography or softcore porn, is commercial still photography or film that has a pornographic or erotic component but is less sexually graphic and intrusive than hardcore pornography, defined by a lack of visual sexual penetration. Soft ...
color feature, '' Love Toy'' (''circa'' 1970). Shortly thereafter, she produced a sex comedy
Sexual intercourse, Sex comedy, erotic comedy or more broadly sexual comedy is a genre in which comedy is motivated by sexual situations and love affairs. Although "sex comedy" is primarily a description of dramatic forms such as theatre and film, ...
entitled ''Keyholes Are for Peeping'' (1972) (also known as ''Is There Love After Marriage?'') starring comedian Sammy Petrillo
Sam Patrello (October 24, 1934 – August 15, 2009) was an American nightclub and movie comedian best known as a Jerry Lewis imitator.
Early life
Sammy Petrillo was born Sam Patrello in The Bronx, New York City, New York (state), New Yor ...
. In the mid-1970s, she went on to direct two low-budget thrillers featuring burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. performer Chesty Morgan
Chesty Morgan, real name Ilana Wajc and also known as Liliana Wilczkowska and Lillian Stello (born October 15, 1937) is a Polish-born, retired exotic dancer of Jewish descent, who also starred in two films directed by Doris Wishman. Morgan was ...
: '' Deadly Weapons'' and ''Double Agent 73
''Double Agent 73'' is a 1974 American exploitation spy film directed and produced by Doris Wishman and starring burlesque performer Chesty Morgan.
Plot
Chesty Morgan, a woman whose bust is in size, plays Jane Tennay, a large breasted secret age ...
'', the former of which was distributed internationally by Hallmark Releasing Corporation, and made on a budget of $50,000. When producing roughies, Wishman shot them with a handheld camera, a tactic used by experimental filmmakers, and exploitation filmmakers trying to cut down shooting costs. Antiobscenity law at the time greatly limited the circulation of the films of Doris Wishman and other sexploitation directors.
Pornographic and later exploitation work
Her work in the 1970s-'80s was all in the soft-core genre of exploitation, except that in the mid-1970s, Wishman directed two hardcore pornographic features entitled '' Satan Was a Lady'' (1975) and ''Come With Me, My Love'' (1976), both of which featured Annie Sprinkle
Annie M. Sprinkle (born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954) is an American certified sexologist, performance artist, former sex worker, and advocate for sex work and health care. Citing: Sprinkle has worked as a prostitute, sex educator, fem ...
. With the collapse of censorship law, demand for nudity in film rose, impacting Wishman's film direction. Hardcore was now available and explicit sex could be filmed; this, however, Wishman and many sexploitation directors considered distasteful. Wishman was not fond of working on pornographic films and later in her life denied having directed them. In 1968, she released ''The Hot Month in August'' and ''Passion Fever'', two already completed Greek films, which Wishman bought and added minimal original material, such as voiceover. Additionally in 1978, she released a semidocumentary
A semidocumentary is a form of book, film, or television program presenting a fictional story that incorporates many factual details or actual events, or which is presented in a manner similar to a documentary.
Characteristics
Stylistically, it ...
feature entitled '' Let Me Die a Woman'', which she had originally begun shooting in 1971. The film featured interviews with several transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...
individuals, one of whom was Deborah Hartin, and included dramatic reconstructions of scenes from their lives. It was one of the first films to focus on transsexualism and to star transsexuals. The events in the movie were depictions of real events, according to Dr. Leo Wollman, who was featured in the film. One such dramatization featured porn star Harry Reems before he became internationally renowned for his role in '' Deep Throat'' (1972). In light of the expanding slasher film
A slasher film is a genre of horror films involving a killer stalking and murdering a group of people, usually by use of bladed or sharp tools like knife, chainsaw, scalpel, etc. Although the term "slasher" may occasionally be used informally as a ...
craze that began with ''Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration geography of Halloween, observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. ...
'' in 1978, Wishman's final feature was a horror film entitled ''A Night to Dismember''. Begun in the late 1970s, it went through various manifestations and was finally completed in 1983.[ The film stars pornographic actress ]Samantha Fox
Samantha Karen Fox (born 15 April 1966) is an English pop singer and former glamour model from East London. She rose to public attention aged 16, when her mother entered her photographs in an amateur modelling contest run by '' The Sunday Peop ...
. It was never theatrically released. In these later works, the films take a bloody and grotesque turn, and are sometimes referred to as her cinema of somatic portrayal, due to heavy themes of the body betraying itself.
Later life and final films
After the failure of ''A Night to Dismember'', Wishman moved to Coral Gables, Florida, in the mid-1980s, where she found work in an adult-novelty store. Interest in her work began to slowly increase due to the home video release of many of her films through Something Weird Video.[ A ]cult following
A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic ...
started to form and Wishman was honored at the New York Underground Film Festival The New York Underground Film Festival was an annual event that occurred each March at Anthology Film Archives in New York City from 1994 through 2008 founded by filmmakers Todd Phillips (''Road Trip'', '' Old School'') and Andrew Gurland. After P ...
in 1998 and appeared twice on ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien
''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' is an American late-night talk show hosted by Conan O'Brien. NBC aired 2,725 episodes from September 13, 1993, to February 20, 2009. The show featured varied comedic material, celebrity interviews, and musi ...
'', one of which she was interviewed with Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
. When she returned in 2001 she started work on two projects. One was a sex comedy called ''Dildo Heaven'', released in 2002. The other was ''Each Time I Kill'' which had cameos from John Waters
John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including '' Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), '' Pink Flamingos'' (1972) and '' Fe ...
, Linnea Quigley, and Fred Schneider
Frederick William Schneider III (born July 1, 1951) is an American singer, songwriter, arranger, and musician, best known as the frontman of the rock band The B-52's, of which he is a founding member.
Schneider is well known for his '' sprechg ...
, the singer of the B-52s
B5, B05, B-5 may refer to:
Biology
* ATC code B05 (''Blood substitutes and perfusion solutions''), a therapeutic subgroup of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System
* Cytochrome ''b''5, ubiquitous electron transport hemoprotein ...
.
Death
Wishman died on August 10, 2002, in Miami, Florida, shortly after being treated for lymphoma
Lymphoma is a group of blood and lymph tumors that develop from lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell). In current usage the name usually refers to just the cancerous versions rather than all such tumours. Signs and symptoms may include enl ...
.[
]
Legacy
Wishman made more films than any other female director of the sound era. Filmmaker John Waters
John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including '' Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), '' Pink Flamingos'' (1972) and '' Fe ...
featured a clip from '' Deadly Weapons'' in his film ''Serial Mom
Serial may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media The presentation of works in sequential segments
* Serial (literature), serialised literature in print
* Serial (publishing), periodical publications and newspapers
* Serial (radio and televis ...
''. Film critic Joe Bob Briggs
John Irving Bloom (born January 27, 1953), known by the stage name Joe Bob Briggs, is an American syndicated film critic, writer, actor, and comic performer. He is known for having hosted ''Joe Bob's Drive-in Theater'' on The Movie Channel fro ...
described Wishman as "The greatest female exploitation film director in history."[ She was one of the most active ]women directors
Women's cinema primarily describes cinematic works directed (and optionally produced too) by women filmmakers. The works themselves do not have to be stories specifically about women and the target audience can be varied.
It is also a variety of ...
in the world during the 1960s and '70s working in the sexploitation genre. Prior to her death, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and several of her films were selected for a gala celebrating her work at Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...
's Nuart Theatre in 1998, titled "Doris Wishman: Queen of Sexploitation."[ In 2021, she was the subject of a curated retrospective on the art-house streaming service, the Criterion Channel.
]
Filmography
See also
*Nudity in film
In film, nudity may be either graphic or suggestive, such as when a person appears to be naked but is covered by a sheet. Since the birth of film, depictions of any form of sexuality have been controversial, and in the case of most nude scene ...
References
Works cited
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External links
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*
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
John Michael McCarthy's memoire of meeting Doris Wishman at the 1998 New York Underground Film Festival featuring original stills. May 30, 2013
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wishman, Doris
1912 births
2002 deaths
Film producers from New York (state)
American pornographic film directors
Screenwriters from New York (state)
American women film directors
American women screenwriters
Deaths from cancer in Florida
Deaths from lymphoma
Hunter College alumni
Women pornographic film directors
Film directors from New York City
American pornographic film producers
Writers from the Bronx
American women film producers
Women pornographic film producers
James Monroe High School (New York City) alumni
20th-century American women writers
20th-century American screenwriters