This month, the AFI Catalog celebrates the 50-year anniversary of director/producer Karen Arthur’s independent film debut LEGACY, which toured festivals in 1975. It was produced for just $46,000 with finishing funds provided in part by the American Film Institute. Around the time that Arthur made LEGACY, she was enrolled in an internship program through AFI and would later become a member of the inaugural class of AFI’s DWW+, an initiative that heralded young women filmmakers at a time in which there was little opportunity for them in Hollywood. LEGACY was one of only a few U.S. features directed by women in the early 1970s. Written by and starring actress Joan Hotchkis, with photography by John Bailey early in his career and cut by Carol Littleton in her first credited role as lead editor, LEGACY follows a day in the life of an economically privileged yet emotionally depleted woman struggling with severe depression, a particularly poignant theme that resonates even more deeply during Mental Health Awareness Month this May.

LEGACY was based on Joan Hotchkis’ one-woman play of the same name, which impressed Karen Arthur with its brave and uncompromising depiction of a housewife’s struggle with mental illness. The first time Arthur saw LEGACY at The Actors Studio in Hollywood, she was convinced it would be her next project (and first feature), and went backstage to propose an option for the screen rights. In an interview with AFI, Arthur explained that she initially gave Hotchkis $1 for the rights and promised to match any other offer that came along.ⁱ Around this time, AFI secured an internship for Arthur on the set of Arthur Penn’s NIGHT MOVES (1975). There she met cinematographer John Bailey, later known for his work on hit films such as THE BIG CHILL (1983) and for his presidency of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Bailey introduced Arthur to his wife, editor Carol Littleton, whose prolific career in years to come would include E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982) – a film that earned her an Academy Award® nomination for Best Editing. While Hotchkis was already a seasoned actress, LEGACY marked her first play and her first script. In interviews, the filmmakers agreed that LEGACY was a highly collaborative production and one in which they consistently honed their crafts. Without having an established footprint in the film industry, the friends looked to LEGACY to jumpstart their careers.

Filming took place in 1974 over eight days at Hotchkis’ childhood home in San Marino, CA, and at a nearby house belonging to a family friend. Arthur told AFI in an interview that production also took place in Pacific Palisades.ⁱⁱ The modest budget of the picture was bolstered by shooting at locations that were provided for free, with props and costumes derived from the personal collections of performers and members of the production team. Originally shot on 16mm film, the picture was later blown up to 35mm for its release in New York. LEGACY tells the story of Bissie Hapgood, a wealthy and entitled housewife who has inherited a past generation’s misogynistic expectations of femininity, despite her own deep resentment for her lot in life. The film reveals profoundly intimate aspects of Bissie’s inner world, from her thought process – which is spoken aloud in monologues – to her frank discussions about menstruation and female genitalia – to her desire for orgasm through masturbation, all told through her own, stern gaze. Bissie begins her day watching her aged mother crawl naked through the water in the pristine swimming pool of their family estate, finding a brief respite from her declining health, and Bissie vows to never befall the same fate of aging. Back at home, Bissie prepares for a dinner party that evening, becoming increasingly obsessed about dressing the table with “shocking pink” Christmas ball ornaments and her wedding veil. As the day unfolds, Bissie grows more volatile, disclosing her suicidal ideation to a disinterested psychiatrist, and ultimately screaming shocking racist obscenities about her staff after discovering missing butter knifes, all alone in the dining room. Conjuring themes akin to Virginia Woolf’s classic “Mrs. Dalloway” and John Cassavetes’ 1974 tour de force A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, the film delves into the loneliness, desperation and bitterness of women of prestige and status, who appear to have it all and really have nothing of their own.

In a recent interview, Karen Arthur told AFI that her internship with the Institute opened doors of possibility for her to become a director, as she leveraged her confidence and her association with AFI to talk her way onto studio backlots, where she would ask to observe the work of established filmmakers.ⁱⁱⁱ With a background in ballet and choreography, as well as acting, Arthur visualized LEGACY cinematically from the start even though it was a monologue (“If I turned the stage upright it was a frame. A motion picture frame,” she noted in a 2011 interview)^iv and she eventually helped Hotchkis write her adaptation. Arthur described the actress/writer as a “radical” who “wanted to explore women’s sexuality” from the female perspective – a fearless and novel approach to storytelling that had rarely been captured in film to date.^v

Securing funding for LEGACY was a challenge, with some financing provided by Hotchkis’ affluent family and other resources supplied by friends.^vi Arthur noted that a former boyfriend gave her an initial $10,000 loan to have in the bank as a way to prove the legitimacy of the project to other investors.^vii When filming came to a conclusion, Arthur was still in need of completion funds, and she applied for an AFI Independent Filmmakers Grant – she had unsuccessfully sought the grant five times previously – and this time she landed $10,000 from AFI for the film’s final touches.^{viii ix} After an early preview at AFI, which also provided screening rooms to her for free, Arthur was invited by a potential investor named George England to show LEGACY the following day at Warner Bros. Unbeknownst to Arthur, the small audience consisted of Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Cloris Leachman and a few other Hollywood luminaries, who wrote her checks to finish the film when the lights went up in the theater.^x Arthur religiously made small payments to her patrons every January to reimburse their generosity.^xi Truly intrepid, Arthur secured a meeting with Roger Mayer, then president of MGM’s Laboratories, and so impressed him that he allowed her to use the facilities for free. With this accomplishment, Leo Chaloukian at Ryder Sound also agreed to let Arthur process the sound at his company without payment. When Arthur’s career progressed, she returned with other projects and sent work to both collaborators whenever possible.^xii

As noted in Maya Montañez Smukler’s book “Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema,” LEGACY’s Bissie Hapgood is an anti-hero, a stark deviation from standard portrayals of leading ladies that reinforce stereotypes and insist women must be sympathetic in order to carry a movie. Bissie’s furious aggression toward her indulged lifestyle is both hard to appreciate and intriguing; overall, her character is far from amenable. In addition, Bissie’s ongoing declaration of her innermost feelings – sometimes gazing directly at the audience – defies filmmaking norms that shun extensive monologues as a means to distance the cinematic art form from staged theater. These innovative and daring aspects of LEGACY were troubling to some critics, including the New York Times’ Vincent Canby, who complained the picture “seems uncommonly cruel for a film about a woman made by women.”^xiii Canby’s unfavorable review ostensibly killed LEGACY’s theatrical release in the U.S., even though it played successfully abroad. The picture was briefly picked up for distribution by Bill and Stella Pence, but the couple ultimately went on to establish the Telluride Film Festival and did not last long as distributors.^xiv

Karen Arthur has directed two more theatrically-released feature films to date, THE MAFU CAGE (1978) and LADY BEWARE (1987), but the responsibility of extensively fundraising left her with the hard truth that she “didn’t get to say ‘Action’ enough.” ^xv She opted for a prolific career in television, where productions were already bankrolled and went on to make history as the first woman to win a Primetime Emmy® for directing a drama series. Arthur also became the third woman to be inducted into the Directors Guild of America, after Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino, and told AFI in a recent interview that men would come to her sets just to witness history in the making, remarking that she was the first Hollywood studio woman director they had seen on the lot since Lupino.^xvi When guards turned her away from her designated parking space, telling her it was reserved for the director, she proudly corrected them, “I am the director!”^xvii Asked about her extensive accomplishments as a young director at a time in which opportunities for women were few, Arthur commented, “If you don’t know you can’t do it, you just do it.”^xviii Although the DGA is currently led by another AFI DWW+ Alum, Lesli Linka Glatter (AFI DWW Class of 1982), and progress in representation is underway, female directors make up only 16% of the guild,^xix and Hollywood continues to be depleted of women’s voices. Karen Arthur’s LEGACY provides hope and inspiration to the next generation of storytellers.

Watch Karen Arthur make history as the first woman director to win a Primetime Emmy for directing a drama series: