Actress/Director, supernumerary of her generation. And, yet, a lot of contemporary movie fans aren’t even aware of Ida Lupino, born in London in 1918 to a theatrical family.
It’s a sad comment on our amnesiac era that one of the most distinctive stars of the 1940s and 50s is virtually forgotten today, writes critic David Mermelstein in The Wall Street Journal. (Few) people realize that Lupino, alone among actresses of her time, forged a secondary career as a Hollywood director and screenwriter.
She was, in short, a genuine, working feminist pioneer in Hollywood.
No question that Lupino was a sexy, tough babe on the screen who could confound audiences with her subtlety and surprising singing abilities.
You hear a lot about folks being one-of-a-kind. In Ida Lupino’s case, it wasn’t just blowing smoke. Unless you didn’t take her seriously — then she’d blow it right in your face, writes film noir savant Eddie Muller.
Lupino was even billed above Humphrey Bogart in 1940’s High Sierra because back then she was better known and more popular. She was all of 22 at the time.
She appeared opposite some of the most notable leading men of the Thirties and Forties (see photo above), and even charmed the universally disdained Columbia Pictures’ Harry Cohn. Her career was a lengthy one. When movie acting ran dry, she turned with gusto to television, winning at least three prime time Emmy nominations.
She worked for nearly a half century, and knocked off some 100 pictures and tv shows either as actress or director/writer before she died at age 77 in 1995. Lupino’s stellar contribution as a director to the film noir genre was RKO’s tense 1953 thriller The Hitch-Hiker, costarring Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy, and highlighted by a truly creepy performance from William Talman. Highly recommended, not to be missed.
Did you know that the fellow pictured below was her first husband, actor Louis Hayward? And that she was heartbroken when their seven-year marriage fell apart in 1945. Louis Hayward was husband No. 1.
Hayward, an intense type, served in the South Pacific with the Marines in World War 2. So shaken by the carnage he saw, he came home shell shocked, said to be incapable of a “normal” life. Lupino, who adored Hayward, was crushed as she witnessed the collapse of their marriage. Producer-actor Collier Young was husband No. 2, followed by Howard Duff.
In 1972’s Junior Bonner, she would wind down her 46-year career by costarring with top-of-his-game Steve McQueen.
New York’s Film Forum will celebrate Lupino’s career with a 25-film retrospective screening through the month of November. Catch at least part of it if you can.
IDA LUPINO… Not as forgotten as you might think!
Even way before her centennial, there are scores of articles on her fascinating life and career.
So many movie sites and blogs have paid tribute to her, including as recently as September, when BEST MOVIES BY FARR had a good article as Joe & Frank’s.
But there’s a lot more to her story than you might already know…
The famous FDR line “Nothing happens in politics by accident,” is also very true of HOLLYWOOD.
IDA LUPINO was a very talented and genuinely good and gutsy woman…
Whether as an actress, director, producer, writer or social activist, she was also someone who cared and wanted to make a difference…
The right kind of someone who could be very useful to the OSS, soon to become the CIA. Now so many actors, directors and alike did their part for the war effort, but then came the ‘peace.’
And what would continue on as PYSCHOLOGICAL warfare, already started in WWI, would continue to grow and grow, and become even more refined and socially engineered, later to be even renamed as “PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT,” that is the very essence of the so-called ‘reality’ we have today.
Now better, more educated and experienced people than me have written about this, and seeing as what I write about anything anyway, is only read by a very few aside from Joe and Frank… Then I’ll just give you a brief sampling by one such intelligence-connected source called Miles Mathis…
He starts with actor Hugh O’Brian-
“Now let us return to Hugh O’Brian, who, if you will remember, ran into Sharon Tate and Merv Griffin during a live interview in London in 1966. Merv jokingly asked Hugh if he was CIA (because Hugh seemed to be stalking them or spying on them, I guess). Turns out, Hugh probably was CIA.
His dad was a career Marine, but we aren’t told his final rank. After New Trier, O’Brian went to the Roosevelt Military Academy. He enlisted in the Marines in 1943, and we are told he became the first 17-year-old drill instructor. Since drill instructors are normally Sergeants, most Marines will find that curious.
Also curious is that by 1948, O’Brian was already in Los Angeles appearing in major films. In that year O’Brian had a bit part in Kidnapped, starring Roddy McDowell as David Balfour. That’s a quick transition from Marine drill instructor to successful actor. O’Brian would have been only 22 when the film shot. Another red flag is that O’Brian is said to have been discovered by Ida Lupino.
Lupino also has CIA markers all over her, especially in 1948. Although she had appeared in many pictures in the 1930s and 40s, in the mid-40s she suddenly stopped acting to write and direct “low-budget, issue oriented films”. Although she was British and didn’t need US citizenship, she was given it in 1948.
That date itself is a red flag, since that is when the CIA was doing a full-court press on Hollywood.
The subject of Lupino’s first film Never Fear was polio, which is curious seeing that Roosevelt had polio. It appears the CIA was trying to spin Roosevelt’s still-recent death (1945).
Here’s something else strange about Lupino: we are told she was a Lieutenant during WWII in the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps of America.
Problem? She wasn’t a citizen until 1948. You can’t become a lieutenant in the US Military without being a citizen. So she was just a pretend lieutenant.
I will be told non-citizens can enlist. Yes, but they can’t become lieutenants. “Federal law prohibits non-citizens from becoming commission or warrant officers.” A lieutenant is a commissioned officer. As a Brit during the war, Lupino would have had to join the British Ambulance Corp.”
Now there is a lot more on her intelligence activities, whether she knowingly knew who was really helping or fast-tracking her career, or was just being used to serve another post-war agenda, Lupino played an important role in bringing a good many women’s social issues to the forefront.
In her first movie as director, or rather un-credited co-director, 1949’s NOT WANTED, the issue was un-wed mothers… In 1950, in the movie NEVER FEAR, it was polio, a subject that was very close to her as she contracted it herself in 1934.
Later in 1950, she directed OUTRAGE, and that was about rape.
She in all probability believed that it was her chance to educate the public to these issues via GOOD propaganda. But as is so often the case, that which is good can quickly be turned BAD propaganda by the likes of the CIA and its associates.
Even so, IDA LUPINO was a very special lady, a true pioneer, and someone very worthy of being IDOLIZED!