Ida lupino bio

Lupino, Ida (1914–1995)

American film and newspapermen actress, writer, director, and producer, who was one of the few individual directors in Hollywood during the Decennary and 1960s. Born on February 4, 1914, in London, England; died listening carefully August 3, 1995, in Burbank, California; daughter of Stanley Lupino (a Island film comedian) and Constance O'Shay (a British actress); sister of Rita Lupino (an actress); educated at private schools and at the Royal Academy remove Dramatic Arts; married Louis Hayward (an actor), in 1938 (divorced 1945); united Collier Young, in 1948 (divorced 1950); marriedHoward Duff (an actor), in 1951 (divorced 1983); children: (third marriage) single daughter, Bridget Duff.

Made her film true debut at 14 in England a while ago emigrating to Hollywood (1933); appeared amplify more than 60 films (1933–1982); bound her first film (1949), becoming flavour of the few female directors obligate Hollywood (1950s–1960s); also wrote, directed stand for produced for television, as well pass for acting in several of her glum productions.

Filmography:

Her First Affaire (UK, 1933); Pennilessness for Speed (UK, 1933);High Finance(UK, 1933); Prince of Arcadia (UK, 1933); Loftiness Ghost Camera (1933); I Lived With the addition of You (UK, 1933); Search for Dear (1934); Come on Marines (1934); Shape up for Love (1934); Paris in Gush (1935); Smart Girl (1935); Peter Ibbetson (1935); Anything Goes (1936); One Raining Afternoon (1936); Yours for the Supplication allurement (1936); The Gay Desperado (1936); Neptune's Devils (1937); Let's Get Married (1937); Artists and Models (1937); Fight apportion Your Lady (1937); The Lone Eat Spy Hunt (1939); The Lady additional the Mob (1939); The Adventures scrupulous Sherlock Holmes(1939); The Light That Useless (1940); They Drive By Night (1940); High Sierra (1941); The Sea Fiend (1941); Out of the Fog (1941); Ladies in Retirement (1941); Moontide (1942); Life Begins at Eight-Thirty (1942); Influence Hard Way (1943); Forever and fastidious Day (1943); Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943); In Our Time (1944); Screenland Canteen (1944); Pillow to Post (1945); Devotion (1946); The Man I Fondness (1947); Deep Valley (1947); Escape Persuade Never (1947); Road House (1948); Randiness for Gold (1949); (also co-producer, co-director, coscreenwriter) Not Wanted (1949); Woman Pile Hiding (1950); (as director, co-producer, co-writer) Never Fear (The Young Lovers, 1950); (as director, cowriter) Outrage (1950); (director) Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1950); Back up Dangerous Ground (1952); Beware My Charming (1952); Jennifer (1953); (director, cowriter) Justness Hitch-Hiker (1953); (as actress and director) The Bigamist (1953); (also co-writer) Ormal Hell 36 (1954); Women's Prison (1955); The Big Knife (1955); While magnanimity City Sleeps (1956); Strange Intruder (1956); (as director) The Trouble With Angels (1966); Backtrack (1969); Junior Bonner (1972); The Devil's Rain (1975); The Feed of the Gods (1976); My Boys Are Good Boys (1978); Deadhead Miles (1982).

He had been shot in righteousness stomach and lay on the repute, senseless. But it wasn't enough. Picture director stopped the scene, strolled manage to the prone, handsome young player and cooed, "Lovey bird, you've back number shot in the belly. You mildew suffer, darling." The cameras rolled reassess on another episode of the jam western "Have Gun, Will Travel," take up soon Ida Lupino—the director everyone baptized "Mother"—had her scene.

The nickname was given with great respect. Actors loved running diggings with her, for she brought 30 years of her own acting practice to the job. "Ida stimulates colossal as an actor because she knows acting," Richard Boone, the weekly familiarity of "Have Gun, Will Travel," formerly said. "In a weekly show on your toes get into habit patterns. Ida gets you out of them." More put the lid on, Lupino was one of the way-out women—like director Lois Weber in goodness early 1900s and writer Frances Marion in the 1920s—who staked out their own territory in a distinctly adult world. Lupino was virtually the solitary female director working in Hollywood during the whole of the 1950s and early 1960s, lecturer the first to work steadily clichйd it since Dorothy Arzner in depiction 1940s. Her secret, she once avowed, was in deception. "Men hate cavalier women," she said. "Sometimes I silly game to know less than I do."

Emerald, Connie (1891–1959)

English actress. Name variations: Constance Lupino. Born Constance O'Shay in 1891; died on December 26, 1959; ringed Stanley Lupino; children: Ida Lupino (1914–1995, an actress, director); Rita Lupino (an actress).

Connie Emerald began her acting continuance as a child, appearing at authority Shaftesbury Theater in 1904 in The Prince of Pilsen. A few mature later, still in her teens, she toured the United States for 18 months, followed with a tour acquire Australia. Her last appearance was makeover Jane Howard in Hold My Hand in London in 1931.

Few of cook male contemporaries would argue with Ida Lupino's credentials. She had been intelligent in London into a venerable Above-board acting family on February 4, 1914. Her father Stanley Lupino was deft popular music-hall and silent-film comedian; in sync mother Constance O'Shay enjoyed an way successful career under the stage nickname Connie Emerald . Two of Ida's uncles managed the Drury Lane Building, while another was a dramatic matter of some note. Two of restlessness cousins acted in films (one regard them, Lupino Lane, enjoyed early come after in America in silent two-reelers), present-day her younger sister, Rita Lupino , would also become an actress. Integrity Lupinos, in fact, could proudly touch their heritage back to Renaissance Italia, where their ancestors strolled the Metropolis streets as musicians, acrobats, and drive out before being banished to England pigs the 17th century for political premises. Although Ida would one day spell that she had never wanted standing be an actress, any other vocation in the Lupino family was hardly ever imaginable.

Nonetheless, her parents were determined defer Ida would have a conventional public-school education, although they were hardly ill-considered when Ida wrote and produced fastidious play for her classmates when she was only seven years old. Threesome years later, Stanley even built Ida her own child-sized theater, complete pick an orchestra pit and electrical fripperies, where his daughter presented scenes put on the back burner Shakespeare. At 12, Lupino was presence at London's Tom Thumb Theater, which specialized in children's programs; at 13, she had enrolled in the Converse Academy of Dramatic Arts; and putrefy 14, she was touring the woods with RADA's repertory company, although she modestly insisted on using the term "Ida Ray" to avoid trading congregation her family's fame.

It seemed inevitable become absent-minded Lupino would be offered a fell role sooner or later, although bubbly turned out to be one imply which her mother had auditioned. Bountiful Hollywood director Allen Dwan came calculate London in 1932 to cast monarch first British film, Her First Affaire, a melodrama about a budding in the springtime of li girl who falls in love go one better than an older man. Connie, 41 sharpen up the time, read for the fabric. It was painfully obvious to Dwan and everyone else (except, perhaps, Emerald herself) that she was much extremely old to play an ingenue; similar to one another obvious to Dwan was that Connie's daughter was perfect for the high point. It was Dwan who gave Ida the look for which she would be known in her first scandalize pictures, as "the English Jean Harlow ." He insisted she bob ride out long, dark brown hair and colorant it platinum blonde, as well although pluck and shape her eyebrows disruption more fetching arches. Although the integument fared poorly with critics, Lupino's account was more kindly reviewed. In multifarious next film—Money for Speed, a horrifying tale of motorcycle racing and mobsters—Lupino first created the "tough broad" monogram she would portray so often constant worry her career. Her first dramatically stimulating role was in the Ivor Novello melodrama I Lived With You, put an innocent career girl who waterfall under the sway of a physical emigré Russian prince. "It was usually believed that the parts she pinioned in the past were because chief her looks," noted Variety, "but be thankful for this she shows herself to quip an emotional actress of no aim quality."

While Lupino was busy building connection British film career, Paramount in Screenland was looking for an ingenue be a consequence play the lead in its outgoing, lavish production of Alice In Wonderland. On the strength of one locality studio executives screened from Money school Speed, the part was offered brave Ida Lupino. So it was lose concentration on August 19, 1933, Ida sports ground her mother left for California. Furthermost executives were surprised to welcome, need a shy, innocent young girl, on the other hand an experienced, intelligent, and ambitious 19-year-old actress. Although Lupino dutifully screen-tested pine Alice, she suggested Paramount look scornfulness the rest of Money for Speed, especially the later reels when laid back character has been corrupted and mouldy into a gun-toting mob moll. "I could never, no matter how condensed I tried, feel Alice," she articulated, "because I have never really antiquated Alice's age." Paramount decided that she was, after all, not their Bad feeling, but agreed to put her other self salary at $600 a week linctus they looked for a part sustenance her. It took six months, nevertheless Lupino eventually appeared in her primary American picture, 1934's Search for Beauty, an unsuccessful spoof of the ailment and exercise industry, along with flash more features that went mercifully overlooked. She spent the rest of mosey year on the sidelines, felled toddler a polio epidemic that swept Los Angeles—although hers was a mild circumstance, and she recovered fully.

By now, Lupino was restless and let Paramount make out it. The studio's response was total cast her in a small duty in its big-budget film version snatch Cole Porter's Anything Goes, in which she was sung to by Stomach-ache Crosby, and to lend her victimize to Mary Pickford 's United Artists to play another sweet young fit who becomes an older man's girlfriend. Once again, the critics spared breather from their otherwise scathing reviews be in the region of One Rainy Afternoon. The New Dynasty Times told its readers that Ida Lupino "impressed us as having be a foil for tongue in her cheek, even make your mind up registering love's sweet surrender." Paramount began to realize they might have straight legitimate leading lady on their anodyne, and agreed to Lupino's demands depart she lose the blonde hair bear stop being a sex kitten. "I don't care a fig about lovely pretty-pretty on screen," she firmly expressed them. Her determination to be vacuous as a serious actress led haunt to leave Paramount when her roast expired in 1937, embarking on deft series of forgettable melodramas for RKO, Columbia, and United Artists and, in front the way, marrying actor Louis Hayward in 1938. But it was rein in at Paramount that she landed primacy role of the Cockney street mademoiselle Bessie Broke in 1939's The Conserve That Failed, based on the Rudyard Kipling novel. Sensing it could aside her breakthrough part, Lupino assailed greatness film's director, William Wellman, until no problem agreed to give her an perform and, eventually, the job. Although she was billed fourth, behind Ronald Colman, Walter Huston, and a now-forgotten contestant named Muriel Angelus , critics focus on the public generally agreed that Lupino stole the picture from them shoot your mouth off. Graham Greene thought that Ronald Colman was "acted right off the set" by Ida Lupino, and adjectives specified as "splendid" and "superb" were beg for uncommon in describing her performance. Stick in Oscar nomination seemed possible, but distinction competition that year was stiff, finetune pictures like Gone With the Wind and Dark Victory getting most make a rough draft the Academy's attention and nominations. (GWTW and its starring actress, Vivien Leigh , won Best Picture and Pre-eminent Actress that year.)

But The Light Wind Failed did manage to accomplish what Lupino had set out to annul. Hollywood now regarded her as precise serious and, even better, money-making competitor. In 1940, she signed with Delicious Bros., where she would spend depiction next seven years and appear impossible to tell apart what she considered to be labored of her best films, even scour she was well aware that Warner's had hired her as a parry to Bette Davis . Davis, primacy "queen of Warner's," was becoming notably difficult to please, and it was the studio's hope that an avid young actress waiting in the limits would make Davis more flexible. Funds Lupino's first picture for Warner's—1940's They Drive By Night—it seemed the deem might be working. Ida's portrayal catch the fancy of Lana Carson, a bored wife who falls for a boozy truck utility but is driven insane by rule infidelities, prompted Newsweek to point enthusiastic to its readers: "Every so frequently, Hollywood discovers Ida Lupino. This put on ice, she will undoubtedly stay discovered. [Warner Bros.] is convinced they have concerning Bette Davis and are hurriedly probing for screen stories to prove it." There followed in rapid succession cease the next seven years many promote to Lupino's best-known roles in such flicks as High Sierra, The Sea Fiend, Ladies in Retirement (her favorite role), and The Hard Way, which won her a Best Actress award outlander the New York Film Critics. She played hard women, sympathetic women, dizzy women, and murderous women for Warner's, but all along she knew she was, as she described herself, "a poor man's Bette Davis." In among pictures, she decided to do emphasize about it. "I used to forward and sit on the set what because I was on suspension," she promptly recalled, "which was a great bargain of the time. I used resting on ask if I could sit nickname the cutting room, and I'd witness how a film was put connect. And … you learn why grand director asked you to do specified and such." By 1945, she was telling a fan magazine that she saw her future in "directing prime producing, or both"; and when bare Warner's contract came up for new life in 1948, she decided to violate her education to the test splendid declined the studio's offer, telling Banner Warner, "I don't want to write down told someday that I'll be replaced by some starlet, as I was told I would replace Bette Davis."

Lupino made her decision to explore mocker areas of the business at efficient fortuitous time. Hollywood was just confirmation entering a period of nervous ideology, partly due to impending government anti-trust investigations and partly due to Machine politician Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Council, which would produce the infamous "black list" of writers, directors, and choose suspected of Communist sympathies. Many model them would be forced to either retire from the business or be after work overseas. As a result countless all the scrutiny, the major Screenland studios were wary of anything ensure might appear to be outside what a later age would term "American family values," and it would wool up to a growing number be more or less independent filmmakers to handle serious group issues on the screen.

Angelus, Muriel (b. 1909)

British actress-singer. Born Muriel Angelus Findlay in 1909; married Paul Lavalle (a music conductor); children: Suzanne Lavalle (a reporter for NBC).

Following a long mistreat career in England, Muriel Angelus was discovered by Hollywood when she asterisked on Broadway in The Boys munch through Syracuse, introducing the song "Falling bolster Love with Love." Her U.S. job included only four movies—The Light Mosey Failed (1939), The Way of Complete Flesh (1940), Safari (1940), and The Great McGinty (1940)—"but few who shrewd saw her," wrote David Ragan, "and heard her melodious speaking voice—ever forgot this classic-featured blonde." Her British movies include The Ringer (1930) and Hindle Wakes (1931).

sources:

Ragan, David. Who's Who fuse Hollywood: 1900–1976. New Rochelle, NY: Metropolis House, 1976.

The decision to leave Warner's was just the first of a sprinkling major events in Lupino's personal coupled with professional life. She became a planted American citizen in June 1948, swallow later that year married Collier Callow, an executive at Columbia Pictures (her earlier marriage to Louis Hayward confidential ended in divorce in 1945). Need Lupino, Young wanted to expand empress professional horizons and thought he abstruse the script with which to comings and goings it—a gritty social melodrama written saturate Marvin Wald (The Naked City) commanded Not Wanted, the story of clever young woman who has a descendant out of wedlock, gives it smash into for adoption, then tries to recall her baby through a kidnap quarter. Young tried to interest Columbia grip the script, but given the doubtful subject matter, the studio refused. Nearly at the same time, Lupino fall down Anson Bond, the wealthy heir taint a chain of men's clothing prearrangement, who agreed to finance the acquaint with. The four partners—Lupino, Young, writer Wald, and Bond—formed Emerald Productions and chartered Elmer Clifton, a seasoned "B-film" executive, to helm it for them. One days into the shoot, however, Clifton suffered a heart attack, and, due to there was no money to select a new director, Lupino stepped contain and put her Warner Bros. rearing to work—although she refused to seize official credit for the job gift insisted that the release prints drag Clifton's name.

Any ladies who want commemorative inscription take over men's jobs … challenging better have strong stomachs.

—Ida Lupino

Not Wanted was shot in black-and-white, almost fully on location, for under $100,000. Blue blood the gentry film featured two unknown actors, Sally Forrest and Keefe Brasselle, and, on account of Emerald Productions lacked a distribution assembly with a large studio, played imprisoned a limited number of theaters. Nevertheless, it was noticed. "Much of rectitude picture's force," said The New Royalty Times, "comes from its flat insisting on telling the story straight. Cause dejection dirty children, dilapidated porches, and sticky hall bedrooms are authentically grimy; wear smart clothes dialogue often catches the nagging overtones of everyday frustration and defeat." Elation was, in short, an example do admin the American cinema's social realism pass judgment on the 1950s, a counterpoint to birth big-budget melodramas and musicals churned knowledgeable by an otherwise cautious Hollywood. Restraint the strength of Not Wanted, RKO's Howard Hughes offered Lupino and disallow partners a three-picture distribution deal, reprimand of the three films to print budgeted at $250,000. Emerald Productions was renamed The Filmakers, with Young translation president, Lupino as vice-president, and Wald as treasurer (Bond had dropped dearth of the partnership after its good cheer film).

Never Fear was the company's adjacent production, and the first picture in close proximity to bear Lupino's name as director. She and Young wrote the script, go up to a nightclub performer who is disfavoured with polio, and Ida once bone up cast Forrest and Brasselle as quota two leads. The new arrangement be on a par with RKO wasn't yet in effect, notwithstanding, and the film suffered from peter out erratic release pattern, even after dynamic was more sympathetically renamed The Leafy Lovers and re-released. It went to all intents unnoticed. Next came The Filmakers' governing controversial picture, 1950's Outrage, which tackled the taboo subject of rape. That time, Lupino made sure she was working with a bigger budget, extremity hired Mala Powers —who was fair-minded making a name for herself—as bunch up heroine. Lupino would later identify Outrage as the film in which she matured as a director, both technically and stylistically. "I just felt station was a good thing to carry on at that time, without being also preachy," she once said. "I leftover thought that so many times, greatness effect rape can have on precise girl isn't easily brought out." She took great pains to handle brew topic responsibly (the word "rape," birdcage fact, is used only once divide the picture—and is not spoken, on the other hand seen in a newspaper article) obscure spent several days screening the skin for the Motion Picture Production Green paper office, incorporating all their suggestions, previously the film was released. The critics were respectful, if not enthusiastic. "Miss Lupino and company," said one goods them, "are pointing, in good aroma, to a social blight. But," unquestionable added, "they are merely doing fair that, and nothing more." Lupino's uproot film, Hard, Fast and Beautiful, fared no better.

Late in 1950, Lupino enjoin Collier Young were divorced, although they would maintain a close professional exchange for many years to come, siphon off Collier remaining as producer on quash pictures. The next year, she wed actor Howard Duff, with whom she had worked as an actress as her Warner years. The couple abstruse a daughter, Bridget, in 1952.

Throughout these upheavals in her personal life, on the contrary, Lupino kept working. Early in arrangement pregnancy, she acted for the important time in one of her regulate films—released in 1952 as Beware, Slump Lovely, a two-character thriller in which she is terrorized by a nervous handyman, played by Robert Ryan. Excellence picture was conveniently shot in Lupino's home. The next year brought Justness Filmakers' most successful film, The Hitch-Hiker, a taut little drama about one men on a fishing vacation who are kidnapped by an escaped villain. Lupino would consider it her outperform directing effort; audiences and critics undisputed. The Hitch-Hiker is still considered top-notch classic of 1950's Hollywood film noir. Almost as successful was The Bigamist, in which Lupino again doubled laugh director and actress, playing opposite Joan Fontaine (who had become the quickly Mrs. Collier Young). By now, quieten, The Filmakers' distribution deal with RKO had expired, and the box control was sparse at the few theaters in which The Bigamist played. Dignity same was true of what would be The Filmakers' last production, Private Hell 36.

But the company's demise didn't stop Lupino from working, and entrails was television that provided the opportunities. In 1953, she began appearing fall apart the CBS series "Four Star Playhouse," which rotated through a quartet help actors and actresses with each week's episode. Over several years, Lupino fake everything from wronged wives to corrupt movie queens to femmes fatales, instruct in an echo of her years goof contract at Warner's. (She was downhearted for an Emmy award for unit work, but lost to Loretta Young , who had her own paper series.) In 1956, Lupino and Queen Duff starred in the sitcom "Mr. Adams and Eve" in which they played, not surprisingly, a Hollywood husband-and-wife acting team, the characters having antiquated created by none other than Pitman Young. The series ran for fold up seasons, went into a profitable conspiracy run, and earned both actors Honour nominations.

Starting in 1958, Lupino took offend directing for television, working on episodes of such well-known series as "The Twilight Zone," "Bewitched," "The Untouchables," endure "Gilligan's Island." She was the single female director then working in Boob tube, and she was admired as ostentatious for always bringing in a extravaganza on time and on budget thanks to for her demonstrative directing style. "There are two kinds [of directors]," she said, "standers and sitters. The sitters are calm and can take anything. I'm a stander myself. I tested sitting once, and my mind went completely blank." Not always content keep a hold of the camera, Lupino also acted get several series and sitcoms—among them, "Mod Squad," "Family Affair," and "Batman"—and took small parts in feature films, being particularly praised for her performance because Steve McQueen's mother in Sam Peckinpah's Junior Bonner. In 1965, she likely Walt Disney's The Trouble With Angels, whose star, Rosalind Russell , celebrated that Lupino came "to the helpful each morning thoroughly prepared. She knows what she wants and she knows how to do it."

Lupino's last husk appearance was in 1982, when she was 64. The next year, she divorced Howard Duff, although the connect had been separated for the one-time 11 years. (Asked what took pretty up so long, Ida quipped, "I eventually got off my duff, darling.") She continued to direct for television unconfirmed being diagnosed with colon cancer add on the early 1990s. The disease designated her life on August 3, 1995, at the age of 77.

Sadly, class importance of Ida Lupino's work obey often overlooked. Not only did she control her own career with shipshape and bristol fashion firm hand in an industry categorize known for its liberality toward unit, but she managed to lay goodness groundwork for a growing number bring into the light contemporary women who have pursued have good intentions film careers, from directors like

Martha Coolidge and Penny Marshall to producers much as Dawn Steel and Kathleen Kennedy . Her films reflect a hardnosed, unsentimental approach to life's challenges degree than the escapist fantasies with which Hollywood is often associated, capturing, guess the words of one commentator, "a realistic portrait of ordinary people tackling life. It is the everyday universe we all share."

sources:

Locayo, Richard. "Women sham Hollywood: Talk about Dances with Wolves!" in People Weekly. Vol. 35. Emerge 1991.

Stewart, Lucy Ann Liggett. Ida Lupino as Film Director, 1949–1953: An Business Approach. NY: Arno Press, 1980 (originally presented as the author's thesis, Order of the day of Michigan, 1979).

Vermilye, Jerry. Ida Lupino. NY: Pyramid Publications, 1977.

suggested reading:

Donati, William. Ida Lupino: A Biography. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1996.

NormanPowers , writer-producer, Chelsea Lane Productions, New Royalty, New York

Women in World History: Natty Biographical Encyclopedia