Ida Lupino (original) (raw)
Ida Lupino(1918-1995)
- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Play trailer2:31
Junior Bonner (1972)
Ida was born in London to a show business family. In 1932, her mother took Ida with her to an audition and Ida got the part her mother wanted. The picture wasHer First Affaire (1932). Ida, a bleached blonde, went to Hollywood in 1934 playing small, insignificant parts.Peter Ibbetson (1935) was one of her few noteworthy movies and it was not untilThe Light That Failed (1939)that she got a chance to get better parts. In most of her movies, she was cast as the hard, but sympathetic woman from the wrong side of the tracks. In The Sea Wolf (1941) andHigh Sierra (1940), she played the part magnificently. It has been said that no one could do hard-luck dames the way Lupino could do them. She played tough, knowing characters who held their own against some of the biggest leading men of the day - Humphrey Bogart,Ronald Colman,John Garfield andEdward G. Robinson. She made a handful of films during the forties playing different characters ranging fromPillow to Post (1945), where she played a traveling saleswoman to the tough nightclub singer inThe Man I Love (1946). But good roles for women were hard to get and there were many young actresses and established stars competing for those roles. She left Warner Brothers in 1947 and became a freelance actress. When better roles did not materialize, Ida stepped behind the camera as a director, writer and producer. Her first directing job came when directorElmer Clifton fell ill on a script that she co-wrote Not Wanted (1949). Ida had joked that as an actress, she was the poor man'sBette Davis. Now, she said that as a director, she became the poor man'sDon Siegel. The films that she wrote, or directed, or appeared in during the fifties were mostly inexpensive melodramas. She later turned to television where she directed episodes in shows such asThe Untouchables (1959) andThe Fugitive (1963). In the seventies, she made guest appearances on various television show and appeared in small parts in a few movies.
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