by Ray Hagen
Although the film bombed, it gave Lupino the chance to work with her good friend Errol Flynn. He called her “Little Scout” and she named him “The Baron”; it was a friendship that endured until Flynn’s death in 1959. She would remain loyal to his memory, especially in later years when he was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer.
Ida called Errol Flynn “The Baron,” while he called her “Little Scout.” They were the best of friends, but Escape Me Never (WB, 1947) was their only film together.
The studio was pressuring her to sign again, but now they wanted it their way: an exclusive seven-year contract. Ida, restless by nature, and canny enough to see what that kind of imprisonment could do to her career, refused. You were meant to toe the line at Warners, but Ida wasn’t playing that game.
Deep Valley (1947) was a worthy farewell. It gave Ida the unusual role of a shy, nervous, speech-impaired farm girl whose life slowly opens up after she meets escaped convict Dane Clark. It was a sensitive, beautifully crafted performance which Ida pulled off without seeping into mawkishness. Her playing seemed so simplistic, but that was the beauty of it. Ida was able to add subtle layers of deep emotion to her part, making it utterly believable. It was one of her best for the studio.
Previously Ida had been voice-doubled when her characters were required to sing on camera. For the slightly tawdry Road House (1948), her first freelance job, she was, after some vocal lessons, permitted to sing for herself—a brave choice for all concerned. Her songs, “The Right Kind,” “One For My Baby” and “Again,” were all sung in a croaking whisper. But it works. “She does more without a voice than anybody I ever heard,” marvels a stunned Celeste Holm in the movie. Or as the director Jean Negulesco commented, “No-voice Lupino sang them and placed them first on the hit parade.”
Ida was born for these kind of dishy roles: a sultry nightclub singer who’s been around long enough to know the score, certainly no pushover when it comes to men. Her portrayal, remarked The New York Times, was “expertly brittle and passionate,” not to mention tough. When Cornel Wilde tries to rough her up, Ida is more amused than abused: “Silly boy,” she sasses, as she slaps him. Of course, Wilde falls hard for her, but the troubled Richard Widmark has other ideas.
She was a sought-after catch off-screen too. Among her many dates, Lupino met the man who would soon become her second husband, ex-story editor and aspiring producer Collier (Collie) Young. The two were wed on August 5, 1948. A few months later she moved over to Columbia (where Young worked as Harry Cohn’s executive assistant) to appear in the unremarkable Lust for Gold (1949).
By this time Ida and Young were seriously contemplating producing for themselves. Ida was always driven to be creative, not only acting but the whole shebang. She wanted to be in control of her own work. Ida had read a story that interested her: Not Wanted (1949). Funding was hard to obtain. Columbia was not interested, and Young, in a huff, resigned. Instead, he and Ida joined Anson Bond to produce their groundbreaking film.
Ida collaborated on the screenplay with Paul Jarrico, co-produced and chose the actors. She wanted unknowns for the realistic story of an unwed pregnancy, and ended up with two young hopefuls, Keefe Brasselle and Sally Forrest.
Sally told Jerry De Bono: “I don’t know if this was just publicity, but the press reported that anywhere from 200 to 300 actresses had read for the part before it was my turn. That afternoon, [my agent] Milo [Frank] drove me to the Youngs’ house on Mulholland Drive, and I read from the script of Not Wanted for Ida and her husband in their living room. When I finished, Ida said, ‘You’re the one we’ve been looking for. You’ve got the part.’ Well, you can imagine how I felt.”
Milo Frank, who later became Forrest’s husband, added, “I think she reminded Ida of Ida.” Many feel that Sally bore more than a passing resemblance to Ida. It was as if Ida found a younger version of herself to act in her movies. “I can’t overemphasize Ida’s importance to my career,” Sally continued. “She was an exuberant, brilliant, creative woman. She could do everything!” Frank seconded his wife, stating that Lupino was “the consummate actress, artist, and a terrific person.”
Ida’s directing career began on Not Wanted, sans credit. Elmer Clifton suffered a heart attack right before filming, forcing Ida to step in. Out of respect to old pro Clifton, who remained on the set, Ida kept his name on the picture.
Shot in eight days on a budget of $153,000, Not Wanted’s success led her and her husband to form their own company, Filmakers, a daring move for a Hollywood actress in 1949; she would be the first actress to produce, direct and write her own product. Filmakers’ partner, writer Malvin Wald, explained to The New York Herald Tribune: “We are trying to make pictures of a sociological nature to appeal to older people who usually stay away from theaters. We are out to tackle serious themes and problem dramas. We don’t plan to make any melodramas, musicals or westerns.”
Their first release was to be Never Fear. It was another risky subject, that of a dancer afflicted with polio. The theme was an obstacle; they couldn’t find a distributor or the financial backing necessary to proceed. The couple put all their money into the project, but it wasn’t enough.
Ida, to help Filmakers’ money matters, appeared in Woman in Hiding (1949), as a newlywed whose husband tries to kill her. It was a melodramatic trifle, but significant in that it introduced Ida to Howard Duff, an actor best known for playing Sam Spade on radio.
Never Fear (1949) finally went before the cameras, with Lupino earning her first screen credit as director. It again featured (real-life dancer) Forrest, Brasselle, and another newcomer, Hugh O’Brian. The production, which took all of 15 days to shoot, was beset with financial problems. Young wasn’t able to come through with investors; her agent Charles K. Feldman loaned them $65,000, which Ida herself had to pay off. Blame was placed solely on Young’s poor business sense.
Even worse was the deal Young struck with Howard Hughes at RKO to back and distribute three of their future movies, a deal which cost Filmakers half their profits. By this time, the marriage was in trouble, not helped by Ida’s growing relationship with Duff. Filmakers, albeit ground breaking and artistically rewarding, caused the rift. Meanwhile, Never Fear, released by Eagle-Lion, bombed.
Ida began to concentrate more on directing, less on acting. She unfolded her sudden plans to Hedda Hopper in 1949: “I’ve never really liked acting. It’s a tortuous profession, and it plays havoc with your private life. It’s about time the screen got rid of the old faces, including mine. I intended to give up acting altogether eventually.” She next directed two well-received gems: Outrage (1950), starring Mala Powers as a rape victim, and Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951), featuring Claire Trevor’s bravura turn as the controlling mother of tennis player Sally Forrest. Trevor called Lupino a “very warm, very sensitive, very intelligent lady.” For fun, Ida did a fleeting cameo.
Cinematographer Archie Stout, who worked with Lupino at Filmakers, told Colliers in 1951 that “Ida has more knowledge of camera angles and lenses than any director I’ve ever worked with, with the exception of Victor Fleming.” The respect Lupino generated as a director continues today, sometimes overshadowing her equally fine acting. In a magazine piece in 1995, acclaimed director Martin Scorsese wrote: “She was a true pioneer. The six films she directed between 1949 and 1953 are remarkable chamber pieces that deal with challenging subjects in a clear, almost documentary fashion, and are a singular achievement in American cinema … What is at stake in Lupino’s films is the psyche of the victim. They addressed the wounded soul and traced the slow, painful process of women trying to wrestle with despair and reclaim their lives. Her work is resilient, with a remarkable empathy for the fragile and the heartbroken.”
Needing money, Ida accepted RKO’s On Dangerous Ground (1951). Under Nicholas Ray’s stylish direction, it combined urban and rural surroundings to show detective Robert Ryan’s changing moral blindness. Used to dealing with crooks, tramps and other undesirables, Ryan’s jaded demeanor
shatters when he meets the blind Lupino.
Having worked well with pal John Garfield in the past, Ida, whose Filmakers was producing Beware, My Lovely (1952), sought him for the role of the handyman-cum-psycho. But Hollywood’s blacklist had not only affected his career, but also his health; before he could be cast, 39-year-old Garfield was dead of a heart attack. Robert Ryan, who had the right dazed, angry quality, was cast opposite Lupino again, she as a widow who hires the unstable man to work around her house.
It was a nerve-wracking cat-and-mouse chase with both stars, playing victims of a different sort, excellent. Also noteworthy was Barbara Whiting, playing Lupino’s bitchy niece who sets off Ryan. “I was thrilled to be in that picture with Miss Lupino,” Barbara says today. “That was a pleasure to work with two good people, especially Ida. She was a wonderful actress, and I’d always admired her very much. I was in awe of her, and so I did whatever she said!”
Off-screen, things were complicated when Ida became pregnant with Duff’s child. She obtained a divorce from Collier Young on October 20, 1951, in Nevada. The next day she and Duff married; daughter Bridget was born about six months later. Lupino would remain friendly with her ex largely because of Filmakers; Young and actress Joan Fontaine, whom he would wed the following year, even served as Bridget’s godparents.
On Dangerous Ground (RKO, 1951), a tense film noir directed by Nicholas Ray, starred Ida as a blind woman who falls for violent, jaded city detective Robert Ryan.
She directed Filmakers’ atypical The Hitch-Hiker (1953), a highly acclaimed, starkly original film noir that has attained cult status. Based on a then-recent murder spree, it was a harrowing, realistic movie that drew raves for Lupino’s skillful handling of the action. Ida’s dynamic sense of pace is explosive, as two men unwittingly pickup a killer. “People shouldn’t be alone when they see it,” Lupino told American Film in 1981. “It scares me even today.” She often cited it as her favorite directorial effort.
The Bigamist (1953) was a breakaway from RKO, with Filmakers footing the bills. It was not a sensationalized rendering of a potentially sordid subject, but a very human story of a man (Edmond O’Brien) tangled between two women, Lupino and Joan Fontaine. It was the first time she directed herself. “I’m not mad about combining the two,” Lupino told Patrick McGilligan in 1974. “It takes me morning, noon, and night to pull through just as a director, then to get in front of a camera and not be able to watch myself … When I was acting, I still had to say, ‘Cut, print, cut, print.’ I think I needed a separate director.”
The movie is also unusual due to the possibly sticky personal situation, considering the title—the working triangle of Lupino, Fontaine and Young. “Ida and I are old friends,” commented Fontaine, defusing the issue. “I knew her before Collier did … I’m his third wife and Ida is his second. In fact, when I go to New York I always visit the first Mrs. Collier Young. We’re all good friends.”
Her concentration on directing shoved her acting to the sidelines. The roles she was accepting were, it was suggested, dictated by her desire to see Duff cast also: Jennifer (1953), Private Hell 36 (1954), Women’s Prison (1955) and While the City Sleeps (1956), all this amid problems in their marriage. If Ida was trying to make Duff a star by insisting on his casting, it didn’t work. She didn’t dare direct any of these. Duff, possessor of a strong ego, would have resented it, and she knew it. Ida was especially good in While the City Sleeps. Her flip, flirtatious delivery and glamourous appearance lightened the mood of this tense psycho-on-the-loose thriller. Robert Aldrich’s The Big Knife (1955), was arguably Lupino’s best movie of the ’50s, an adaptation of Clifford Odets’ 1949 play. Her last for a while, Strange Intruder (1956) was interesting, slightly paralleling Beware, My Lovely. Filmakers went out of business after Private Hell 36.
Confessing to being “snobbish toward TV at first,” Ida warmed up fast, spending the greater part of her ensuing years in the medium, as a director and actress. She became known as a fast, efficient, fun director, with a large body of work as proof of her capability. “Television—there’s nothing rougher, nothing rougher,” Ida marveled. It was so demanding of her time that she wouldn’t direct again for the big screen until 1966’s The Trouble with Angels. Deadhead Miles (1972), reuniting her with George Raft, marked her return to big-studio acting.
Some of the hundreds of episodic TV shows Lupino directed: The Donna Reed Show, Have Gun Will Travel, The Untouchables, Thriller, The Fugitive, The Twilight Zone (the classic “The Masks”), Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Big Valley, Gilligan’s Island and Gunsmoke. Lupino acted on Four Star Playhouse, Bonanza, Burke’s Law, Batman (opposite Duff), and Columbo.
Doug Benton, story editor and associate producer for Thriller, was especially impressed by Lupino. He raved to Tom Weaver in 1996: “I’m amused by all these so-called feminine ‘pioneer’ directors who toot their own horns today. They couldn’t carry her script case. We used to call her ‘The Great Orsini’ sometimes [laughs]—she was the package Welles. She could act, she could direct, she could write, she could drink [laughs]—she was something! She was so serious about it, she really was. When she acted, she was serious, when she was producing, she was serious, and when she was directing, she was most serious, because that’s what she enjoyed more than anything else.
“I remember one time,” Benton continues, “she wanted to stay on the lot overnight so she could get up early and walk the sets in the morning. Well, she did, she got up at four o’clock in the morning, went over to the stage and conned some guard into opening it up. She was climbing around on the sets and she fell down and severely sprained her ankle. And when they came to open the stage an hour and a half later, they found her down at the bottom of this thing that she had climbed up on. They took her over to the little infirmary, put her in a splint and she came back and directed that day! At that time I thought, ‘I don’t know anybody else who would do this.’”
Again Ida thought of Duff: She took on the added burden of a regular TV series when Collier Young, acting as executive producer, proposed the idea. Mr. Adams and Eve premiered on January 4, 1957, and was not only a hit with audiences, but it proved Ida a delightful comedic actress, something not seen since Pillow to Post; she would be Emmy-nominated. It went off the air in September of 1958 due to insider squabbles having nothing to do with the Duffs.
The marriage, long a battle of wills, came to an end in 1972. Their relationship was marked by many verbal and physical altercations, fueled by alcohol on both sides. Ida’s friends were puzzled by her devotion to Duff, who seemed to dominate the relationship. The two Ida Lupinos were very different. Before and behind the camera she was in control, outspoken. At home she deferred to him until she couldn’t take it any more. But she loved him enough to turn down directing jobs in Yugoslavia, Greece and England to stay close to home, and she told Modern Screen just before their separation: “I said to myself, ‘No, Ida, you have to make up your mind. Are you going to be a wife who stays with her husband, or are you going to blow the whole marriage by spending six or seven months away from home?’ So I said, ‘No, sorry, I can’t do it.’ Some husbands follow their wives, but Howard would never do that; he is not that kind of man.” It was Duff who left her for a younger woman. They would be separated for many years until Ida finally granted him a divorce in 1984.
Once very busy as a director, Ida found that screeching to a halt in the late ’60s. She turned back to acting, mostly in TV movies (Backtrack, “gloriously camping it up as a Mexican widow,” approved Variety) and series (Medical Center, Barnaby Jones, Police Woman). On the big screen she sensitively played rodeo champ Steve McQueen’s mother in Junior Bonner (1972). Ida imbued her scenes with estranged husband Robert Preston with a restrained honesty and understanding; she conveyed so much with just her eyes—the regret, bitterness, and love she can’t help feeling. It was a marvelous performance, showing that those years of directing hadn’t dulled her acting senses. Other movies like Food of the Gods (1976), in a role r
equiring her to be scarfed down by a giant rat, and My Boys Are Good Boys (made in 1972, released in 1978) didn’t show her off nearly as well.
Ida’s final years were plagued by poor health, eccentricity, alcohol and an estrangement from her daughter. She faced the cameras for the last time in 1977 on an episode of Charlie’s Angels. Ida transcended the material, as usual, but she was having trouble memorizing her lines.
She became a recluse, leading a generally quiet life away from the glare of the spotlight. She had only a few trusted friends, particularly Mala Powers, who came over to chat; Ida was still known for her wild sense of humor as she spun tales from her Hollywood heyday. Vincent Sherman, who directed her in three of her best at Warner Bros., recalled, “She asked to see me a few weeks before she passed away. I went up to see her, and we had a wonderful time. I gave her a lot of laughs, and her conservator called me later and said, ‘Vincent, I just want you to know Ida said it was the best afternoon she’d had in a long time.’ I was imitating how she used to come in sometimes so nervous and say ‘W-wha-what are we going to do today?’ And I’d say, ‘Take it easy, take it easy.’ But she was wonderful to work for. Very talented.”
Her health started to decline by 1988, worsened by the passing of Howard Duff in 1990; many feel he was the love of her life, despite her comments to the contrary. In June of 1995 Ida was diagnosed with colon cancer, and had also suffered a stroke. She passed away two months later on August 3, at the age of 77. The press lauded Lupino for her skill as an actress and a pioneering auteur.
Honors came late. The American Museum of the Moving Image paid tribute to her November 2–24, 1996, and 2002 saw the UCLA Film and Television Archive celebrating “the strong-willed acting and directing” of Lupino with a three-week, 13-film festival of her work. It was long overdue, but well worth it to see Lupino finally gain an important place in cinema history. “She was electric,” Sally Forrest told The Los Angeles Times. “She never had the popularity she should have had. She was a fine actress. She was beautiful. She had a fabulous figure and was a great director. Maybe she was too strong for those days.”