Ida Lupino (1918-1995) was one of the most fascinating people in Hollywood. Throughout her years there, she refused to do what was required of her, did only what interested her, and defeated the Hollywood method. This week, a beautiful tribute to a star who was a director at a time when women did not direct films will begin in Cinematheques. This is an opportunity to write about this unique filmmaker, whose appreciation for her films is expanding, and not only because she dared to deal with issues that no one else had touched.
It should be noted that although it was rare, Lupino was not the first female director in Hollywood. There were a few, such as Alice G-Blacha, Mabel Normand and Louis Weber, who directed short films in the early days of silent cinema. But when Lupino started directing in 1949, she was alone in the field. Dorothy Arzner, the only director who worked regularly in Hollywood, retired from directing six years before, and Lupino carved an independent path for herself.
The daughter of a London theater family (her father belonged to an ancient line of actors), Lupino wrote her first play at the age of seven. She wanted to be a writer, but to please her father she stuck to the family tradition and wandered between the stages from a young age. In 1932, when she was 14, she played a girl who falls in love with a writer and is pushed into his life in the British film “Her First Affaire”. The next year she starred in five films, also in which she played seductive women. Thus, when she was still a minor by all accounts, she was nicknamed “the English Jean Harlow”. The original Harlow, known for her platinum blonde hair, was Hollywood’s biggest sex star in the 1930s (she served as a model for Marilyn Monroe who came after her) until she died suddenly at the age of 26.
Anyway, Fremont Studios was impressed and brought Lupino to Hollywood at the age of 15, signed her to a five-year contract, dyed her hair blonde and didn’t really know what to do with her. So in 1939, when she was 21, she took her career into her own hands, bursting into director William Wellman’s office and demanding that he let her do a screen test for the role of a sassy model in his film “The Light that Failed.” it worked. After that she moved to Warner Studios, reverted to her natural brown hair color, and was cast alongside some of Hollywood’s toughest men. Lupino could have been a bigger star if she wanted to, but she didn’t (she called herself “the poor man’s Betty Davis”). She turned down quite a few roles that were offered to her and entered into conflicts with studio head Jack Warner. More than once, she also demanded that corrections be made to the scripts, and that really raised the bar for him. The peak was in 1942, when she refused to appear alongside Ronald Reagan in his most famous film “Kings Row”. Warner suspended her, and when her contract expired, she chose not to renew it.
Lupino used the time when she was not working to closely examine the work of photographers and editors, and realized that what they do is much more interesting to her. So in 1948 she founded with her second husband, the producer Collier Young, an independent production company called “The Cinematographers Ltd.”, with the aim of producing films about challenging social issues that conservative Hollywood preferred to ignore. The idea was to show “how America lives” through films that would be shot in Two weeks on a budget of less than $200,000.
In 1949, director Elmer Clifton, who was hired to direct “Not Wanted” for the studio (the production code did not approve the original title “Unmarried Mother”), had a heart attack shortly before filming began. Lupino, who participated in writing the script, decided to fill his place but in her modesty left him the directing credit. The controversial topic of pregnancy outside of marriage attracted a lot of attention, and the film was a minor hit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWSzteDuFiU
Lupino saw that it was good, and in the following years she wrote, produced and directed more films about difficult subjects such as rape, bigamy and dealing with polio – a disease she contracted herself at the age of 16. The traces of the disease made it difficult for her all her life, but according to her the physical limitation encouraged her to develop her intellectual abilities and not to be built only on its beauty. However, she did not see herself as a feminist. “Men hate domineering women,” she once said. “Many times I pretended to photographers that I knew less than I did. That’s how I got more cooperation.” The low budget is evident in her films, but in each of them there are moments of cinematic inspiration, and the design of the drama and characters is different from the usual. It is interesting to notice the differences between the design of the men, and their relationship with the women, in the films she starred in and those she directed. These differences are noticeable in the seven films included in the tribute – four of them directed by her.
As mentioned, in the films that stand out in her repertoire as an actress, she appeared alongside the tough men of Hollywood. In “The Sierra Mountains” by Raoul Welch from 1940 (Sunday, 14.8, 21:30), Humphrey Bogart in his first leading role in the cinema plays a professional robber whose heart opens up to a disabled girl. But when she rejects him, he turns to Lupino, who prefers him to the partner who beats her. And in “On Dangerous Ground” from 1952 (Thursday, 18.8, 19:00) she plays a blind woman who opens the heart of a violent policeman played by Robert Ryan. Nicholas Ray signed on to direct, but he had a nervous breakdown during filming, and Lupino filled in for him in some scenes. In both films there are impressive chases in spectacular natural sites – in the mountains and in the snow – even though they are somewhat outdated (the robbery scene is weak), they are worth watching.
“Moon Tide” from 1942 (Monday, 15.8, 18:30) is one of the two films that the French star Jean Gavan made in Hollywood. He was not satisfied, and returned to France. Although it was nominated for an Oscar for its cinematography due to excessive play of light and shadow (and fog), “Moon Tide” is nothing more than an intriguing archival item. Fritz Lang was supposed to direct, but dropped out and was replaced by the mediocre Archie Mayo. Gavan plays a drunkard in San Francisco Bay, who saves Lupino from a suicide attempt, and she immediately falls in love with him. The artificiality of the setting built in the studio detracts from the attempt to create an atmosphere, and there is no visible chemistry between the stars.
Interestingly, the films we have directed have survived the ravages of time better. The main men in her films are not tough and aggressive like those she appeared alongside, but unusually soft and vulnerable. “Scandal” from 1950 (Monday, 8.8, 7:30 p.m.) is the first film that dealt with rape from the victim’s point of view. It is devoid of stars, and some of the supporting roles are played unprofessionally, but the treatment of the effect of rape on the soul of the raped is groundbreaking, and there are several scenes in the film with an unforgettable visual imprint. Ann (Mela Powers) is raped by a stranger on her way home. Following the incident, she leaves her parents and her new fiancé, and gets on a bus without knowing where she is headed. The trauma will come back and erupt when a strange man starts with her at a country party. The correct directing style usually gives way to impressive flashbacks in key scenes – the rape is filmed and edited like a dark horror film, Anne’s interrogation by the police representative the day after the rape is filmed through the bars of the bed as an image of the psychological prison she is in and the researcher’s insensitivity, and at the village party Anne is filmed with a long whip who follows from a distance her hesitant movement behind dancing couples. Despite the presence of a good and benevolent priest, the end of the film is far from being happy and Hollywood. A small role is played by Rita Lupino, Ida’s sister, who appeared in three of her films.
“The Bigamist” from 1953 (Tuesday, 16.8, 19:00) tells the story of a man who married two women who don’t know each other, and instead of judging him, creates the impression that in the conservative era of the 1950s, this was the most moral solution to the situation he found himself in. Edmund O’Brien is a traveling agent who moves between San Francisco, where he is married to the careerist and barren Joan Fontaine, and Los Angeles where he lives with his son’s mother (Lupino, in her only appearance in the film he directed). Most of the film is presented as a flashback narrated by O’Brien to the head of an adoption agency played by Edmund Gwen (there are two inside jokes in the film about the actor whose most famous role was as Santa Claus in “Miracle on 34th Street”). O’Brien crafts a delicate and sensitive performance as a good man who got into trouble, and the two wives are also sympathetic and not trouble for each other.
In the same year, O’Brien also starred in Lupino’s most famous film – the film noir “The Hitchhiker” (Thursday, 25.8, 19:00). Two friends (O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy) who go on a fishing trip in Mexico, pick up a hitchhiker (William Tallman) who turns out to be a serial killer and forces them to change routes. It’s a very suspenseful seventy minutes during which the abductees do not behave like the typical protagonists of thrillers (directed by men), who are always trying to establish their masculinity. In Lupino, the two are frightened and obey the instructions of the psychopathic killer, and never try to attack him, which makes the film more realistic. The rocky photo locations add to the effectiveness of the story. The script was written by Lupino and Yang inspired by a true case. At this point they were already divorced (at the time of the divorce Lupino was pregnant with her third husband, the actor Howard Deff), but continued to work together in their production company.
After the company broke up in 1955, Lupino turned to television directing. She signed dozens of episodes in many of the prominent series of those years, including “The Twilight Zone” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”. At the same time, she continued to act in films and TV series – one of her last roles was as an aging actress who plans a comeback in an episode of “Charlie’s Angels”.
In 1966 Lupino directed her last film, “Trouble with Angels” (Wednesday, 17.8, 21:00). It is very different from the films she made in her production company, and its feminism is more humorous (the screenplay was written by Blanche Henleys, who created the television series “Little House on the Prairie”). It’s a graceful and captivating coming-of-age comedy about two rebellious girls at an all-girls boarding school (Hayley Mills and John Harding), who do everything to avoid studying. At the center of the film is the brave friendship between the girls, and their relationship with the tough and motherly nun (the wonderful Rosalind Russell) who finds it difficult to deal with them, but does not give up (contrary to the expectations of their families, she does not prepare them to be good housewives). The film is shot almost entirely on the school grounds, and is endowed with careful and playful colors. “The main colors will be black and sharp white and charcoal gray,” Lupino said in an interview. “And then there will be sudden bursts of intense color. And the film will be warm and funny. It’s such a nice change – no blood is spilled at all.”
Lupino died of cancer at the age of 77, and also left behind children’s books and symphonic works. And the rest of her story is told in the documentary “Ida Lupino: Gentlemen and Mrs. Lupino” which will be screened on August 4 (9:00 p.m.), August 5 (3:00 p.m.) and August 20 (9:00 p.m.).
Cinematech Tel Aviv, Shprincek 2. Tribute to Ida Lupino, 4.8 – 25.8. Details and tickets here