I chose this star because amidst all the fanfare that women have advanced the narrative to in so many endeavors once held as a man’s domain because this woman did it without so much as a tweet, a news story on 6o minutes, a sound byte on social media or even a long winded pundit waxing on like some sycophants often do. Ida Lupino was a woman decades ahead of her time and she did it in a man’s world and moved about in it with a deftness simply because she was just flat out great as an actress, producer and maybe most importantly as a director. Yes a director. I’ll get to that later.
Ida Lupino was born in London on February 4, 1918 during of all things a German zeppelin bombing, to a traveling player family that had migrated from Italy back in the 17th Century. Acting with her sister by age 15 in a theater built by her father she eventually made 5 films in England and then signed with Paramount in 1933 where she took on over a dozen or more ingénue roles over the next 5 years. Her breakout films however came next in “The Light that Failed” in 1939 opposite Ronald Colman playing a vengeful prostitute and then “They Drive by Night” in 1940 costarring George Raft and the up and coming Humphrey Bogart as a demented murderer. These two roles cemented her a long-term commitment with Warner Brothers. A personal note here from me, watching her in these two movies astride the 1939 “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” with Basil Rathbone as a demure debutante displayed Ida’s great range in acting ability. Many actors even to this day are always themselves but Ida took on the character akin to a Meryl Streep of the present day. Peter Flint wrote in 1995 that Ida Lupino was an earthy intelligent movie actress that created a luminous gallery of worldly-wise villainesses, gangster molls and hand wringing neurotics.
Ida continued with Humphrey Bogart in 1941’s High Sierra and won the New York Film Critic’s award for best actress playing an embittered woman and stage mother to her musically talented daughter in “The Hard Way” two years later. Ida formed her own production company and started to take on controversial social themes and in 1949 wrote and directed “Not Wanted” about the travails of an unwed mother. She also addressed rape and bigamy topics that were largely disregarded at the time but in retrospect make Ida Lupino a true pioneer not only as a woman but as a filmmaker as well.
In the 1950’s her film career started to wane but television came calling and Ida began to direct shows like “Have Gun Will Travel”, “The Untouchables”, “Daniel Boone”, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, “Bonanza”, “The Virginian”, and in the 60’s and 70’s “Batman”, “Bewitched”, “Police Woman”, “Mod Squad” and “Charlie’s Angels”
Personally Ida was married 3 times first to actor and part time swashbuckler and full time suave leading man Louis Hayward and also to Howard Duff with more longevity, which yielded a daughter Bridget Duff. Ms. Lupino small in stature at 5’ 2” and lithe in figure at 112 pounds pursued skin diving, wrote short stories, composed music and one of her works “Aladdin Suite” was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Ida Lupino died in August of 1995 of a stroke following a battle with cancer at age 77. Ida Lupino a woman who made herstory without bragging about it.
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