Ida Lupino

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Ida Lupino (1979)

Ida Lupino (born February 4, 1918 in London ; died August 3, 1995 in Los Angeles ) was a British-American actress , director , producer and writer . She became a movie star in the 1940s and later became one of the few filmmakers of her generation in Hollywood.

Life

The daughter of the then well-known British film and stage actor Stanley Lupino (1893-1942) came from a family that had produced actors for several generations. Ida Lupino made her film debut at 15 in the film Her First Affair , after director Allan Dwan first wanted her mother, actress Connie Emerald (1892-1959), for the role, but then decided on Ida.

After a few more films in England, Ida Lupino finally went to Hollywood in 1933 , where she began a contract with Paramount with the film Search for Beauty . The next few years brought her little fame and few serious roles. In 1939 she starred alongside Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in the film The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . In the same year, she also gained attention as a dramatic actress when she played a hard-hearted and unscrupulous woman in the film adaptation of The Light That Failed . The success of this flick earned her a contract with Warner Brothers , where she gradually got better roles. So she played twice in 1940 at the side of Humphrey Bogart , who was also close to his final breakthrough as a Hollywood star. Of these two films, Decision in the Sierra , in particular , based on a script by John Huston , was a respectable success. The following year, Ida Lupino got good reviews for the lead role in the film adaptation of the Broadway hit The Secret of the Three Sisters . A high point in her career came in 1943 when she played the sickly ambitious sister of Joan Leslie in the film The Hard Way , who throws her into misery with her unconditional will to succeed. Ida Lupino won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Female Actress for her performance. However, she was often dissatisfied with the roles that were offered to her and she liked to refer to herself as "the poor man's Bette Davis ".

In 1949 Lupino was behind the camera for the first time as a director when she briefly took over the direction of the film Verführung (Not Wanted) with Sally Forrest in the lead role during the shooting after the actual director Elmer Clifton had suffered a heart attack. She made her first independent film as a director later in 1949 with the socially critical drama The Young Lovers , for which she also wrote the screenplay and which was distributed via RKO . After Dorothy Arzner , Ida Lupino was one of the first female directors in Hollywood. In the period that followed, Lupino made a few more films, mostly produced at low cost, which often dealt with sensitive topics such as rape and bigamy. By The Hitch-Hiker it is considered as the first female director of a film noirs . Lupino founded the production company Four Stars Production with Dick Powell , David Niven and Charles Boyer in 1965 and directed countless episodes for television series in the following years. In the mid-1950s she had her own series called Mr. Adams and Eve . Her greatest financial success as a director came in 1966 with the comedy The Trouble With Angels , which brought Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell together in front of the camera.

In the 1970s Lupino was only active as an actress and, among other things, twice guest star in the television series Columbo with Peter Falk . She also made an appearance in Bert I. Gordon's monster film The Island of Monsters , in which she had to fight mutated rats alongside Marjoe Gortner . After a bigger role in the B-movie My Boys Are Good Boys , she left the film business in 1978.

Ida Lupino was the mother of a daughter from her third marriage to actor Howard Duff , whom she married in 1951 and from whom she divorced in 1984. Before that, she was married to her fellow actor Louis Hayward from 1938 to 1945 and to the film producer Collier Young from 1948 to 1951 , these marriages also ended in divorce. Lupino became an American citizen in 1948. She died at her home in Burbank, California in August 1995 at the age of 77, at which time she was diagnosed with cancer and had recently suffered a stroke. Her autobiography, edited and published by Mary Ann Anderson, was published after her death under the title Ida Lupino: Beyond the Camera .

Filmography (selection)

As an actress

As a director

literature

Elisabeth Bronfen , Ivo Ritzer and Hannah Schoch (eds.): Ida Lupino. The two sides of the camera. Bertz and Fischer, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86505-329-9 . (In addition, the detailed presentation by Stefan Ripplinger: Drive into the dark for Ida Lupino's 100th birthday. In: Neues Deutschland from February 3rd / 4th 2018, p. 10)

Web links

Commons : Ida Lupino  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter B. Flint: Ida Lupino, Film Actress and Director, Is Dead at 77 . In: The New York Times . August 5, 1995, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 27, 2019]).
  2. ↑ they made the film for the ailing Elmer Clifton to an end
  3. ↑ She is said to have replaced the sick Nicholas Ray for a few days while shooting a few scenes
personal data
SURNAME Lupino, Ida
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actress, director, writer, film producer
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England, UK
DATE OF DEATH August 3, 1995
Place of death Los Angeles , California, United States