The recent talk of Ida Lupino as a fantasy replacement for
Mary Astor sparked some memories. Has anyone mentioned that
the love of her live and long (for Hollywood) husband was
Howard Duff, who was excellent as radio's Sam Spade? If so I
missed it.
She was a true pioneer. In addition to her roles in various
noir films, she directed and co-wrote "The Hitchhiker." Was
it the first noir film directed by a woman?
A couple of years ago I was friendly with a young, feminist
film maker and was surprised she had never heard of Lupino. I
was shocked as my friend respected pioneers who struggled in
a long male-dominated industry. (Talking politics over dinner
with her taught me that the one word guaranteed to hush
conversation in a Washington restaurant was "vagina" said in
a voice that carried).
One evening I held a mini-Lupino film festival for her
featuring Lupino in scenes from "The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes" (as a ingenue), "High Sierra"
(as a star billed above Bogart), "The Bigamist" (which she
also directed) and in Sam Peckinpah's "Junior Bonner." To
represent her enormous and significant work as a director in
television I chose an episode of "Have Gun Will
Travel."
The most difficult part of the evening was explaining the
popularily of the core concept of the Richard Boone program.
"Every episode begins with Paladin in a luxurious hotel with
beautiful women hanging all over him despite the fact he was
in no way physically attractive. Then he would get a telegram
and go out and beat up or shoot people for large amounts of
money, which paid for the expensive hotel and women in San
Francisco. This was enormously popular, especially with
teenage boys in America."
She had a lot of followup questions.
When I survey Ida Lupino's career directing, writing and
sometimes financing movie productions, I am struck by her
couragous choices of subject matter: unwed mothers, rape from
the point of view of the victim, the handicapped, and a
surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of a bigamist, all in the
teeth of the McCarthy era. I am amazed she is not better
known and celebrated.
Richard Moore
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