Ida Lupino Brilliantly Heartless in 1943's "The Hard Way."

Here's an early scene that shows Ida's big sister's motivations toward her young siblings. This would make a great double feature with "Mildred Pierce."

I really love Ida Lupino's films of the forties and fifties. She was such an interesting actress, she had such a soft and dainty little face, but was as hard and tough as a butcher's knife underneath!

A bit like Joan Crawford, but without either the fabulous bone structure which stayed photogenic for decades, or the grandiosity. Which is probably why Lupino spent much of her acting career on the B-list, she was a damn good actress but not someone the public could fall in love with.

Don’t know why she never got an Oscar nomination. She added five years to her age so she could get work in Hollywood. She was married to Howard Duff who allegedly was abusive towards her. She was also a director, one of the few women to do so.

She was GREAT in Roadhouse, even if you don’t like the sound of gravel.

[quote]She was also a director, one of the few women to do so.

Ida was a true pioneer.

I felt Ida Lupino was closer to Bette Davis as an actress than Joan Crawford. But WB had an overflow of interesting female stars that Jack Warner didn't seem to know what to do with...

Apparently, "The Hard Way" is a thinly-veiled biographical version of a very famous actress at the time and her mother. Hearing of this film in pre-production the famous mother and daughter informed Warners they were prepared to sue, and the script was changed from mother-daughter to two sisters, which got the duo to back off.

The actress + mother? Ginger and Lela Rogers

Thanks for bringing her up, OP - I have always enjoyed her work but when I think of Ida Lupino, I think of the fact that Thelma Todd’s last night was at a party in her honor.

Love Road House, saw it at a film noir festival. Ida and Richard Widmark are really good in it

Ida's second cousin, Lupino Lane...

I love when Ida loses it in They Drive By Night.

Joan & Fred

R11, she's great in that

Dennis Morgan is so fucking hot in “The Hard Way”

Does anyone know what platform can stream that movie?

Aside from Lupino, Dennis Morgan was a hottie in his youth, and in my review I give a shout out to Jack Carson, who is especially good in his comedic and dramatic role. Really a nifty noir melodrama. TCM shows it regularly. Check out my review, too!

I like her in The Big Knife. Who knew Jack Palance was sexy? I only knew him as an old man.

Here's the opening scene to "The Hard Way," which reminds me a bit of "Mildred Pierce."

I always hoped to get into her but never did. She gets an 'A' for ambition, but many of her movies suffer from low budget woes (bad lighting, etc.).

I would have posted her "One for My Baby" if R4 hadn't. Great scene, great phrasing.

One of my old drinking buddies (RIP) insisted that Jack Carson was bisexual. And he was a cross dresser!

Bitch.

A woman's touch...

The best free copy of Ida Lupino's "The Hard Way" that I could find, a 480p copy that will play well on a lap top or tablet...

Joan Leslie in later years

She didn't age particularly well, women with softly pretty faces generally don't. It's the hard angular faces like Kate Hepburn and Joan Crawford that photograph well in maturity, while someone like Ida Lupino can photograph beautifully when young, and look quite ordinary in middle age.

I predicted the same thing about Jennifer Lawrence a while ago, BTW, and it's already started. She just doesn't have to bone structure to still be photogenic at 50.

R12, I saw just three edits in that dance. Remarkable

I was surprised Warner Bros had some many actresses under contract in the 1940s vying for leading roles.

Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, Jane Wyman, Brenda Marshall, Alexis Smith, Eleanor Parker, Joan Leslie, Priscilla Lane, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Betty Field, Nancy Coleman, Susan Peters, Faye Emerson, Ruth Roman, Dorothy Malone, Andrea King, and Dolores Moran.

I like when her English accent slips in eg when she says years.

Joan Leslie was rather underrated I think. I saw her in another film and she did a spot-on Ida impersonation.

Not that I'm a huge Joan Leslie fan, but she was just a teen when she did The Hard Way, and she did a pretty good job, going from innocent teen to star starting to go down the wrong path. Also, Leslie was from a vaudeville family, so she knew her stuff. I give her a shout out in my review.

(Reply 26) It's true Ida didn't age well, and I agree that soft and pretty doesn't age well as dramatic beauty. Ida also had the common problem of golden era stars, too many smokes and drinks.

This film's plot gives me a chuckle. Joan is a sensation as a musical star on stage and then she is given a drama to do. They just assume she can act.

The funniest scene is when Gladys George has a singing rehearsal on stage and she keeps stopping. At one point someone is hammering the set when she tries to sing so no wonder she gets pissed. He is told to stop but he does it again!

R30 the biggest trick Joan Leslie ever pulled was managing to seem mature enough for James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy - at just 17 to his 43!

Ida had a really bad hairstyle when she made ROADHOUSE. I read somewhere that she had lost her hair earlier in her career and wore wigs and extensions for years.

Not sure, but seems like Ida became ill very young and lost most of her hair, something like diphtheria.

Like Fanny Skeffington r36 .

r37 = Janie Clarkson

Maybe Ida should have played Fanny! One of a couple roles Bette was too old for... another was "In This Our Life," with Olivia playing "mantrap" Bette's OLDER sister!

Ida had an issue with her forehead which is why she always wore her hair with banges on one side especially.

...bangs

Ida suffered from a bout of polio early in her career. The film Never Fear, which she directed, is partly based on this experience.

All the films she directed are brilliant, btw. They range from noirish melodramas like Outrage and The Bigamist to straight-up noir like The Hitch Hiker to the coming-of-age comedy The Trouble with Angels. I highly recommend all of them.

So she had success as a director…why’d she stop? Did she direct television projects as well?

Yes, why did she stop directing? The last film she directed was "The Trouble with Angels", and I'm under the vague impression that it was a hit, because of how many times I saw it as a child. And a quick look at her filmography tells me it had been more than ten years since she'd last directed a film.

So I don't know if stopped because she wanted to stop, or if industry politics and/or sexism kept her from directing as much as she'd like. Because when Ida was directing films in the late forties and early fifties, she was the ONLY female director working for a Hollywood studio, Dorothy Arzner had directed films in the 1930s and 1940s, and her last film was in the early 1940s, so when Ida started directing she was on her own. So she definitely wasn't part of the Old Boys' Club, and if she had a flop she wouldn't have been forgiven and handed another directing assignment, and if some higher-up decided he didn't want the actresses getting above themselves, she wouldn't have been given more films to direct. Yes, Hollywood was blatantly sexist then, that could have happened.

It was a boy's club, r44.

[quote]Joan is a sensation as a musical star on stage and then she is given a drama to do.

Didn't Helen Lawson go straight from "Carnival Songbird" to "Saint Joan"?

Ida directed on TV as well... IMDB gives Lupino a total of 42 directing credits, most from TV. Here's a link...

R44, she was a drunk,, Hayley Mills wrote about it in her memoir. Her drinking is the more likely reason that her directing career ended than 'sexism.'

She wanted to do a film about Frances Farmer after that supposed autobiography came out, as she knew Frances at Paramount in the early 1930s.

Ida directed the most brilliant episode of "Gilligan's Island" - The Producer- starring Phil Silvers as Hollywood producer Harold Hecuba, and the castaways perform Hamlet to the score of Bizet's Carmen!

No further achievement required!

R43, Ida stopped directing films when The Filmakers, the indie production company she started with her then-hubby, Collier Young, went out of business in 1955. Young, a producer and writer who was in charge of the business end of things with the company, was not a particularly astute businessman.

But as others have pointed out, after that she directed a *lot* of TV, as well as the 1965 film The Trouble with Angels. It's true that her alcoholism hurt her directing career but sexism also played a major role. After all, there were countless male alcoholics during this period who continued to enjoy thriving directorial careers.

But after Lupino made her final film in 1965, no other woman was allowed to direct a major Hollywood film until Elaine May in 1971, with A New Leaf. Even after that, throughout the 70s and 80s only a handful of women got to direct films within the Hollywood studio system. Opportunities for women directors were few and sexism was rampant.

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I would love to know how they put her in this gown…

[quote]I would love to know how they put her in this gown…

A shoe horn and WD-40

I first was aware of her via her sitcom with Duff, Mr. Adams and Eve. Not to mention their appearance on The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.

She would have made a great Auntie Mame.

Reply 56, off-camera, I've read that Ida was a live wire, very intense... so she might have made a delightful Auntie Mame...

In addition to The Hard Way, some of my favorite films that Lupino starred in (as opposed to those she directed) are The Man I Love, Road House, On Dangerous Ground, Moontide, The Sea Wolf, Deep Valley, Women's Prison, and Private Hell 36 (she co-wrote the screenplay of this one).

I need to see Ladies in Retirement...

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(Reply 60) Will check it out! Thanks!

She was really too young for Ladies in Retirement. The play was originated on stage by Flora Robson when she was in her late 30s and playing a 60 year old.

Another fan of Ida's from her 1950s sitcom MR ADAMS AND EVE in which she and her then husband, sexy Howard Duff played Hollywood movie stars. There isn't much of it on youtube so I can't really say if it holds up well, but as a kid watching it in reruns, I just adored it. Ida showed a great flair for light comedy.

And Howard Duff was soooooo hot! I hope there's no truth about him physically abusing Ida. As someone said upthread, they also appeared as "themselves" in one of the Lucy/Desi Comedy Hours, not anyone's finest hour.

Read this book on her.

I'll check it out!

Howard Duff was hot???

She was never given the credit she deserved , imo.

[quote]Howard Duff was hot???

Yes.

The funniest drag queen name I've heard is Ida SlappedHer.

Howard Duff was effortlessly hot. A very sexy grownup man.