When Ida Lupino starred alongside Humphrey Bogart in Raoul Walsh’s gritty High Sierra, her name, not Bogie’s, topped the marquee. This tense, mountainside thriller follows a newly freed convict entangled in a final heist and the loyal dancer who clings to him. As the desperate taxi dancer, Lupino infused the role with raw authenticity, transcending the stereotypes so often cast upon women in film noir. The movie propelled both Lupino and Bogart to new heights, though neither’s success was as sudden as it might have seemed.
For Lupino, the film marked a culmination of years in Hollywood and a lifetime in show business. She carved out her career with a blend of “talent, nerve, and courage,” as Hedda Hopper once observed, always refusing the easy road to fame.
A retrospective series on the Criterion Channel this month revisits Lupino’s impact, highlighting the provocative star who defied studio typecasting to deliver some of Hollywood’s most intense female performances. Lupino was ultimately drawn to directing, admitting that it was “so much more fun” than acting. “Creating it yourself,” she said, “not just parading in front of a camera.” And yet, as the series shows, her work on screen is every bit as exceptional.
Born in London in 1918 amidst an air raid, Lupino came from a family steeped in the theater. Her mother acted, her father was the comic Stanley Lupino, and her cousin was the entertainer Lupino Lane. She began her film career in Britain as a teenager, often cast as the “bad girl.” “My father once told me, ‘You’re born to be bad,’” Lupino recalled. “I made eight films in England before coming to America, and I played a tramp or a slut in all of them.”
Hollywood wasn’t quick to change her image. Paramount initially wanted her to bleach her hair for Alice in Wonderland, but Lupino never felt at home with the role. “I could never feel Alice,” she confessed. Instead, she was dubbed the “English Jean Harlow” — a label that didn’t suit her either. After years of lightweight roles, Lupino demanded to audition for the part of a vicious model in The Light That Failed, which finally allowed her to showcase her talent. Soon after, she starred in They Drive by Night as a woman driven mad by her own ambitions, proving herself a formidable talent.
Lupino often joked she was the “poor man’s Bette Davis,” taking on the challenging roles Davis passed up. But her humor masked a fierce creative ambition. She pushed for complex, class-conscious characters, notably in The Sea Wolf, where she played a woman battling oppression on a ship ruled by a tyrannical captain. The film, set amid the turmoil of wartime Europe, struck a nerve with audiences. For 1942’s Moontide, Lupino even took her co-star Jean Gabin on a tour of Los Angeles’s seediest locales to gain an authentic perspective on vice and violence.
Though initially hesitant to play the hardened older sister in The Hard Way, Lupino’s searing performance won critical acclaim. Even Davis later admitted, “How did I let that one get away?” Lupino also breathed vulnerability and courage into her nightclub singer role in The Man I Love. Yet her ambition stretched beyond acting, and in 1947, after leaving Warner Bros., she shifted her focus to directing. She went on to create powerful films like The Hitch-Hiker, tackling taboo subjects such as rape and bigamy.
In Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground, Lupino gave one of her finest performances as a blind woman protecting her brother from the law. Rumor has it she stepped in to direct when Ray fell ill, though she remained coy. “In a way, Bob Ryan and I did. We did it our way,” she said, as if Lupino ever needed anyone else to call the shots.
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