THE LAST DAYS OF IDA LUPINO

Mary Ann Anderson was a new sub agent for The Lund Agency in California when she was ordered to deliver flowers to movie star Ida Lupino's home on her birthday. The woman was stunned by what she saw.

Anderson, who would go on to serve as Lupino’s conservator and business manager, collaborated with the Hollywood beauty on a book published posthumously in 2011 titled “Ida Lupino: Beyond the Camera.”

The London-born entertainer came from an acting dynasty and made her film debut at age 15. Her career spanned almost five decades, with acting appearances in 59 films alongside Humphrey Bogart, Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn, among others. She passed away in 1995 at age 77.

But it was 1983 when Anderson met the then-64-year-old with flowers on hand. And despite her glamorous past, Anderson said she looked nothing like a screen siren on that fateful day.

“The house was very overgrown,” she recalled. “I walked to the other end of the property and she came walking down a pathway dressed like a bag lady with a lot of keys.”

While Lupino appeared to be a recluse, she was alert and cheerful with her new surprise guest.

“I said, ‘Ida, I have some flowers for you,’” Anderson recalled. “She said, ‘From the florist?’ I said no. She said, ‘Is there a bomb in them?’ I said, ‘No, the flowers are for you.’ And she started laughing. … She was very sweet, very funny, imitating me. She shook my hand and said, ‘You really do have flowers for me.’ She had a little tear coming down on her eye.”

The next day, Lupino called Anderson and asked her to come over for tea. Anderson stayed with Lupino for eight hours.

“She talked about everything,” said Anderson. “She didn’t think I was the agent type. She thought I would be better as a manager. She wanted me to come work for her.”

Anderson noticed cards with cats and dogs — which all had names — taped to Lupino’s walls. And while Anderson suspected Lupino was lonely at the time, the star had faith someone would come into her life.

“[Ida] told me she prayed to God that somebody would come,” said Anderson. “She was very spiritual.”

But the veteran femme fatale who famously starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in the 1941 film noir “High Sierra” didn’t seem to feel sorry for herself. In fact, Anderson said one of the things that quickly surprised her was Lupino’s sense of humor.

“She was really funny,” said Anderson. “A lot of people have no idea how funny she was. And I have so many memories. Like some of her mishaps with the neighbors. I remember I was once taking her to lunch. I came through the wrong side, where the neighbors she didn’t like were located. She thought I was a neighbor and got me with a garden hose. She looked at me and said, ‘Well, you’re all wet!’ We just sat outside for a long time and laughed about it.”

And Lupino was aware of her status in Hollywood. She’s still recognized as a successful woman who worked within the ‘50s Hollywood studio system all while directing, producing, acting and singing. At the time of her death, The New York Times added she was celebrated for directing “eight provocative and socially relevant feature films and scores of episodes of many long-running television series.”

The Los Angeles Times reported Lupino famously walked out on a $1,700-a-week contract in 1937 because she was fed up with “lightweight ingenue parts.” The newspaper added she would later abandon another acting contract in the early 1950s to produce, write and direct.

But despite her significant contributions to film, Lupino never saw herself as a feminist.

“She felt more women should work in the film, but she didn’t think there was anything special to it,” said Anderson. “She was just doing her job.”

But at the point Anderson first encountered Lupino, the actress had stopped working altogether. Her last credited role was 1978’s “My Boys Are Good Boys.” Lupino preferred it that way.

“When I met her, she was kind of a recluse,” explained Anderson. “She just didn’t seem like she wanted to work anymore. She could have. She had offers. But she just didn’t want to do. She was offered ‘Murder, She Wrote,’ which she considered, but then she got sick with cancer.

“And remember, Ida had been working since she was 14 years old. She was 64 by then. She spent many years in front of the camera, behind the camera and above it.”

Lupino did have one daughter named Bridget whom she shared with her third husband, actor Howard Duff. That union lasted from 1951 until 1984. He died in 1990.

According to reports, Lupino and Bridget allegedly had a strained relationship, but the two reconciled before the matriarch’s death.

“Ida wanted Bridget to pursue the movie industry,” said Anderson. “The Lupinos go back several hundred years. Bridget did not want to be a part of the film industry.”

And when it came to her own legacy, Lupino was determined to tell her story.

“When I met Ida, she wanted to do a book,” said Anderson. “She wanted two books on herself. She had the covers designed. … She had notes and I started taping her. She was aware of the first book and had participated in a great amount of it, like 80 percent. I, of course, wrote the ending … She was quite aware at the end of her life in terms of what was going on.”

When asked what Lupino would have thought of today’s Hollywood, Anderson said the star would have been “very happy” there are more women directing films. And while she appeared as a great beauty who was no-nonsense, Lupino was eager to share stories on her own terms.

“She was a very sensitive person,” said Anderson. “She was very gentle. If she liked you, she would be very protective. And if she wanted to do something, she would find a way to do it.”

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PHOTOS OF THE DAY: A CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD HALLOWEEN

It is that time of the year - Halloween when all of the gremlins and ghouls come out! I like to dust off some movies I always watch around this time of the year like: Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and even Arsenic And Old Lace (1944). I may have to watch the creepy Freaks (1932) as well. It's a movie I can not watch every year though. I also like to look through how classic Hollywood celebrated October 31st. Some of the pics are really great to look at again:

Judy Garland

Ida Lupino

Fay Wray and Gary Cooper

Ann Rutherford

Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra

Thelma Todd

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD AND EASTER

I've written it before, and I will write it again - there is just something beautiful in the photographes of classic Hollywood. Were the stars more beautiful? Where the photographers more talented? Whatever it is, I never get tired of looking at these vintage pictures. Here are some pictures of classic Hollywood stars celebrating Easter...

DORIS DAY (BORN 1924)

VERA-ELLEN (1921-1981)

LILLIAN HARVEY (1906-1968)

SHARON TATE (1943-1969)

SHIRLEY TEMPLE (1928-2014)

IDA LUPINO (1918-1995)

IDA LUPINIO: A PIONEER DIRECTOR

By the time the 1940’s and 1950’s arrived women directors were virtually unheard of in Hollywood. Those women who had influenced the film industry from its inception, and who were in fact responsible for much of film’s initial popularity, had names no one mentioned, remembered or recognized. Ida Lupino’s name was known but as it appeared in front of the camera. She had been a successful actress for years, having given strong.

With performances in films like High Sierra and They Drive by Night. But in the late 1940’s, Lupino wanted more creative control over her projects. The opportunity for this was never going to happen unless she started her own production company. She did so, The Filmakers, with her then husband, Collier Young. The Filmakers shot their films on location with small budgets and tackled subjects Hollywood didn’t want to go near – taboos at the time and even now to some degree – unwed motherhood and bigamy were two. After producing two films with her new production company, Lupino began production on a new script she had written called Not Wanted. Director Elmer Clifton had a heart attack on the 3rd day of shooting and Lupino took over and directed the entire picture. She declined directorial credit on the film but it was her first endeavor as director. Ida Lupino would go on to direct six movies for The Filmakers from 1949 through 1953. No other woman could boast a similar accomplishment.

After four "woman's" films about social issues – including Outrage (1950), a film about rape – Lupino directed her first hard-paced, fast-moving film, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), making her the first woman to direct a film noir. Femmes fatales, sure — these stories could scarcely exist without them — but women behind the camera? To add a layer of irony on top of the unlikeliness, The Hitch-hiker does away with any trace of overt womanly presence. By the time we get to know the film’s hapless protagonists, a couple of buddies who look and act like fresh-cut slabs of all-American blandness, they’ve already told their wives they’re off to a fishing trip, and they’ll get back when they get back. Bearing straight south down the open road, no sooner do they reach Mexico than they pick up a hitchhiker. By the time they come to understand that this black-clad, lumpy-featured fellow has killed before, may well kill again, and intends to mount a ceaseless campaign of psychological manipulation in order to get a ride to his freedom, we understand why hitchhiking has gone out of style.

Lupino’s film doesn’t just remove the women from the noir formula; it leaves aside most of the darkness implicit in the genre’s very name. Apart from a few tense nighttime scenes and a climactic chase through an after-hours shipyard, the bulk of The Hitch-hiker‘s action takes place under a harsh Mexican sun that bleaches out nearly everything but the jagged shadows cast by unearthly rock formations along the empty road. Though actually shot on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains, the movie takes its foreign setting seriously, offering several relatively extended sequences and exchanges conducted entirely in untranslated Spanish. By the standards of midcentury American genre film, this nearly counts as an act of radical artistic experimentation. Yes, The Hitch-hiker plays a bit broadly today and leans on a few tropes that must have seemed creaky even in 1953, but it remains an unusual enough entry in noir history to merit attention — and not just because of the sex of the director.

Her films are all emotional, affecting, melodramas despite their measly budgets. The outcome of Lupino’s films always seems neutral where even the person doing wrong is not blamed for it in the end – no judgment. Her protagonists are ordinary people so her films did not feature the glamour Hollywood wanted and expected at that time. I expect it was either a result of the difficulty of getting funds in order to produce more movies, or perhaps the lack of funds in order to compete in marketing her films given the competition at the time, or simply a lack of interest in a small budget film directed by a woman, but Lupino’s directing of feature films did not last. In order to continue her directing she moved on to the small screen and directed many, many episodes of popular television shows. Ida Lupino continued to direct in television well into the 1970’s and I would say, became a pioneer in that medium as well...