Ida Lupino Movies

In a manner of speaking, Humphrey Bogart had George Raft to thank for his ascendancy to stardom: after all, if Raft hadn't turned down both High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, Bogart might have continued playing second-billed gangsters to the end of his days. Adapted from W. R. Burnett's novel by Burnett and John Huston, High Sierra opens with gangster Roy Earle (Bogart) being paroled after a lengthy prison term. Though he enjoys the fresh air and sunshine of the outside world, Earle has no intention of giving up his criminal ways. In fact, his parole has been arranged by Big Mac (Donald MacBride), so that Earle can mastermind a big-time heist at a fancy California resort hotel. After a few unkind words with a crooked cop, Kranmer (Barton MacLane), in Big Mac's employ, Earle heads toward a fishing resort, where he is to commiserate with his inexperienced, hot-headed cohorts Babe (Alan Curtis) and Red (Arthur Kennedy). En route, he befriends a farm family, heading to LA in search of work. He falls in love with the family's club-footed daughter Velma (Joan Leslie)--though she never really gives him any encouragement--and makes a silent promise to finance an operation on her foot once he's gotten his share of the loot. At the mountain cabin rendezvous, Earle meets Marie (Ida Lupino), Babe's tough-but-vulnerable girlfriend. He angrily orders her to scram, but she stubbornly remains. Earle also finds himself the owner of a "jinxed" dog, whose previous masters have all met with early demises (a none-too-subtle foretaste of things to come). Marie is strongly attracted to Earle, but he refuses to have anything to do with her, reserving his affections for Velma. He arranges an operation for the girl with mob doctor Banton (Henry Hull), never suspecting that the self-serving Velma is planning all along to marry someone else. The robbery goes off without a hitch, save for the fact that "inside man" Mendoza (Cornel Wilde) panics and nearly gives the game away. While escaping, Babe and Red are killed in a car accident, but Earle and Marie escape. Having been disillusioned by Velma's indifference and by the fact that the untrustworthy Kranmer has taken over the late Big Mac's operation, Earle at last realizes that the only person he can truly depend upon is the faithful Marie. With the police hot on his trail, Earle tells Marie to look after herself, then heads alone into the High Sierras--where, in Greek Tragedy fashion, he "busts out" of life. As in Petrified Forest, Humphrey Bogart plays a burnt-out anachronism from an earlier era in crime in High Sierra; in the latter film, however, Bogart has an innate nobility that allows the audience to empathize with him throughout. It is nothing short of amazing that, despite his superb performance in this 1940 film, he still had to wait until The Maltese Falcon for top billing in an "A picture." High Sierra was remade in 1949 as Colorado Territory and in 1955 as I Died a Thousand Times. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Regarded as the best of Columbia's "Lone Wolf" B-picture series, The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt stars Warren William as Michael Lanyard, a onetime criminal known as the Lone Wolf. He is determined to remain reformed for the sake of his daughter (Virginia Weidler), but a gang of foreign spies abducts Lanyard and force him to steal the blueprints for a secret anti-aircraft gun. Ever the ladies' man, Lanyard has two lovelies to contend with here: dizzy heiress Ida Lupino and seductive spy Rita Hayworth (just prior to her superstardom). Lone Wolf Spy Hunt is a remake of 1929's The Lone Wolf's Daughter, and like the earlier film is based on the character created by Louis Joseph Vance. Incidentally, the character of the daughter would never be seen or heard from after this 1939 film, though Warren William would make seven more appearances as the Lone Wolf. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

How could anyone dislike a film with the title Lady and the Mob? Sweet Fay Bainter stars as eccentric dowager Hattie Leonard, who takes it upon herself to smash a dry-cleaning racket. When the crooks and the cops laugh at her efforts, the resourceful Hattie sets about to organize her own mob, consisting of such soft-hearted yeggs as Warren Hymer and Joe Sawyer. With the help of her Runyonesque stooges-not to mention her grandson Jeff (Lee Bowman) and his sweetheart Lila (Ida Lupino)-Hattie manages to strike a blow for The American Way, bringing the villains to their knees. The supporting cast includes the ineffable Henry Armetta and versatile radio actor Tommy Mack, of "I'm not excited! WHO'S excited?" fame. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this actioner, a tough Coast Guard officer endeavors to marry his lovely daughter to a handsome sailor. The trouble is, she is already in love with another rambunctious and contentious Coast Guardian. To stop the romance, the officer transfers the young man to his command and hopes that he will squeeze the wildness from him by assigning him to a dangerous dynamiting operation. Unfortunately, things go awry and the handsome sailor is relegated to Davy Jones' locker. Fortunately, that leaves the burly brawler free to marry his love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This musical parody follows the exploits of American performers in Hungary. The story begins as a Yankee wrestling trainer becomes friends with a gringo singer who works in the same Budapest nightclub as a female ventriloquist. When the singer is dumped, the trainer offers to help him with his romantic life. The singer then gets involved with the ventriloquist who is married to a notorious swordsman who has successfully killed 40 men in duels. Trouble ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Gay Desperado is a 1936 musical lampooning the then-popular gangster pictures. Leo Carrillo plays a genial Mexican bandit, Pablo Braganza, who gets nowhere until he and his amigos begin studying gangster techniques -- courtesy of Hollywood movies. Selecting kidnapping as his crime of choice, Pablo snatches opera star Chivo (Nino Martini) simply because he likes his singing. But the bold bandito gets in over his head when he abducts a troublesome heiress, Jane (Ida Lupino), and her nerdy fiancé, Bill (James Blakely). Chivo hopes to extract a huge ransom for Jane's return, but the girl is more trouble than she's worth. All ends happily when Pablo engineers a romance between Jane and Chivo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of the French comedy Monsieur Sans-Gene, One Rainy Afternoon gets under way when film-actor Phillippe Martin (Francis Lederer) heads to a darkened Parisian movie theater for a romantic rendezvous with his married sweetheart Yvonne (Countess Live de Margaret). But our hero sits in the wrong seat and kisses the wrong young lady: Monique Pelerin (Ida Lupino), the daughter of a powerful publisher Joseph Cawthorn. This innocent mistake snowballs into a national scandal, fomented by the hatchet-faced president (Eily Malyon) of the Purity League, with Phillippe earning the onus of "The Kissing Monster." It all culminates in one of those zany courtroom trails which proliferated in screwball comedies of the 1930s, wherein Phillippe defends himself by insisting that it is in a Frenchman's nature to be romantic, even with perfect strangers -- and as a result he becomes an international hero! One Rainy Afternoon was the first of a handful of United Artists talkies personally produced by studio vice-president Mary Pickford. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tulio Carminati, who was previously and felicitously teamed with Grace Moore in One Night of Love, co-stars with another splendid operatic singer, Mary Ellis, in Paris in Spring. Ellis plays Simone, who breaks up her long-standing engagement with Paul de Lille (Carminati) because she balks at the notion of marriage. Simultaneously, young lovers Mignon (Ida Lupino) and Albert (James Blakely) split up for the same reason. In desperation, Mignon heads to the Eiffel Tower, intending to leap to her death. She is dissuaded from doing away with herself by Paul, who'd come to the tower with the same thought in mind. The symbiotic relationship between the two couples is played to the hilt, especially when Mignon and Albert conspire to make Simone and Albert jealous. The distinctly American character actor Lynne Overman is bizarrely but effectively cast as a dry-witted French gendarme. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"I'll See You in My Dreams" could well have been the theme music of Peter Ibbetson, the second film version of George du Maurier's 1891 novel. Peter Ibbetson (Gary Cooper) is an architect who, while working on a restoration job for the British Duke of Towers (John Halliday), discovers that The Duchess of Towers (Ann Harding) is actually Mary, his childhood sweetheart. The jealous duke pulls a gun on Ibbetson, but Peter kills him. He is sent to prison for life, certain that he'll never meet his Mary again. But both lovers are reunited in one another's dreams, which connect them spiritually. The years pass, but the aging Peter and Mary remain ever youthful in their dreams. Upon their deaths, they are reunited in the afterlife. Somehow this fragile fantasy works, thanks to the steady guiding hand of director Henry Hathaway. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Philip Wylie, a writer best known for his "anti-Momism" work A Generation of Vipers, was responsible for the Paramount "leg show" Come on Marines. Lucky (Richard Arlen) and Spud (Roscoe Karns) are among the Marine troops dispatched from San Diego to the Philippines to rescue a group of "shipwrecked children." Upon their arrival, the leathernecks are both amazed and delighted to discover that the "children" are a bevy of gorgeous 18-year-old debutantes, among them such promising starlets as Ida Lupino, Toby Wing and Clara Lou (later Anne) Sheridan. The sort of silly escapist film that regularly confounds the "auteur" devotees of director Henry Hathaway, Come On, Marines was obviously made for the sole purpose of showing off its pulchritudinous female cast members in various states of undress. The film's giddy high point is leather-clad Grace Bradley's hotcha dance solo, performed before a collection of floor-length mirrors! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

High Finance, Ida Lupino's second film (and one of director George King's many low-budget quickies), is "a drama of a man overwhelmed by his own success," as the studio's publicity department put it. The man is question is Sir Grant Rayburn (Gibb McLaughlin), a man whose blinders prevent him from appreciating those around him. This is especially true of his daughter Jill (played by Lupino), determinedly in love with a man that Rayburn deems unsuitable. He resolutely refuses to allow her to marry without his consent and dismisses the matter, concentrating on a new opportunity that has presented itself: the opportunity to become chairman of a new company. He ignores the advice of others who see this as a disastrous move, and as a result ends up in jail. While behind bars, he comes to realize that he has behaved in an unsuitable and self-centered way, and emerges a better, more beneficent man. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

Very little plot, but some interesting scenes in this slight suspense offering. A man is falsely accused of murder. Luckily for him, a picture was taken of the murder. Unluckily for him, the camera had been thrown out of the window to destroy the evidence. Luckily, it landed in a passing car, so the evidence was not destroyed. Unluckily, they don't know where it went from there. An awful lot hangs on the ability of the viewer to keep believing in this set of bizarre circumstances in a chase to find the evidence that will clear his name. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide