Begin­nings: Ida Lupino’s London

A rad­i­cal and impor­tant fig­ure of clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood, Ida Lupino paved the way for tougher roles for women in front of and behind the cam­era. With a career span­ning almost 50 years on stage and screen, she was not­ed for por­tray­ing con­tro­ver­sial char­ac­ters, gain­ing her the hard image as the so-called British Jean Har­low or, as she famous­ly quipped in typ­i­cal­ly spiky self-dep­re­ca­tion, ​‘a poor man’s Bette Davis.’

Equal­ly, when direct­ing, she was drawn to touch-paper top­ics, dar­ing the large­ly male stu­dio sys­tem to blink first and win­ning more times than los­ing. With such a specif­i­cal­ly Hol­ly­wood per­sona, in par­tic­u­lar due to her impor­tant rela­tion­ship with film noir and her rebel­lious deter­mi­na­tion to work how she pleased, it’s easy to for­get that her back­ground was not in dark high­ways, stu­dio lots or run-down whiskey joints but in South Lon­don sub­ur­bia where her inter­est in act­ing was first sparked. For Lupino, act­ing was a fam­i­ly matter.

The world in which Lupino was born was not a safe or secure one by any means. She was born on 4 Feb­ru­ary, 1918, at 33 Ard­beg Road between Herne Hill and North Dul­wich. The city was in the midst of bomb­ing, some of the most effec­tive of the war. All was not well in the Lupino house­hold either, for there were com­pli­ca­tions with the birth. Her moth­er, Con­nie O’Shea, was a not­ed stage per­former under the name of Con­nie Emer­ald and starred in sev­er­al films though was quick­ly over­tak­en by her daughter’s nat­ur­al abil­i­ty on screen.

Ida’s father, Stan­ley, was a musi­cal hall suc­cess, star­ring and writ­ing a num­ber of British come­dies, includ­ing Gra­ham Cutts’ Over She Goes, as well as work­ing exten­sive­ly for BBC radio. The act­ing dynasty of the fam­i­ly went as far back as the Sev­en­teenth Cen­tu­ry so it was a nat­ur­al pro­fes­sion for her to grav­i­tate towards. In fact, it was more than nat­ur­al but real­ly a pres­sure for her to begin work in the fam­i­ly busi­ness as soon as was pos­si­ble. With a strong con­nec­tion to Stan­ley in par­tic­u­lar, his influ­ence turned into train­ing from a very young age. ​‘My father, she said, ​‘start­ed train­ing me for grown-up roles when I was seven.’

She sup­port­ed her­self as soon as she was able to, her father deter­mined to make her a suc­cess in the indus­try that he and Con­nie worked so hard in, just like their exten­sive ances­try. It was not work with­out its due rewards as the fam­i­ly soon moved from Ard­beg Road to 152 Leigham Court Road in Streatham. Though today the sight now hous­es blocks of flats, the house at the time was lav­ish. Stan­ley in par­tic­u­lar would make great finan­cial suc­cess­es in the film indus­try in the fol­low­ing decade, at one point earn­ing £20,000 a year in a lucra­tive three-pic­ture deal. By then Lupino had made her own way into film, already out-rank­ing her mother’s attempts to break into the indus­try from the stage.

Her very first role, albeit uncred­it­ed, came at the age of 13 in The Love Race, a film pro­duced, writ­ten by and star­ring Stan­ley, as well as direct­ed by Stanley’s cousin, Lupino Lane, and star­ring Lane’s own broth­er Wal­lace Lupino. A year lat­er and things were very dif­fer­ent. Ida came into her own for her first major role, a lead no less, in Allan Dwan’s Her First Affair. Aside from being a pro­duc­tion with lit­tle direct involve­ment from the fam­i­ly, it was essen­tial as she went up against her own moth­er in read­ing for the role and got it.

It took only anoth­er year for Ida to catch the eye of the much big­ger Amer­i­can indus­try, atten­tion drawn to her role in Bernard Vorhaus’ Mon­ey for Speed. She had already made waves in the British indus­try before she left, in par­tic­u­lar impress­ing her god­fa­ther Ivor Nov­el­lo who helped cast her in Mau­rice Elvey’s I Lived with you. But it was Para­mount tal­ent scout Dono­van Pedel­ty who spot­ted her, a big offer for her to play the role of Alice in Nor­man Z McLeod’s Alice in Won­der­land and a mul­ti­ple pic­ture deal on the table.

It was in 1933 when Lupino began the slow but steady jour­ney to Hol­ly­wood. A big fan­fare was arranged as Ida was giv­en a grand send-off at Water­loo Sta­tion, pho­tographs of which still exist today. She was incred­i­bly ner­vous about the move, not least because she knew the first role that she was going to test for was not one she had any inten­tion of tak­ing. Char­lotte Hen­ry would take the role of Alice in McLeod’s film, a pic­ture that also saw ear­ly sound roles for Gary Coop­er and Cary Grant. She is skil­ful in the pho­tos at hid­ing her appre­hen­sion in leav­ing Lon­don but the pride on show makes them a beau­ti­ful and emo­tion­al memento.

Today, Ard­beg Road is qui­et and leafy, a far cry from the glam­our and dra­ma of Hol­ly­wood that Ida would soon find her­self bat­tling. The house is marked with plaques to cel­e­brate both her and her father’s time on the road. But, in spite of Stanley’s ini­tial sad­ness at being alone, Con­nie accom­pa­ny­ing Ida on the cross­ing from Southamp­ton to New York, there’s no doubt that she more than ful­filled the ambi­tion to con­tin­ue in the fam­i­ly line.