Ida Lupino

The first talkie was directed by Alice Guy, the first color film was produced by Lois Weber, who directed more than 300 films over 10 years. Frances Marion wrote screenplays for the Hollywood Star Mary Pickford and won two Oscars, Dorothy Arzner was the most powerful film director in Hollywood. And what do all of them have in common? They are all women and they have all been forgotten. Incredibly, it also took until 2010 for the first woman, Kathryn Bigelow, to win the Oscar for Best Director. Even if underrepresented women have always played a big part in Hollywood and it is this part of the film history left untold that this documentary sets out to uncover.

7.1/10

Four dozen original coming attractions previews of classic film noir. From A-list biggies to lesser-known gems, this set is a distillation of America’s home grown film style: pulp cinema.

7.1/10

Teenagers at a correctional facility devise a plan to rob an armored van.

4.7/10

Morgan and his friends are on a hunting trip on a remote Canadian island when they are attacked by a swarm of giant wasps. Looking for help, Morgan stumbles across a barn inhabited by an enormous killer chicken. After doing some exploring, they discover the entire island is crawling with animals that have somehow grown to giant size. The most dangerous of all of these, however, are the rats, who are mobilizing to do battle with the human intruders.

4.7/10
2.4%

Satanists in the middle west terrorize and sometimes melt the terrified locals.

5.1/10
1.8%

A gospel singer wants to be rid of his zealous wife. But a murder made to look like an airplane accident does not fool the wily Lt. Columbo.

Three insurance investigators search for a mysterious billionaire. Based on the Old Time Radio show of the same name.

6.5/10

An outlaw joins up with a wagon train of pioneer women and secretly hides some money there, but his old gang shows up and wants their money - and the women.

6.7/10

Story of people whose lives were changed because of a year-long delay in the delivery of some letters.

6.2/10

McQueen is Junior Bonner, an aging rodeo champ who returns to his home town to participate in the annual rodeo. He finds his family estranged, does what he can to help, and then moves on ... after some good rodeo riding and a few brawls.

6.8/10
9.2%

A parole officer goes undercover to investigate prison brutality but is trapped when the only person on the outside who knows why she's there is killed.

6.1/10

Andy Griffith plays a philandering apartment house manager who picks up a pretty young girl (Suzanne Hildur) in a bar. He takes her home, whereupon the girl's male cronies show up armed with guns. Griffith and his wife (Ida Lupino) are held hostage by the crooks, who plan to use the apartment as headquarters while they pull off a big robbery. Director Paul Wendkos stages the action essentially from the victim's point of view; we see only what they see, and are kept guessing as to the full details of the crime and the ultimate fate of the hostages. Based on a novel by Fielden Farrington, The Strangers in 7A was first telecast on November 14th, 1972 as a CBS Movie of the Week.

5.5/10

Alan Arkin, dressed like a sea captain, aimlessly sails the American highways in his 18 wheeler mumbling manic, southern accented non sequiturs; carnivalizing roadside stops and happenstance towns while out-wierding cops and weigh stations with his new cryptic, overcoated hitchhiker buddy.

5.5/10

Sent to Mexico to buy a bull, a Wyoming cowhand (Doug McClure) teams up with three Texas Rangers to solve a robbery/murder.

6/10

Mary and her friend, Rachel, are new students at St. Francis Academy, a boarding school run by the iron fist of Mother Superior. The immature teens grow bored and begin playing pranks on both the unsuspecting nuns and their unpleasant classmates, becoming a constant thorn in Mother Superior's side. However, as the years pass, Mary and Rachel slowly mature and begin to see the nuns in a different light.

7.4/10
7.5%

Wealthy Jason Foster is dying and he invites his greedy heirs to a Mardi Gras party where they must wear the masks he specially had made for them or else be cut off from their inheritance.

Wealthy Jason Foster is dying and he invites his greedy heirs to a Mardi Gras party where they must wear the masks he specially had made for them or else be cut off from their inheritance.

Kraft Suspense Theatre is an American anthology series that was telecast from 1963 to 1965 on NBC. Sponsored by Kraft Foods, it was seen three weeks out of every four and was pre-empted for Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall specials once monthly. Como's production company, Roncom Films, also produced Kraft Suspense Theatre. Writer, editor, critic and radio playwright Anthony Boucher served as consultant on the series. Later syndicated under the title Crisis, it was one of the few suspense series telecast in color at the time. While most of NBC's shows were in color then, all-color network line-ups did not become the norm until the 1966-67 season.

7.9/10

Tate is an American Western television series that aired on NBC from June 8 until September 14, 1960. It was created by Harry Julian Fink, who wrote most of the scripts, and produced by Perry Como's Roncom Video Films, Inc., as a summer replacement for The Perry Como Show. Richard Whorf guest starred once on the series and directed the majority of the episodes. Ida Lupino directed one segment.

7.6/10

Dante is a short-lived NBC adventure/drama television series starring Howard Duff as Willie Dante, a former gambler who operates Dante's Inferno, a San Francisco, California, nightclub. Alan Mowbray co-starred as Stewart Styles, the Maitre d'; Tom D'Andrea as Biff, Dante's "man Friday", and Mort Mills as police Lieutenant Bob Malone. Dante claims to have put his past behind him but has retained old associates Stewart and Biff. While his club is legitimate, neither the police nor the mob believe that he is truly finished with the criminal underworld. Dante's old associates in crime keep appearing at the club in efforts to lure him back to the underworld. Dick Powell had previously played Dante in eight episodes of his Four Star Playhouse, initially written by Blake Edwards, who had previously created the radio drama Richard Diamond, Private Detective for Powell. There, Willie operates an illegal gambling operation in the back room of the "Inferno", which police soon shut down. The only regular from the Four Star Playhouse version to be cast in the series as well was Mowbray, who had first played a millionaire named Jackson who had gambled away his fortune and then worked as one of Dante's waiters. These episodes were subsequently rebroadcast under the collective title The Best in Mystery.

7.7/10

Barbara Jean Trenton is a faded 1930s film star who lives in the past by constantly re-watching her old movies instead of moving on with her life, so her associates try to lure her out of her self-imposed isolation.

An aging movie star (Ida Lupino) rewatches her old films in an attempt to recapture her youth.

Mr. Adams and Eve is a CBS sitcom starring Howard Duff and his then wife, Ida Lupino, as a fictitious acting couple, Howard and Eve Adams, residing in Beverly Hills, California. In the television series, Lupino is known professionally as Eve Drake. The program aired sixty-six episodes from January 4, 1957, to July 8, 1958, with rebroadcasts continuing until September 23, 1958. Lupino was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Best Actress in a Continuing Role" for both seasons of Mr. Adams and Eve.

8/10

Newspaper men compete against each other to find a serial killer dubbed "The Lipstick Killer"

7/10
8.9%

A Korean War veteran must find his buddy's widow and children to keep a bizarre promise.

5.8/10

Sheila and her brother engineer a gas leak to kill her husband so they can split the insurance money. Overhearing the plot is the husband's invalid father, but it's no concern because he can't speak or write. Sheila doesn't realize he is able to communicate with his nurse through his eyes.

A young deaf women confronts desperate crooks who are using one of her remote resort cabins for a hideout.

7/10

A crusading psychiatrist battles a sadistic female warden to improve conditions at a women's prison.

6.5/10

Movie star Charlie Castle draws the ire of Hollywood producer Stanley Hoff when he refuses to sign a new seven-year contract. Castle is sick of the low quality of the studio's films and wants to start a new life. While his estranged wife supports him in the decision, Castle's talent agent urges him to reconsider. When Castle continues to be uncooperative, Hoff resorts to blackmail in order to get his way.

6.8/10
8.8%

Two LA detectives get in over their heads when they get involved with a nightclub singer who holds the key to the missing loot from a New York elevator robbery. Once they find the money, they are tempted to keep it and betrayal and corruption come to run the order of things.

6.7/10

In this drama, a young woman is hired to take care of an eerie old mansion. There she finds herself entangled with an enigmatic murderer.

6/10

Ray and Gilbert's fishing trip takes a terrifying turn when the hitchhiker they pick up turns out to be a sociopath on the run from the law. He's killed before, and he lets the two know that as soon as they're no longer useful, he'll kill again. The two friends plot an escape, but the hitchhiker's peculiar physical affliction, an eye that never closes even when he sleeps, makes it impossible for them to tell when they can make a break for it.

7/10
9.4%

A woman discovers her husband has another family in another city.

6.8/10
8.8%

A psychopath on the run takes a job as a handyman at the house of a lonely widow.

6.7/10

Four Star Playhouse is an American television anthology series that ran from 1952 to 1956, sponsored in its first bi-weekly season by The Singer Company; Bristol-Myers became an alternate sponsor when it became a weekly series in the fall of 1953. The original premise was that Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, David Niven, and Dick Powell would take turns starring in episodes. However, several other performers took the lead from time to time, including Ronald Colman and Joan Fontaine. Blake Edwards was among the writers and directors who contributed to the series. Edwards created the recurring character of illegal gambling house operator Willie Dante for Dick Powell to play on this series. The character was later revamped and spun off in his own series starring Howard Duff, then-husband of Lupino. The pilot for Meet McGraw, starring Frank Lovejoy, aired here, as did another episode in which Lovejoy recreated his role of Chicago newspaper reporter Randy Stone, from the radio drama Nightbeat.

7.7/10

A big-city cop is reassigned to the country after his superiors find him too angry to be an effective policeman. While on his temporary assignment he assists in a manhunt of a suspected murderer.

7.3/10
9.4%

When most people look at Florence Farley, they see a pretty teenager. But when Milly Farley looks at her daughter she sees something else: a tennis prodigy who could be Milly’s ticket to money and fame. Released in 1951, Hard, Fast and Beautiful foresaw our modern era of big-time women’s sports – and of driven parents who would stop at nothing to “help” their daughters grab the golden ring. Sally Forrest plays Florence, who finds athletic success but not happiness. Claire Trevor seethes with barely concealed malice and greed as Milly. And behind the camera is movie star Ida Lupino, guiding one of a series of low-budget, big-concept films that established her as a rarity in mid-century Hollywood: a successful and stylish female director.

6.2/10

A documentary short film depicting the work of the motion picture director. An anonymous director is shown preparing the various aspects of a film for production, meeting with the writer and producer, approving wardrobe and set design, rehearsing scenes with the actors and camera crew, shooting the scenes, watching dailies, working with the editor and composer, and attending the first preview. Then a number of real directors are shown in archive footage (as well as a predominance of staged 'archive' footage) working with actors and crew.

6.4/10

A young woman who has just become engaged has her life completely shattered when she is raped while on her way home from work.

6.8/10

Deborah Chandler's rejected suitor, Selden Clark, manages the factory of her father, who dies a suspicion death. But charming Clark manages to win her over and marry her. On the honeymoon, Clark's former girl Patricia intervenes and opens Deborah's eyes, alas too late. Now Clark tries to kill Deborah. Believed dead by all but Clark, she flees. But drifter Keith Ramsey recognizes and follows her. Can she trust him? Can he believe her?

6.9/10

A dancer who has just gotten engaged to her partner and choreographer and is about to embark on a major career is devastated to learn that she has contracted polio.

6.4/10

A man determined to track down the fabled Arizona gold mine known as The Lost Dutchman has an affair with a married treasure hunter, whose pursuit of the mine has lead her to double-cross her husband.

6.8/10

After a beautiful but unsophisticated girl is seduced by a worldly piano player and gives up her out-of-wedlock baby, her guilt compels her to kidnap another child.

6.9/10
8%

A night club owner becomes infatuated with a torch singer and frames his best friend/manager for embezzlement when the chanteuse falls in love with him.

7.3/10
10%

Romantic quadrangle involving two burgeoning musically gifted brothers- one respectable, hard working and hard working, while the other irresponsible, selfish and a rascal, a willful heiress and a waif.

6.1/10

A shy California farm girl falls head-over-heels in love with Barry Burnett, a fugitive from a chain gang building a road through the wilderness.

6.9/10

In Victorian England, literary siblings Emily and Charlotte Brontë vie for the affection of the Reverend Arthur Nichols. Along with their sister Anne, Emily and Charlotte also try to help their tormented brother Branwell, a gifted artist whose life is being destroyed by alcohol.

6.6/10

Tough torch singer Petey Brown, visiting her family, finds a nest of troubles: her sister, brother, and the neighbor's wife are involved in various ways with shady nightclub owner Nicky Toresca. Sexy Petey has what it takes to handle Nicky, but then she meets San Thomas, formerly great jazz pianist now on the skids, and falls for him hard.

6.8/10

This short was released in connection with the 20th anniversary of Warner Brothers' first exhibition of the Vitaphone sound-on-film process on 6 August 1926. The film highlights Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell's efforts that contributed to sound movies and acknowledges the work of Lee De Forest. Brief excerpts from the August 1926 exhibition follow. Clips are then shown from a number of Warner Brothers features, four from the 1920s, the remainder from 1946/47.

6.1/10

With a war on and most men being drafted, Howard Oil Supply Company has no salesmen left. So daughter Jean hits the road and does not make one sale. She finally gets one tentative sale with the Black Hills Oil Co., but Earl wants dinner with her. With the shortage of housing due to the war, Jean needs a military husband to get a place to stay in Clayfield, which is next to Camp Clay. She gets Lt. Mallory to act as her husband just to register. Then things go wrong as his commanding officer is there and believes them to be married. It gets worse as Don's mother shows up and then Jean's father.

6.7/10

Dozens of Warner Brothers stars come together in this 1940s musical/comedy

7.1/10

It is early 1939 in Poland when Mrs. Bromley and Jennifer come to buy antiques for her business in London. Jennifer meets Count Stephen and they wine, dine and see the sights though out the city. He wishes to marry, but his family is against plain Jennifer. When she tries to leave, he catches her at the train station and they are married. To be self sufficient, they modernize the family farm with tractors and increase production, but then Germany starts the war.

6.6/10

In World War II, American Gates Trimble Pomfret is in London during the Blitz to sell the ancestral family house. The current tenant, Leslie Trimble, tries to dissuade him from selling by telling him the 140-year history of the place and the connections between the Trimble and Pomfret families.

7/10

Helen Sherman pushes her younger sister Katherine into show business in order to escape their small town poverty.

7.1/10

An Eddie Cantor look-alike organizes an all-star show to help the war effort.

7/10

Kathy lives in a cramped New York flat with her father Madden Thomas, a celebrated actor brought down by drink. Lame from an early age and feeling trapped with her father in her small world, Kathy is delighted to meet fellow tenant Robert. When Madden is offered the lead in a new King Lear and Robert lands a composing job in Hollywood, better times seem for a while to beckon.

6.1/10

After a drunken night out a longshoreman thinks he may have killed a man.

6.9/10

Shipwrecked fugitives try to escape a brutal sea captain who's losing his mind.

7.5/10
10%

Ellen Creed is a housekeeper who looks after Leonora Fiske, a retired actress living in the English countryside. When Ellen's eccentric sisters visit their sibling at Leonora's home, tensions soon lead to murder.

7/10

A racketeer terrorizes a small fishing community until he falls in love with a fisherman's daughter.

6.9/10

Given a pardon from jail, Roy Earle gets back into the swing of things as he robs a swanky resort.

7.5/10
9%

Joe and Paul Fabrini are Wildcat, or independent, truck drivers who have their own small one-truck business. The Fabrini boys constantly battle distributors, rivals and loan collectors, while trying to make a success of their transport company.

7.3/10
9.2%

Having once again avoided criminal conviction, Professor Moriarity develops a murderous plan to "finish off" his last major nemesis, Sherlock Holmes, by making him fail to prevent the perfect crime. Does it involve a family curse, the crown jewels of England, or something else...

7.4/10
10%

Hattie Leonard sets out to break a criminal gang controlling the dry cleaning business.

6.3/10

A London artist struggles to complete one last painting before going blind.

6.7/10

Spies force former jewel thief Michael Lanyard (Warren William) to steal defense secrets in Washington.

6.5/10

Wrestling trainer puts himself in charge of a singer's love life when the singer is jilted by a rich girl.

5.7/10

Doris lives with her rough Coast Guardsman father. He has plans for her to marry an up and coming officer, but there is competition when a new, brash, Guardsman enters the picture. Dad hates the new guy, mostly because he is like himself.

5.7/10

Let's Get Married is a 1937 American comedy film starring Ida Lupino, who plays the daughter of a political consultant, Joe Quinn. From Wikipedia

6.6/10

An ad man gets his model girlfriend to pose as a debutante for a new campaign.

6.2/10

Opera singer Chivo is currently playing a singing cowboy, and Mexican bandito Braganza kidnaps him (along with Jane, an heiress) so he can learn to become more like the American movie gangsters he admires.

6.2/10

A young man falls in love with a beautiful blonde. When he sees her being forced onto a luxury liner, he decides to follow and rescue her. However, he discovers that she is an English heiress who ran away from home and is now being returned to England. He also discovers that his boss is on the ship. To avoid discovery, he disguises himself as the gangster accomplice of a minister, who is actually a gangster on the run from the law.

6.4/10
8.3%

Suave French actor Philippe Martin provokes a scandal when, in a darkened theater, he mistakes young Monique for his mistress, Yvonne, and tries to kiss her. Charged with assault, the quick-thinking Philippe claims it's French tradition to do as he did, and is let go. To his surprise, Philippe learns that Monique has paid his fine. As the tabloids exploit the situation, Monique dates Philippe, until a photo appears of him kissing Yvonne.

6.1/10

Casino operator Johnny Lamb hires down-on-her-luck socialite Lucille Sutton as his casino hostess, in order to help her and to improve casino income. But Lamb's pals fear he may follow Lucille onto the straight-and-narrow path, which would not be good for business. So they hire Gert Malloy and Dictionary McKinney, a pair of con-artists, to manipulate Johnny back off the path of righteousness.

6.6/10

Hollywood stars participate in a Mexican-themed revue and festival in Santa Barbara. Andy Devine, the "World's Greatest Matador", engages in a bullfight with a dubious bovine supplied by Señor Keaton, and musical numbers are provided by Joe Morrison and the Garland Sisters.

5.9/10

Architect Peter Ibbetson is hired by the Duke of Towers to design a building for him. Ibbetson discovers that the Duchess of Towers, Mary, is his now-grown childhood sweetheart. Their love revives, but Peter is sentenced to life in prison for an accidental killing. Mary comes to him in dreams and they are able to live out their romance in a dream world.

7.1/10

Afraid of marriage, Simone (Mary Ellis) breaks off her long term engagement with her fiancé Paul de Lille (Tullio Carminati). Paul heads to the top of The Eiffel Tower with thoughts of suicide. In another part of Paris and also afraid of marriage, Mignon (Ida Lupino) breaks it off from her young lover (James Blakely). Despairing, Mignon also climbs to the top of the The Eiffel Tower intending to leap to her death. There she meets Paul and the two compare stories. After discussion, Paul dissuades her from leaping and the two conspire to make their respective partners jealous by pretending to have an affair with each other.

6.2/10

Socialite Pat Reynolds (Ida Lupino) is forced to become the "smart girl" of the title when her wealthy father commits suicide, leaving nothing but a pile of debts. Pat sets up a successful hat-designing business, providing the sole support for herself and her sister Kay (Gail Patrick). So devoted is Pat to Kay's welfare that she stands by in stoic silence as Kay begins romancing Pat's sweetie Nick Graham (Kent Taylor).

5.4/10

Three con artists dupe two Olympians into serving as editors of a new health and beauty magazine which is only a front for salacious stories and pictures.

6.1/10

In this fluffy romance, a young woman fights against the narrow-minded residents of her small town. The trouble begins when a young woman flees her boarding school to stay with her retired aunt, a former actress, who try as she might, has never been welcomed into the snobbish community in which she resides. The young woman too, is shunned and ends up being victimized in witchcraft trial and ducked into a pool of water.

5.7/10

"Lucky" Davis, a ladies-man and a devil-may-care U. S. Marine Sergeant, is leading a Marine-squadron on an expedition through a Phillipine jungle where an outlaw bandit is leading a guerilla-war rebellion. Their assignment is to rescue a group of children from an island mission that has been cut off from all communication. It comes as a bit of a surprise when Davis discovers that the "children" are a group of 18-25 year-old girls blissfully bathing in a pool while awaiting rescue.

6/10

Self-made businessman Sir Grant Rayburn is obsessed with making money to the exclusion of all else. He shows little interest in his daughter Jill and is irritated when she falls in love with, and wishes to marry, a young man named Tom. Sir Grant does not believe Tom is a suitable match for Jill as he does not come from a moneyed background. He suspects that Tom is a chancer with an eye on access to Jill's money....

In London a young lady meets a homeless and apparently penniless Russian prince. She introduces him to her middle-class Fulham family and he moves in. It turns out he still has a number of diamonds given him by the last czar, and he is persuaded to start selling them. The resulting money, and his princely notoriety, soon cause changes in everyone's lives.

6.5/10

A Ruritanian Prince is due to marry a princess with acting ambitions, but he has fallen in love with another woman.

A motorcycle champion becomes a stunt rider after he is banned from speedway racing.

6.6/10

When a photograph is taken at the scene of a murder, the camera is tossed out of a castle window to destroy the evidence and lands in the back of a passing car belonging to chemist John Gray who becomes amateur sleuth after developing the film and goes in search of the woman captured by the photograph. When the camera is stolen from his laboratory, Gray's suspicions are further aroused.

6.2/10

A headstrong young girl falls completely for a writer of trashy novels, and insinuates herself into his household, all to the chagrin of her erstwhile fiancé.He conspires with the author's wife to show the girl how foolish she's been.

5.9/10

The Love Race is a delightful musical comedy film based around the fierce rivalry between two motor manufacturers – and the romance that develops between the daughter of one and the son of the other...

5.6/10

Documentary on early women filmmakers including Alice Guy-Blanche, Ida Lupino and Lillian Gish

A gospel singer plots the murder of his wife.