This Sheilah Graham article was published shortly after Ida Lupino completed filming for the western noir film Lust for Gold, which is referred to by its working title of Greed in the article.
The version below is from the Dayton Daily News, January 16, 1949—seventy-three years ago today. The headline was Ida Lupino Risks Life, Limb For Better Pictures.
HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 15. — Ida Lupino is known in Hollywood as the girl who loves to suffer for her art.
In "Greed," her latest sadistic cinema showcase, Ida sprained her sacroiliac and broke two ribs. In "Roadhouse," Robert Widmark [sic, Richard Widmark] smacked her face and loosed two front teeth. In "In Our Time," Ida passed out with suffocation from a fire.
"In 'Deep Valley,' says Ida, "my big toe was almost severed on a rock and it was hanging by a thread. I couldn't feel it because it was so cold." This was the movie where Ida caught pneumonia from wearing a thin cotton dress in the snow at Big Bear.
"And the payoff is,'" continues Miss Lupino, "when you get through doing it; the public says: 'Aw, that wasn't her; she used a stunt man.' "
"Well, don't you?" queries this skeptical reporter.
"Sure I do for the long shote," replies the always candid star. "I have a wonderful stunt girl who walks like me and thinks like I do and gets hurt in exactly the same places that I do.
"In 'Greed,' for example, she tore her ribs, hurt her knee and cut her elbow in the same places that I did, She did 'em in the long shots, me in the close shots.
"Something more should be done," asserts Ida, "for the unsung heroes of pictures—the stunt people who take these terrible risks. They do such horrible things, risking their lives for these stunts. Through the years they've taught me how to do them. When I can, I do my own stunts. It makes a better picture."
It all started when Ida rebelled against cute ingenue roles on the screen. She came to Hollywood from England at the age of 15 to star in "Alice in Wonderland" with her father's final advice in her ear: "No daughter of mine is going to be an acrobat."
"That," says Ida, "was because his family (the famous Lupino family) had been acrobats, tumblers and circus performers for centuries back. But just to be sure that his two daughters were equipped for the hazards of the acting profession, poppa Stanley Lupino had them taught how to take falls.
"And how right he was. In my very first picture, 'Her First Affair,' before I even came to Hollywood I had to fall from a three-story building on fire into a lake below. I was 13 at the time."
In Hollywood, the producer of "Alice in Wonderland" took one listen at Ida's deep voice, "looked at my face and said it was 'off beat.' He gave the part to Charlotte Henry instead."
"For years I was stuck in ingenue roles," says Ida who still has that angelic look which now adds a double impact to the tough, witchy roles she plays.
"My first crack at an action picture in Hollywood was 'Come on Marines,' with Ann Sheridan. I was 16 then, and Annie and I lived together. She had just won a 'Search For Beauty' competition. We were both very discouraged with Hollywood, and both wanted to go home and raise families."
Now, 16 years later, they both will probably get their wish, Ida recently married family-loving man Collier Young, after an unhappy marital session with Louis Hayward, Annie is about to become the bride of Steve Hannagan, after two marriage flops with Ed Norris and George Brent.
"In 'Come on Marines,' continues Ida, "I had to stand in an ice-cold mountain lake, I caught a terrible cold that put me in bed for a month.
"In 'In Our Time,' there was a big scene where we all had to fall on the ground while we were strafed by planes." In pictures, when a plane strafes you, it isn't done by the plane. The ground is dynamited and at a given signal it pops off to coincide with the machine gun in the plane,
"You have to be sure to fall in the right place," says Ida, "or you get dynamited. A couple of us in that picture fell in the wrong places and injured our hands."
In the same picture Ida and Paul Henreid had to dash out of a burning house through a chalk-marked passaged. Ida slipped, swallowed smoke and scared herself into a faint.
"It was almost funny in 'Roadhouse,'" declares Ida, who has a British sense of humor. "Richard Widmark had to sock me. He hated to hit women in real life, and he missed me on the timing. So I got it full on the chin. It jarred my neck and loosened my teeth.
"Then Cornel Wilde had to swing on Widmark. He missed, went into Widmark's eye and put two of his fingers out. Then Celeste Holm ran through the woods breathing so heavily that she passed out and we all landed in the studio hospital!"
The torn ribs on "Greed" happened when Glenn Ford pushed a big rock at Ida on a mountain path. In avoiding the rock, Ida caught her heel in her long skirt.
"In saving myself, part of the rock went into my rib and I had a bump on my head the size of an egg, to say nothing of being black and blue from head to foot," explains Ida. Would you risk all this—for a fortune?