Warner Brothers studio chief Jack Warner relates a curious story about actress Ida Lupino in his 1965 book, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood. The story takes place during the filming of the 1940 drama They Drive by Night—22-year-old Ida Lupino's first film at Warner Brothers, after seven years in Hollywood as a top supporting player and leading lady. At this point in her career, Lupino was in the process of transforming from an ingenue and light comedienne into a notable dramatic actress. Her dynamic performance in They Drive by Night, supporting George Raft and Ann Sheridan, would launch her into the top ranks of movie stars, where she remained for the rest of the 1940s—until her attention shifted to directing, writing and producing.
In Jack Warner's story, half-way through what he claimed was a ten week shoot with half a million dollars spent, Lupino notified the studio that she would not come back to work. Producer Mark Hellinger then told him that one of the studio's flunkies, an astrology enthusiast named Richard Gully, had "put the hex on Lupino," saying that "she was just asking for trouble if she didn't get out of the picture." Warner promptly fired Gully, then "drove to Ida's home the next morning—and you can bet I don't often get down on my knees—and I begged her to come back." She refused, so Warner claimed he quickly dug up another screen play that Hellinger could get started on right away with the same cast that had been idled by Lupino's walkout. Warner said, "I determined to wait her out even if it took a long time." The wait took seven weeks according to Warner—enough time that they "finished the second picture." Warner ends on a positive note. "I'm glad we were patient with her, because she soon came down from the Milky Way and we completed the original film. In a seven-year period Ida made thirteen fine pictures for us, and recently--when she became a television director and producer--we had her back on the lot using her know-how in the new medium. Without horoscopes."
Notably, other accounts of the production of They Drive by Night make no mention of such an extensive interruption. Indeed, while this anecdote may have entertainment value, further investigation reveals it to be embellished to a comical extent.
First, the documented timeline has no room for any significant delay. Lupino had tested for her role in early April. "She made such a swell test for the role that Burbank studio executives immediately opened negotiations for a four picture pact with the star." That deal was completed by April 18. The initial start of filming was pushed back a week from the original schedule, a delay attributed in the papers to star Raft suffering from a bad cold or flu. Filming on They Drive by Night started on April 23. Production wrapped by early June, after only six or seven weeks. There is no mention in the papers of any further delays after Raft's illness. And immediately Warner Brothers began promoting Lupino as a new star as a result of her performance, casting her in the lead role opposite Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra.
Second, the alleged second picture with the same producer and cast does not exist. Neither Hellinger nor Raft nor Sheridan had the opportunity to begin, much less complete, a separate picture while They Drive by Night was under production from late April through early June.
Mark Hellinger's other productions in 1940 consisted of It All Came True, released in March; Torrid Zone and Brother Orchid, which both completed filming in early April; and High Sierra, which started in August. George Raft's schedule was less full. He completed House Across the Bay for another studio early enough that it was released in March, then after They Drive by Night he didn't start work in another film until Manpower early the next year. Ann Sheridan had been in two of Hellinger's productions that were completed early in 1940, It All Came True and Torrid Zone; then after They Drive by Night wrapped, she moved into City for Conquest in early June.
Clearly Jack Warner's tale of a lengthy walkout by Ida Lupino—leading to a muti-week interruption in the production of They Drive by Night, during which an entire separate picture was completed with its producer and top cast—is categorically false.
Yet there is one piece of Warner's story that is corroborated—and by none other than Richard Gully. Gully's reminiscences are recounted in a 2001 Vanity Fair article:
[Mark] Hellinger, a writer from New York who “specialized in gangster pictures, had me put on the payroll for one year. I had a nondescript job, just sort of wandered around.” During lunch hour one day, Gully, a follower of the stars in every sense, stopped by the soundstage where Ida Lupino was making They Drive by Night. Lupino complained that “things were going badly. So I commiserated. ‘You’re an Aquarius,’ I explained to her. ‘Your aspects are bad now.’ Right there she announced she was quitting the studio for the day, and her excuse was ‘Richard Gully told me to.’ And that,” Gully said, “is how Ida Lupino got me fired. I never spoke to her again.”
So there was a Lupino walkout after all—though it likely lasted at most a few hours, making its lack of mention in other accounts more understandable.
There is one other takeaway. For an egocentric studio chief like Jack Warner—notorious for his stubbornness in disputes with stars like James Cagney and Bette Davis where they were compelled to go on suspension or go to court—to invent a story where he portrays himself as driving to an actress' house to beg for her to return to the set, and when refused, being willing to shuffle production schedules around and wait her out for nearly two months—he must have thought very highly of Ida Lupino.
——
Sources
- Jack Warner, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood, 1965
- Amy Fine Collins, The Man Hollywood Trusted, Vanity Fair, April 2001
- Dates of film productions are gathered from newspaper accounts and trade papers from 1940 compiled by the Media History Digital Library, especially Motion Picture Daily.
Specific references:
- "That deal was completed...": Edwin Schallert, Rosalind Russell Will Costar With Stewart, Los Angeles Times, April 18, 1940
- "a delay attributed...": Louella Parsons, Jack Warner Pays $100,000 for 2 Newly Published Books, San Francisco Examiner, April 19, 1940; 'So Gallantly Gleaming' Readied at Wanger's, Hollywood Citizen-News, April 19, 1940; Sheilah Graham, Gary Cooper Battles for Contract Release, April 25, 1940
- "Filming on...": Edwin Schallert, 'Brooklyn Bridge' Now on Power's 1940 Slate, Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1940