This is the story of a non-legendary chapter in a legendary career—the story of Ida Lupino's first attempt to become a film producer in Hollywood. It was a frustrating experience that set the stage for her later triumphs.
The legendary part of Lupino's story is that, in 1949, she left her career as an established Hollywood movie star to become the driving force behind an independent production company—eventually known as "The Filmakers". There, with collaborators Collier Young and Malvin Wald, she wrote, produced, and directed low-budget films, initially starring unknown actors, that told stories the major studios of the time were not addressing.
Less known is that Lupino's first attempt to move behind-the-scenes into film production came two years earlier. This chapter of the Lupino story is typically ignored in overviews of her career. Even the comprehensive biography by William Donati devotes only a single paragraph to it.
For this initial effort as producer, her approach was very different from her later one. Her goal was to produce films at the same level as the major studios with herself as the star—continuing her acting career, but with creative control. After many months of hard work through most of 1947, she was left with no visible accomplishments. Yet it is likely that from this discouraging episode, she learned lessons that helped make her later creative efforts successful—and that immortalized her career.
To set the stage, let's begin a couple years earlier—January 1945. The end of the all-consuming war was in sight, Lupino's six-year marriage had recently broken up, and Lupino was emerging from that emotional trauma contemplating her life.
At the age of 27, Lupino claimed she was "flummoxed" about her career and seriously considering a major change. At the time, she was a Hollywood veteran of over a decade, at the height of her fame, with a stellar reputation as one of the top dramatic actresses in the industry. But, as she told columnist Erskine Johnson:
"I'll go berserk if I'm still dashing around at 30 [getting up at 5 o'clock every morning making myself look beautiful and then rushing to the studio]. I have a time now making myself look good—and I've got a voice like Wallace Beery's."
She had long known that her time at the top would be limited, and that she needed alternatives in order to survive in Hollywood when her leading actress days were over. Her present plan was to give up acting and become a full-time writer.
Her acting contract with Warner Brothers still had two more years to go. Over those two years, she used her down time to sample various plans for the next phase of her career. She worked on several screenplays, often in collaboration with others—notably her ex-husband, actor Louis Hayward, and actress Barbara Read. In early 1946, Lupino sold one of her screenplays to RKO—Miss Pennington—for $20,000.
Music was another major effort, building on what had been a passion of hers for years. She wrote numerous songs, by herself and in collaboration with Nick Arden and William MacIlwinen. In the spring of 1946, she and MacIlwinen undertook to get a musical stage show produced on Broadway. Lupino took a three-month leave-of-absence from her Warners contract to push this project to completion. Unfortunately, it did not come to fruition as a Broadway show; however, it was eventually produced at a smaller venue in 1949. (See this earlier article for more on Apple Tree Farm.)
Another approach was to continue acting, but to produce her own films. For Lupino, who had been battling studio executives for years over scripts, the lure of creative freedom beckoned. Initially she contemplated a co-producing-acting partnership with ex-husband Hayward, with whom she remained friendly and who also had self-producing ambitions.
But she went a different route. Enter independent producer Benedict Bogeaus.
Ben Bogeaus was a businessman who had made a lot of money in the early years of the war, and then, in 1944, moved to Hollywood to produce films. Bogeaus' movies had name stars and respectable budgets. His company had already released three films by the end of 1945, and his ambitions were expanding. In January 1946, Lupino—with a year left on her Warners contract—signed on to star in one of Bogeaus' pictures. Initially there was no mention of her producing.
At this same time, Lupino claimed that she would be willing to extend her time with Warners if they let her pick stories and directors. While Warners likely would never cede so much control, this indicates Lupino's producing ambition had solidified. In March, 1946, it became explicit. Lupino told Hedda Hopper, "I'd like to get into writing and producing. Acting is too tortuous."
As the Broadway hopes for her stage show slipped away, her next Warner Brothers film suffered delays, and the one with Bogeaus was on hold, Lupino continued her writing work on music and screenplays, while also enjoying a newfound passion for sailing.
Late in 1946, she revealed to the press that one of the sticking points in her negotiations with Warner Brothers was that she wanted the right to independently produce one picture a year—"which I've already contracted to do" (emphasis added). This is the first sign I have found that her deal with Bogeaus had extended from acting into producing. She also said that she was comparing notes on the challenges of being a producer with friend and fellow actor-turned-producer John Garfield.
Lupino left her longtime studio in early 1947, refusing to sign the long-term exclusive contract Warners insisted on. Within days of completing her last film at Warners, Deep Valley, Lupino, along with Bogeaus, announced the formation of a new company to house their joint effort—a company separate from Bogeaus' own. Louella Parsons wrote on Feb. 5, 1947:
Those swanky new offices being redecorated on the Ben Bogeaus lot are for Ida Lupino, who moves over to General Service Studio [Bogeaus' lot at the time] as a producer as well as star.
She and Ben have formed the Arcadia Productions, with Ida set for one film a year for the next three years.
Ida's first is a comedy, "New Year's Eve", an original story by Norman Reilly Raine. Ida plays an heiress who gets kidnaped on New Year's Eve by a prize fighter and a G.I. and the complications that ensue can be imagined.
I'll say for Bogeaus that he tries to keep his stars happy by letting them have their say about their movies. Gregory Peck has a "piece" of "Macomber Affair" and Burgess Meredith is co-producer of "A Miracle Can Happen" and several other pictures he's made with Ben.
Over much of the succeeding year, Ida Lupino would devote her prodigious energies to her new role as producer of her own films. We will see how that turned out in the next edition.