Ida Lupino's HARD, FAST, AND BEAUTIFUL to Screen at MoMI

DIRECTOR IDA LUPINO, PICTURED WITH ACTRESS SALLY FORREST — FUTURE STAR OF LUPINO’S HARD, FAST, AND BEAUTIFUL (1951) — ON THE SET OF NOT WANTED IN 1949.

Tomorrow, September 17th, 2023, at 12:30pm, trailblazing director Ida Lupino’s 1951 psychodrama HARD, FAST, AND BEAUTIFUL will screen at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of their ongoing series Queens on Screen, which spotlights films set or filmed in Queens, New York.

Lupino is a key filmmaker in GME’s collection. We distribute to the North American university market, on Blu-Ray, DVD, and DSL, the director’s 1949 polio drama NEVER FEAR. It’s a psychologically probing look at coping with chronic illness, a project Lupino had a vested personal interest in, considering her own bout with polio as a child. We also distribute on Blu-Ray, DVD, and DSL her nail-biting noir from 1953, THE HITCH-HIKER, which was inspired by the real-life killing spree of serial murderer Billy Cook.

Lupino’s film and television career extended from the early 1930s to the late 1970s. She proved to be a versatile figure in the movie industry, beginning as an actor in England as a teenager, and then later transitioning in the United States to work as an actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. In terms of her directorial career, she worked mostly in the independent vein, establishing a production company entitled The Filmmakers (which she founded with Collier Young, her husband at the time). Directing mostly social issue feature films between 1949 and 1953, she went on to have a prolific career as an actor and director of episodes for innumerable television series, ranging from THE UNTOUCHABLES to DR. KILDAIRE.

If Dorothy Arzner (DANCE, GIRL, DANCE, 1940) has been, historically, most well-known as a woman director of Hollywood films from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, Ida Lupino predominated as the most renown woman director from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s (albeit primarily through films that she herself independently produced). Lupino was the second woman director, after Arzner, to be admitted to the Director’s Guild of America.

Lupino made a unique mark on filmmaking of the era by focusing on social issues in her films, with much of her work dramatically bringing taboo subjects to the fore. Not only did she tackle polio and serial killers, as noted above, in NEVER FEAR and THE HITCH-HIKER; she also examined bigamy (THE BIGAMIST), rape (OUTRAGE), and out-of-wedlock birth (NOT WANTED).

HARD, FAST, AND BEAUTIFUL isn’t as socially-conscious or topical as it is juicy and deliciously hard-boiled. The film stars Oscar-winner Claire Trevor as Millie Farley, “a manipulative, parasitic mother to Sally Forrest’s Florence, a burgeoning tennis star. Florence’s achievements enable Millie’s social climbing, yet the latter’s ambitions wind up dominating their lives — until love intervenes.”

Don’t miss this distinctive work by one of America’s pioneering women filmmakers at MoMI TOMORROW! Head to their website now to get your tickets, and be sure to inquire about our aforementioned Blu-Ray, DVD, and DSL offerings of Lupino’s films.