The Hard Way (1943)

Film: The Hard Way (1943)
Stars: Ida Lupino, Joan Leslie, Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Gladys George
Director: Vincent Sherman
Oscar History: The film received no Oscar nominations, but Lupino won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, and was clearly close to being an Oscar nomination.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ida Lupino-click here to learn more about Ms. Lupino (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Our "Saturdays with the Stars" series this season has focused on actresses who were major names in their era, but never received the blessing of Oscar-women that couldn't quite translate their names above the title into at least one citation from AMPAS.  That doesn't mean, however, that these women didn't come close to getting nominated.  Our series features three Golden Globe nominees (Cyd Charisse, Ruth Roman, and the woman whom we'll feature next month), as well as Linda Darnell, who was in serious conversation for a nomination at least twice (for Fallen Angel and A Letter to Three Wives), but none got quite as close as Ida Lupino in The Hard Way.  Only six women have ever won the NYFCC Award for Best Actress and not been an Oscar nominee eventually (and four are still alive, so they could well shorten that list)-one of them is Lupino.  She was widely assumed at the time, in fact, to be Warner's best shot at a contender in the Best Actress race, but a surprise nomination for Joan Fontaine in The Constant Nymph robbed Lupino of her only real shot at a nomination.  Let's see if Oscar got it wrong, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is centered around two sisters Helen (Lupino) and Katie Chernan (Leslie).  The movie watches as Helen wishes of getting out of a loveless marriage by any means necessary, and views her beautiful younger sister's show business dreams as a way to get there.  They cut a lucky break when Katie marries Albert Runkel (Carson), one half of a vaudeville duo who, along with the handsome Paul Collins (Morgan), whom Helen is drawn to, welcome Katie into their act and eventually Katie has eclipsed both of them, thanks to Helen's guiding hand.  The movie continues with Helen driving her sister further into stardom but in more nefarious ways, sacrificing her romantic happiness (twice) and once even ruining the chances of an alcoholic former starlet (played in a terrific little part by Gladys George) at a comeback.  The film ends with Katie finally giving up her sister to pursue Paul (long after first husband Albert has died from suicide), and Helen attempts suicide herself, realizing that she's given up so much of her life for a sister who wants nothing to do with her.

The film is fascinating even if it's heavy-handed.  The movie is a thinly-veiled (but still fictional) look at the early career of Ginger Rogers, with Lupino taking on the role of Rogers' notoriously ambitious mother Lela.  It'd have been more interesting if they'd stuck to Rogers' real-life, however, as the film's first half is considerably better than the second half, when the movie decides to treat Lupino like a villain rather than how she'd be treated today, as a cutthroat businesswoman who is determined to succeed (which, admittedly, some men would still consider a villain but I'm gay so I had more of a "YASS KWEEN!" reaction to Lupino throughout this movie).  In real life, Rogers didn't give up her career for a man-she in fact had one of the most storied, sustained careers in Hollywood for most of the Golden Age, but was never lucky in romance-she was married five times, and all marriages ended in divorce, and without children.  Rogers was by pretty much anyone's definition one of the most successful women of her era, but this movie's anti-feminist leanings toward the end would have indicted her in real life (by way of Katie) for choosing her flourishing career over a man who wanted her to be his maid & cook, and celebrate only his victories.  It's really disappointing that this is how this movie ended up, rather than emulating a film like All About Eve a few years later where the main character got to be both successful and have a love life, but the writers insist that we laud Katie for wanting marriage more than a career, and attempt to kill off Helen for doing the same.

That being said, the acting is swell here.  I already lauded George, but Leslie is good in her naive (but not fully naive) role as Katie, always willing to look the other way even when she knows what her sister is doing (still-one wonders what someone like Judy Garland, a more singular talent, would have done with this role).  Best of the bunch, though, is Lupino.  I'm still deciding who my favorite stars are of the women we've profiled in this series, but I can say without much hesitation that Lupino is the best actor of the bunch.  She knows what she's got with a complicated, complete role like Helen, and she nails it, finding nuance, verve, and just enough melodrama to elevate the movie in ways the script can't seem to understand.  This is the best performance we've seen from her, and while I haven't completed the 1943 Oscar lineup list, Lupino would have been a really worthy inclusion as a nominee.  It's hard not to think of what that would have meant for her career (considering how much Warner Brothers was dominating that particular ceremony with Casablanca and Watch on the Rhine, she might even have won!).  Instead, her acting career would begin to wane soon after this, and her cinematic career would take a decidedly different turn...but we'll get into that next week.