Sylvester Stallone – Italian American Actor

by Vince Chiarelli | Jul 6, 2021 | Film, Television

Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone was born in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City on July 6, 1946, the elder son of Francesco “Frank” Stallone Sr., a hairdresser and beautician, and Jacqueline “Jackie” Stallone (née Labofish; 1921–2020), an astrologer, dancer, and promoter of women’s wrestling. His Italian father was born in Gioia del Colle, Italy and moved to the U.S. in the 1930s while his American mother is of French (from Brittany) and Eastern European descent. His younger brother is actor and musician Frank Stallone.

Complications suffered by Stallone’s mother during labor forced her obstetricians to use two pairs of forceps during his birth; misuse of these forceps accidentally severed a nerve and caused paralysis in parts of Stallone’s face. As a result, the lower left side of his face is paralyzed (including parts of his lip, tongue, and chin), an accident which gave him his signature snarling look and slurred speech. His father moved the family to Washington, D.C. in the early 1950s to open a beauty school. In 1954, his mother opened a women’s gym called Barbella’s. Stallone attended Notre Dame Academy and Lincoln High School in Philadelphia, as well as Charlotte Hall Military Academy, prior to attending Miami Dade College.He spent two years, from September 1965 to June 1967, at the American College of Switzerland and returned to the United States to study as a drama major at the University of Miami, from 1967 to 1969. Until 1969, he appeared on the stage under the name Mike Stallone; in 1970, he started using the stage name Sylvester E. Stallone.

While attending the University of Miami, Stallone had a role in the drama That Nice Boy (aka The Square Root), filmed in 1968. Stallone had his first starring role in the softcore pornography feature film The Party at Kitty and Stud’s (1970). He was paid US$200 for two days’ work. Stallone later explained that he had done the film out of desperation after being evicted from his apartment and finding himself homeless for several days. He has also said that he slept three weeks in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City prior to seeing a casting notice for the film. In the actor’s words, “it was either do that movie or rob someone, because I was at the end – the very end – of my rope”. The film was released several years later as Italian Stallion, in order to cash in on Stallone’s newfound fame (the new title was taken from Stallone’s nickname since Rocky). Stallone also starred in the erotic off-Broadway stage play Score which ran for 23 performances at the Martinique Theatre from October 28 to November 15, 1971, and was later made into the 1974 film Score by Radley Metzger.

After moving to New York City, Stallone shared an apartment with his girlfriend, Sasha Czack, who supporting them by working as a waitress and she was an aspiring actress herself. Stallone took odd jobs around this time, including being a cleaner at a zoo, and a movie theater usher; he was fired from the latter for scalping tickets. He furthered his writing skills by frequenting a local library, and became interested in the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

In 1972, Stallone was on the verge of giving up on having an acting career; in what he later described as a low point, he tried and failed to get a job as an extra in The Godfather. Instead, he was relegated to a background role in another Hollywood hit, What’s Up, Doc?, starring Barbra Streisand. Stallone is hardly visible in his two appearances.

Stallone happened to be acting in a play that a friend invited him to partake in, and an agent in attendance thought that Stallone fit the role of Stanley, a main character in The Lords of Flatbush, which had a start-stop schedule from 1972 to 1974 over budget issues. Stallone, around mid-1973, achieved his first proper starring role, in the independent film No Place to Hide, playing a man who is associated with a New York-based urban terrorist movement, with a jewellery-seller as his love interest. The film was re-cut and retitled Rebel years later, this second version featuring Stallone as its star. In 1990, this film was re-edited with outtakes from the original movie and newly shot matching footage, then redubbed – in the style of Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily? – into a parody of itself titled A Man Called… Rainbo.

Stallone’s other first few film roles were minor, and included brief uncredited appearances in MASH (1970), as a soldier sitting at a table; Pigeons (1970), as a party guest; Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971), as a subway thug; in the psychological thriller Klute (1971), as an extra dancing in a club; and in the Jack Lemmon film The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), as a youth. In the latter film, Jack Lemmon’s character chases, tackles, and mugs Stallone, thinking that Stallone’s character is a pickpocket. He had his second starring role in 1974, in The Lords of Flatbush.[15] In 1975, he played supporting roles in Farewell, My Lovely; Capone; and Death Race 2000. He made guest appearances on the TV series Police Story and Kojak. He is also supposedly in Mandingo. It is often said that his scene was deleted.

Stallone gained worldwide fame with his starring role in the smash hit Rocky (1976), a sports drama about a struggling boxer, Rocky Balboa, taking on heavyweight champion Apollo Creed.[15] On March 24, 1975, Stallone saw the Muhammad Ali–Chuck Wepner fight. That night Stallone went home, and after three days and 20 straight hours, he had written the script, but Stallone subsequently denied that Wepner provided any inspiration for it. Other possible inspirations for the film may have included Rocky Graziano’s autobiography Somebody Up There Likes Me, and the movie of the same name. Wepner filed a lawsuit which was eventually settled with Stallone for an undisclosed amount. Stallone attempted to sell the script to multiple studios, with the intention of playing the lead role himself. Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff became interested and offered Stallone US$350,000 for the rights, but had their own casting ideas for the lead role, including Robert Redford and Burt Reynolds. Stallone refused to sell unless he played the lead character and eventually, after a substantial budget cut to compromise, it was agreed he could be the star. Upon its release critic Roger Ebert stated that Stallone could become the next Marlon Brando.

In 1977, at the 49th Academy Awards, Rocky was nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay nominations for Stallone. The film went on to win the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Directing, and Best Film Editing.

Stallone made his directorial debut and starred in the 1978 film Paradise Alley, a family drama in which he played one of three brothers who get involved in professional wrestling. That same year, he starred in Norman Jewison’s F.I.S.T., a social drama in which he plays a warehouse worker, very loosely modelled on James Hoffa, who becomes involved in labor union leadership.

In 1979, he wrote, directed and starred in Rocky II (replacing John G. Avildsen, who won an Academy Award for directing the first film). The sequel became a major success, grossing US$200 million.

In 1981, he starred alongside Michael Caine and soccer star Pelé in Escape to Victory, a sports drama in which he plays a prisoner of war involved in a Nazi propaganda soccer game. That same year, he starred in the thriller Nighthawks, in which he plays a New York city cop who plays a cat-and-mouse game with a foreign terrorist, played by Rutger Hauer.

In 1982, Stallone starred as Vietnam veteran John Rambo, a former Green Beret, in the action film First Blood, which was both a critical and box office success. Critics praised Stallone’s performance, saying he made Rambo seem human, as opposed to the way he is portrayed in the book of the same name. It launched the Rambo franchise. That year Rocky III was released in which Stallone wrote, directed, and starred. The third sequel became a box office success. In preparation for these roles, Stallone embarked upon a vigorous training regimen, which often meant six days a week in the gym and further sit-ups in the evenings. Stallone claims to have reduced his body fat percentage to his all-time low of 2.8% for Rocky III.

In 1983, he directed Staying Alive, the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta. This was the only film Stallone directed that he did not star in. Staying Alive was universally panned by film critics. Despite being a critical failure, Staying Alive was a commercial success. The film opened with the biggest weekend for a musical film ever (at the time) with a gross of $12,146,143 from 1,660 screens. Overall, the film grossed nearly $65 million in the US box office against its $22 million budget. Worldwide it grossed $127 million. Though the US box office intake was significantly less than the $139.5 million earned by Saturday Night Fever, the film nevertheless ranked in the top ten most financially successful films of 1983.

Stallone during the 1980s was one of the biggest action film stars in the world. He occasionally attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, roles in different genres. In 1984, he co-wrote and starred alongside Dolly Parton in the comedy film Rhinestone, where he played a wannabe country music singer. For the Rhinestone soundtrack, he performed a song. Stallone turned down the lead male role in Romancing the Stone in order to make Rhinestone instead, a decision he later regretted.

In 1985, Stallone continued his success with the Rocky and Rambo franchises with Rocky IV and Rambo: First Blood Part II. Stallone has portrayed these two characters in a total of 11 films. Stallone met former Mr. Olympia Franco Columbu to develop his character’s appearance for the films Rocky IV, just as if he were preparing for the Mr. Olympia competition. That meant two workouts a day, six days a week. Both films were major financial successes.

It was around 1985 that Stallone was signed to a remake of the 1939 James Cagney classic Angels With Dirty Faces. The film would form part of his multi-picture deal with Cannon Films and was to co-star Christopher Reeve and be directed by Menahem Golan. The re-making of such a beloved classic was met with disapproval by Variety and horror by top critic Roger Ebert. Cannon opted to make the action film Cobra which was released in 1986 and became a box office success. It leads up to his production company White Eagle Enterprises.

In 1987, he starred in the family drama Over the Top as a struggling trucker who tries to make amends with his estranged son and enters an arm wrestling competition. This was poorly received by critics and was a box office failure. In 1989, he co-starred alongside Kurt Russell in the buddy cop action film Tango & Cash, which did solid business domestically and overseas, grossing US$57 million in foreign markets and over US$120 million worldwide.

Stallone became a boxing promoter in the 1980s. His boxing promoting company, Tiger Eye Productions, signed world champion boxers Sean O’Grady and Aaron Pryor.

Stallone began the 1990s starring in the fifth installment of the Rocky franchise, Rocky V. This film brought back the first film’s director, John G. Avildsen, and was intended to be the final installment in the series. It was considered a box office disappointment and received negative reviews.

Stallone next appeared in John Landis’ period comedy Oscar which was both a critical and box office failure. In 1992, he appeared in Roger Spottiswoode’s action comedy Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot which was also both a critical and box office disaster. Stallone signed onto the film based on rumors that Arnold Schwarzenegger was interested in the lead. Schwarzenegger said that, knowing the script was “really bad”, he had publicly faked interest in starring for producers to lure Stallone.

In 1993, he made a comeback with Renny Harlin’s action thriller Cliffhanger. which was a success in the US, grossing US$84 million, and worldwide, grossing US$171 million. Later that year, he starred in the futuristic action film Demolition Man directed by Marco Brambilla, co-starring Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 60% based on 42 reviews, with an average rating of 5.43/10. The site’s consensus reads: “A better-than-average sci-fi shoot-em-up with a satirical undercurrent, Demolition Man is bolstered by strong performances by Stallone, Snipes, and Bullock.” The film debuted at No. 1 at the box office. Demolition Man grossed $58,055,768 by the end of its box office run in North America and $159,055,768 worldwide.

His string of hits continued with 1994’s The Specialist co-starring Sharon Stone and directed by Luis Llosa, which opened in the U.S. on October 7. While the critical reception was overwhelmingly negative, the film was a commercial success. In its opening weekend it made $14,317,765 and ended up making back its budget with $57,362,582 at the domestic box office while making another $113,000,000 overseas, giving it a worldwide gross of $170,362,582.

In 1998, he did voice-over work for the computer-animated film Antz, which was a big hit domestically.

In 2000, Stallone starred in the thriller Get Carter, a remake of the 1971 British film of the same name, but the film was poorly received by both critics and audiences. Stallone’s career declined considerably after his subsequent films Driven (2001), Avenging Angelo (2002) and D-Tox were also critical and commercial failures.

In 2003, he played a villainous role in the third installment of the Spy Kids series: Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, which was a huge box office success (almost US$200 million worldwide). Stallone also had a cameo appearance in the 2003 French film Taxi 3 as a passenger. Also that year, Stallone started to regain prominence for his supporting role in the neo-noir crime drama Shade which was only released in a limited fashion but was praised by critics. He was also attached to star and direct a film tentatively titled Rampart Scandal, which was to be about the murder of rappers Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. and the surrounding Los Angeles Police Department corruption scandal. It was later titled Notorious but was shelved.

16 years after filming Rocky V, Stallone reprised his role as Rocky Balboa in 2006

After a three-year hiatus from films, Stallone had a comeback in 2006 with the sixth installment of his successful Rocky series, Rocky Balboa, which was a critical and commercial hit. After the critical and box office failure of the previous installment Rocky V, Stallone had decided to write, direct and star in a sixth installment which would be a more appropriate climax to the series. The total domestic box office came to US$70.3 million (and US$155.7 million worldwide). The budget of the movie was only US$24 million. His performance in Rocky Balboa has been praised and garnered mostly positive reviews. That year, the development Death Wish remake began, when Stallone announced that he would be directing and starring in a remake of the 1974 film. Stallone said, “Instead of the Charles Bronson character being an architect, my version would have him as a very good cop who had incredible success without ever using his gun. So when the attack on his family happens, he’s really thrown into a moral dilemma in proceeding to carry out his revenge.” He later told the publication that he was no longer involved. In a 2009 interview with MTV, though, Stallone stated that he was again considering the project. However the role went to Bruce Willis with Eli Roth as director.

In 2008, Stallone’s fourth installment of his other successful movie franchise was titled simply Rambo (John Rambo in some countries where the first movie was titled Rambo). The film opened in 2,751 theaters on January 25, 2008, grossing US$6,490,000 on its opening day and US$18,200,000 over its opening weekend. Its box office was US$113,244,290 worldwide with a budget of US$50 million.

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Alessandro Nivola – Italian American Actor

by Vince Chiarelli | Jun 28, 2021 | Film, Television

Nivola was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother, Virginia (née Davis), is an artist, and his father, Pietro Salvatore Nivola (1944–2017), was a professor of political science and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. Nivola’s paternal grandfather was the Italian sculptor Costantino Nivola, and his paternal grandmother, Ruth Guggenheim, was a Jewish refugee from Germany. He was born first of two boys; his brother, Adrian Nivola, a painter, is five years younger. Nivola attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale University. His family also lived in Burlington, Vermont, where he attended Mater Christi School, a ministry of the Sisters of Mercy.

Nivola graduated from Yale University with a BA in English in 1994 and a year later made his Broadway debut opposite Helen Mirren in A Month in the Country earning a Drama Desk Award nomination. Shortly after that came his breakthrough performance in John Woo’s feature film Face/Off (1997) playing Nicolas Cage’s brother Pollux Troy. In the ensuing years he has starred in many films including Mansfield Park (1999), Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000), Jurassic Park 3 (2001), Laurel Canyon (2002 – Independent Spirit Award nomination), Junebug (2005), Goal! 1 & 2 (2005, 2007), Coco Before Chanel (2009), Ginger & Rosa (2012), American Hustle (2013 – Screen Actors Guild Award, Critics Choice Award), A Most Violent Year (2014), Selma (2014 – Critics Choice Award nomination), The Neon Demon (2016), One Percent More Humid (Best Actor Award 2017 Tribeca Film Festival), You Were Never Really Here (2017), Disobedience (2017 – British Independent Film Award, London Critics Circle Film Award nomination), The Art of Self Defense (2019), and The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019).

He will next be seen as Dickie Moltisanti, the lead role in The Many Saints of Newark, David Chase’s feature film prequel to his heralded television series The Sopranos.

Nivola has also worked frequently in television, starring opposite Robert De Niro in Barry Levinson’s Madoff family biopic The Wizard of Lies (2017), as well as the TNT miniseries The Company (2007), the UK Channel 4 series Chimerica (2019), and the three part BBC miniseries Black Narcissus, broadcast 27, 28, and 29 December 2020.

On stage, in addition to A Month in the Country, he starred on Broadway in 2013 in The Winslow Boy (Outer Critics Circle Award nomination), and in 2014 in The Elephant Man opposite Bradley Cooper (Tony Award nomination), and off-Broadway in the Ethan Hawke-directed Sam Shepard play A Lie of the Mind (2010) with Laurie Metcalf. He also starred opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the 1995 Williamstown Theater Festival production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

In 2013 Nivola established King Bee Productions with his wife Emily Mortimer. The company produced two seasons of the half hour comedy Doll & Em for HBO and BSkyB. He also produced To Dust starring Matthew Broderick which won the Audience Award at the 2018 TriBeCa Film Festival and was nominated for a 2020 Independent Spirit Award.

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Giancarlo Esposito – Italian American Actor

by Vince Chiarelli | Apr 26, 2021 | Film, Television

Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito was born in Copenhagen, the son of Giovanni “John” C. Esposito, an Italian stagehand and carpenter from Naples, and Elizabeth “Leesa” Foster, an African-American opera and nightclub singer from Alabama.

When Esposito was six, his family moved from Copenhagen to Manhattan. He attended Elizabeth Seton College in New York and earned a two-year degree in radio and television communications.

Esposito made his Broadway debut in 1968, playing an enslaved child opposite Shirley Jones in the short-lived musical Maggie Flynn (1968), set during the New York Draft Riots of 1863. He was also a member of the youthful cast of the Stephen Sondheim-Harold Prince collaboration Merrily We Roll Along, which closed with 16 performances and 56 previews in 1981.

During the 1980s, Esposito appeared in films such as Maximum Overdrive, King of New York, and Trading Places. He also performed in TV shows such as Miami Vice and Spenser: For Hire. He played J. C. Pierce, a cadet in the 1981 movie Taps.

In 1988 he landed his breakout role as the leader (“Dean Big Brother Almighty”) of the black fraternity “Gamma Phi Gamma” in director Spike Lee’s film School Daze, exploring color relations at black colleges. Over the next four years, Esposito and Lee collaborated on three other movies: Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, and Malcolm X. During the 1990s Esposito appeared in the acclaimed indie films Night on Earth, Fresh and Smoke, as well as its sequel Blue in the Face. He also appeared in the mainstream films Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man with Mickey Rourke, Reckless with Mia Farrow, and Waiting to Exhale starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett. In 1995 Esposito was featured in a music video “California” by French superstar Mylene Farmer, directed by Abel Ferrara.

Esposito played FBI agent Mike Giardello on the TV crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street. That role drew from both his African American and Italian ancestry. He played this character during the show’s seventh and final season, and reprised the role for its 2000 made-for-TV movie. Mike’s estranged father, shift lieutenant Al Giardello, is portrayed as subject to racism, something Esposito’s character practiced in School Daze. Another multiracial role was as Sergeant Paul Gigante in the television comedy, Bakersfield P.D.

In 1997 Esposito played the film roles of Darryl in Trouble on the Corner and Charlie Dunt in Nothing to Lose. Other TV credits include NYPD Blue, Law & Order, The Practice, New York Undercover, and Fallen Angels: Fearless.

Esposito has portrayed drug dealers (Fresh, Breaking Bad, King of New York, Better Call Saul), policemen (The Usual Suspects, Derailed), political radicals (Bob Roberts, Do the Right Thing), and a demonic version of the Greek God of Sleep Hypnos from another dimension (Monkeybone). In 2001, he played Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr. in Ali, and Miguel Algarín, friend and collaborator of Nuyorican poet Miguel Piñero, in Piñero.

In 2002 Esposito was cast as a legal eagle in the David E. Kelley television drama Girls Club. Although the series only lasted one season, and did not garner generally positive reviews, it represented a personal turning point for Esposito, who related to The Washington Post, “I started to play bosses. And I realized, ‘Oh, okay, this is an opportunity.’ It was really a great opening for me to show who I really was. And it’s kept going like that.”

In 2005 Esposito played an unsympathetic detective named Esposito in the film Hate Crime, which centers upon homophobia as a theme.

In 2006 Esposito starred in Last Holiday as Senator Dillings, alongside Queen Latifah and Timothy Hutton. Esposito played Robert Fuentes, a Miami businessman with shady connections, on the UPN television series South Beach. He appeared in New Amsterdam and CSI: Miami. In Feel the Noise (2007), he played ex-musician Roberto, the Puerto Rican father of Omarion Grandberry’s character, aspiring rap star “Rob”.

From 2009 to 2011, Esposito appeared in seasons 2 through 4 of the AMC drama Breaking Bad, as Gus Fring, the head of a New Mexico-based methamphetamine drug ring. In the fourth season, he was the show’s primary antagonist, and won critical acclaim for this role. He won the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama award at the 2012 Critics’ Choice Television Awards and was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series award at the 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards, but lost to co-star Aaron Paul.

Esposito appeared in the first season of the ABC program Once Upon a Time, which debuted in October 2011. He portrayed the split role of Sidney, a reporter for The Daily Mirror in the town of Storybrooke, Maine, who is the Magic Mirror, possessed by The Evil Queen in a parallel fairy tale world.

Esposito appeared in Revolution as Major Tom Neville, a central character who kills Ben Matheson in the pilot. He escorts a captured Danny to the capital Philadelphia of the Monroe Republic.

He has joined the DC Universe Animated Original Movies series. He played Ra’s al Ghul in Son of Batman and Black Spider in Batman: Assault on Arkham. He had a recurring role in the first season of The Get Down on Netflix. In 2017, Esposito reprised his role as Gus Fring in the Breaking Bad prequel series, Better Call Saul. In 2019, he appeared in the first season finale of The Boys as Stan Edgar, and reprises the role in the second season.

In 2016, Esposito voiced Akela in the film The Jungle Book, which was directed by Jon Favreau. Esposito and Favreau would work together once again in the Disney+ series The Mandalorian in which Esposito appears in a starring role, while Favreau acts as an executive producer for the series and as its writer. He plays the role of New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in the 2019 Epix series Godfather of Harlem.

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Ida Lupino – Italian American Actress

by Vince Chiarelli | Apr 22, 2021 | Film, Television

Ida Lupino was born in Herne Hill, London, to actress Connie O’Shea (also known as Connie Emerald) and music hall comedian Stanley Lupino, a member of the theatrical Lupino family, which included Lupino Lane, a song-and-dance man. Her father, a top name in musical comedy in the UK and a member of a centuries-old theatrical dynasty dating back to Renaissance Italy, encouraged her to perform at an early age. He built a backyard theatre for Lupino and her sister Rita (1920–2016), who also became an actress and dancer. Lupino wrote her first play at age seven and toured with a travelling theatre company as a child. By the age of ten, Lupino had memorised the leading female roles in each of Shakespeare’s plays. After her intense childhood training for stage plays, Ida’s uncle Lupino Lane assisted her in moving towards film acting by getting her work as a background actress at British International Studios.

She wanted to be a writer, but in order to please her father, Lupino enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She excelled in a number of “bad girl” film roles, often playing prostitutes. Lupino did not enjoy being an actress and felt uncomfortable with many of the early roles she was given. She felt that she was pushed into the profession due to her family history.

Lupino worked as both a stage and screen actress. She first took to the stage in 1934 as the lead in The Pursuit of Happiness at the Paramount Studio Theatre. Lupino made her first film appearance in The Love Race (1931) and the following year, aged 14, she worked under director Allan Dwan in Her First Affaire, in a role for which her mother had previously tested. She played leading roles in five British films in 1933 at Warner Bros.’ Teddington studios and for Julius Hagen at Twickenham, including The Ghost Camera with John Mills and I Lived with You with Ivor Novello.

Dubbed “the English Jean Harlow”, she was discovered by Paramount in the 1933 film Money for Speed, playing a good girl/bad girl dual role. Lupino claimed the talent scouts saw her play only the sweet girl in the film and not the part of the prostitute, so she was asked to try out for the lead role in Alice in Wonderland (1933). When she arrived in Hollywood, the Paramount producers did not know what to make of their sultry potential leading lady, but she did get a five-year contract.[3]

Lupino starred in over a dozen films in the mid-1930s, working with Columbia in a two-film deal, one of which, The Light That Failed (1939), was a role she acquired after running into the director’s office unannounced, demanding an audition.[11] After this breakthrough performance as a spiteful cockney model who torments Ronald Colman, she began to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress. As a result, her parts improved during the 1940s, and she jokingly referred to herself as “the poor man’s Bette Davis”, taking the roles that Davis refused.

Mark Hellinger, associate producer at Warner Bros., was impressed by Lupino’s performance in The Light That Failed, and hired her for the femme-fatale role in the Raoul Walsh-directed They Drive by Night (1940), opposite stars George Raft, Ann Sheridan and Humphrey Bogart. The film did well and the critical consensus was that Lupino stole the movie, particularly in her unhinged courtroom scene. Warner Bros. offered her a contract which she negotiated to include some freelance rights. She worked with Walsh and Bogart again in High Sierra (1941), where she impressed critic Bosley Crowther in her role as an “adoring moll”.

Her performance in The Hard Way (1943) won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. She starred in Pillow to Post (1945), which was her only comedic leading role. After the drama Deep Valley (1947) finished shooting, neither Warner Bros. nor Lupino moved to renew her contract and she left the studio in 1947. Although in demand throughout the 1940s, she arguably never became a major star although she often had top billing in her pictures, above actors such as Humphrey Bogart, and was repeatedly critically lauded for her realistic, direct acting style.

She often incurred the ire of studio boss Jack Warner by objecting to her casting, refusing poorly written roles that she felt were beneath her dignity as an actress, and making script revisions deemed unacceptable by the studio. As a result, she spent a great deal of her time at Warner Bros. suspended. In 1942, she rejected an offer to star with Ronald Reagan in Kings Row, and was immediately put on suspension at the studio. Eventually, a tentative rapprochement was brokered, but her relationship with the studio remained strained. In 1947, Lupino left Warner Brothers and appeared for 20th Century Fox as a nightclub singer in the film noir Road House, performing her musical numbers in the film. She starred in On Dangerous Ground in 1951, and may have taken on some of the directing tasks of the film while director Nicholas Ray was ill.

While on suspension, Lupino had ample time to observe filming and editing processes, and she became interested in directing. She described how bored she was on set while “someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work”.

She and her husband Collier Young formed an independent company, The Filmakers, to produce, direct, and write low-budget, issue-oriented films. Her first directing job came unexpectedly in 1949 when director Elmer Clifton suffered a mild heart attack and was unable to finish Not Wanted, a film Lupino co-produced and co-wrote. Lupino stepped in to finish the film without taking directorial credit out of respect for Clifton. Although the film’s subject of out-of-wedlock pregnancy was controversial, it received a vast amount of publicity, and she was invited to discuss the film with Eleanor Roosevelt on a national radio program.

Never Fear (1949), a film about polio (which she had personally experienced replete with paralysis at age 16), was her first director’s credit. After producing four more films about social issues, including Outrage (1950), a film about rape (while this word is never used in the movie), Lupino directed her first hard-paced, all-male-cast film, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), making her the first woman to direct a film noir. The Filmakers went on to produce 12 feature films, six of which Lupino directed or co-directed, five of which she wrote or co-wrote, three of which she acted in, and one of which she co-produced.

Lupino once called herself a “bulldozer” to secure financing for her production company, but she referred to herself as “mother” while on set. On set, the back of her director’s chair was labeled “Mother of Us All”. Her studio emphasized her femininity, often at the urging of Lupino herself. She credited her refusal to renew her contract with Warner Bros. under the pretenses of domesticity, claiming “I had decided that nothing lay ahead of me but the life of the neurotic star with no family and no home.” She made a point to seem nonthreatening in a male-dominated environment, stating, “That’s where being a man makes a great deal of difference. I don’t suppose the men particularly care about leaving their wives and children. During the vacation period, the wife can always fly over and be with him. It’s difficult for a wife to say to her husband, come sit on the set and watch.”

Although directing became Lupino’s passion, the drive for money kept her on camera, so she could acquire the funds to make her own productions. She became a wily low-budget filmmaker, reusing sets from other studio productions and talking her physician into appearing as a doctor in the delivery scene of Not Wanted. She used what is now called product placement, placing Coke, Cadillac, and other brands in her films, such as The Bigamist. She shot in public places to avoid set-rental costs and planned scenes in pre-production to avoid technical mistakes and retakes.[8] She joked that if she had been the “poor man’s Bette Davis” as an actress, she had now become the “poor man’s Don Siegel” as a director.

The Filmakers production company closed shop in 1955, and Lupino turned almost immediately to television, directing episodes of more than thirty US TV series from 1956 through 1968. She also helmed a feature film in 1965 for the Catholic schoolgirl comedy The Trouble With Angels, starring Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell; this was Lupino’s last theatrical film as a director. She continued acting as well, going on to a successful television career throughout the 1960s and ’70s.

Lupino’s career as a director continued through 1968. Her directing efforts during these years were almost exclusively for television productions such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, The Twilight Zone, Have Gun – Will Travel, Honey West, The Donna Reed Show, Gilligan’s Island, 77 Sunset Strip, The Rifleman, The Virginian, Sam Benedict, The Untouchables, Hong Kong, The Fugitive, and Bewitched.

After the demise of The Filmakers, Lupino continued working as an actress until the end of the 1970s, mainly in television. Lupino appeared in 19 episodes of Four Star Playhouse from 1952 to 1956, an endeavor involving partners Charles Boyer, Dick Powell and David Niven. From January 1957 to September 1958, Lupino starred with her then-husband Howard Duff in the sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve, in which the duo played husband-and-wife film stars named Howard Adams and Eve Drake, living in Beverly Hills, California. Duff and Lupino also co-starred as themselves in 1959 in one of the 13 one-hour installments of The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour and an episode of The Dinah Shore Chevy Show in 1960. Lupino guest-starred in numerous television shows, including The Ford Television Theatre (1954), Bonanza (1959), Burke’s Law (1963–64), The Virginian (1963–65), Batman (1968), The Mod Squad (1969), Family Affair (1969–70), The Wild, Wild West (1969), Nanny and the Professor (1971), Columbo: Short Fuse (1972), Columbo: Swan Song (1974) in which she plays Johnny Cash’s character’s zealous wife, Barnaby Jones (1974), The Streets of San Francisco, Ellery Queen (1975), Police Woman (1975), and Charlie’s Angels (1977). Her final acting appearance was in the 1979 film My Boys Are Good Boys.

Lupino has two distinctions with The Twilight Zone series, as the only woman to have directed an episode (“The Masks”) and the only person to have worked as both actor for one episode (“The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine”), and director for another.

Lupino’s Filmakers movies deal with unconventional and controversial subject matter that studio producers would not touch, including out-of-wedlock pregnancy, bigamy, and rape. She described her independent work as “films that had social significance and yet were entertainment … based on true stories, things the public could understand because they had happened or been of news value.” She focused on women’s issues for many of her films and she liked strong characters, “[Not] women who have masculine qualities about them, but [a role] that has intestinal fortitude, some guts to it.”

In the film The Bigamist, the two women characters represent the career woman and the homemaker. The title character is married to a woman (Joan Fontaine) who, unable to have children, has devoted her energy to her career. While on one of many business trips, he meets a waitress (Lupino) with whom he has a child, and then marries her. Marsha Orgeron, in her book Hollywood Ambitions, describes these characters as “struggling to figure out their place in environments that mirror the social constraints that Lupino faced”. However, Donati, in his biography of Lupino, said “The solutions to the character’s problems within the films were often conventional, even conservative, more reinforcing the 1950s’ ideology than undercutting it.”

Ahead of her time within the studio system, Lupino was intent on creating films that were rooted in reality. On Never Fear, Lupino said, “People are tired of having the wool pulled over their eyes. They pay out good money for their theatre tickets and they want something in return. They want realism. And you can’t be realistic with the same glamorous mugs on the screen all the time.”

Lupino’s films are critical of many traditional social institutions, which reflect her contempt for the patriarchal structure that existed in Hollywood. Lupino rejected the commodification of female stars and as an actress, she resisted becoming an object of desire. She said in 1949, “Hollywood careers are perishable commodities”, and sought to avoid such a fate for herself.

Ida Lupino was diagnosed with polio in 1934. The New York Times reported that the outbreak of polio within the Hollywood community was due to contaminated swimming pools. The disease severely affected her ability to work, and her contract with Paramount fell apart shortly after her diagnosis. Lupino recovered and eventually directed, produced, and wrote many films, including a film loosely based upon her travails with polio titled Never Fear in 1949, the first film that she was credited for directing (she had earlier stepped in for an ill director on Not Wanted and refused directorial credit out of respect for her colleague). Her experience with the disease gave Lupino the courage to focus on her intellectual abilities over simply her physical appearance. In an interview with Hollywood, Lupino said, “I realized that my life and my courage and my hopes did not lie in my body. If that body was paralyzed, my brain could still work industriously…If I weren’t able to act, I would be able to write. Even if I weren’t able to use a pencil or typewriter, I could dictate.” Film magazines from the 1930s and 1940s, such as The Hollywood Reporter and Motion Picture Daily, frequently published updates on her condition. Lupino worked for various non-profit organizations to help raise funds for polio research.

Lupino’s interests outside the entertainment industry included writing short stories and children’s books, and composing music. Her composition “Aladdin’s Suite” was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1937. She composed this piece while on bedrest due to polio in 1935.

She became an American citizen in June 1948.

Lupino was married and divorced three times. She married actor Louis Hayward in November 1938. They separated in May 1944 and divorced in May 1945.

Her second marriage was to producer Collier Young on 5 August 1948. They divorced in 1951. When Lupino filed for divorce in September that year, she was already pregnant from an affair with future husband Howard Duff. The child was born seven months after she filed for divorce from Young.

Lupino’s third and final marriage was to actor Howard Duff, whom she married on 21 October 1951. Six months later, the couple had a daughter, Bridget, on 23 April 1952. Lupino and Duff divorced in 1983.

Lupino died from a stroke while undergoing treatment for colon cancer in Los Angeles on 3 August 1995, at the age of 77.Her memoirs, Ida Lupino: Beyond the Camera, were edited after her death and published by Mary Ann Anderson.

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Kate Walsh – Italian American Actress

by Vince Chiarelli | Apr 5, 2021 | Film, Television

Kate Walsh was born in San Jose, California. Her mother, Angela Bocchetto is of Italian descent, with roots from Potenza, in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata. 

Walsh graduated from Catalina Magnet High School and studied acting at the University of Arizona before dropping out. Walsh moved to New York City and joined a comedy troupe, Burn Manhattan, supporting herself by waitressing.

Before modeling, Walsh worked at Burger King and Dairy Queen. She began as a model in Japan in the 1980s where she also taught English. Later, she moved to Chicago and worked with the Piven Theatre Workshop. She performed on National Public Radio in the production of the radio play Born Guilty.

After playing Cathy Buxton in the Homicide: Life on the Street episode “Stakeout” in 1996 and Navy Lieutenant Kirstin Blair in the Law & Order episode “Navy Blues”, Walsh’s first major television appearance was in 1997, when she appeared on The Drew Carey Show as Drew Carey’s love interest, Nicki Fifer. She wore a fatsuit in some episodes of the show, as the Nicki character was a formerly obese woman who lost weight and slowly started to gain it back.

Walsh went on to portray Carol Nelson in HBO’s The Mind of the Married Man television series, and played Norm Macdonald’s romantic interest in the sitcom The Norm Show. She made a guest appearance on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as Mimosa, a transgender woman. She sometimes appeared in sketches on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

Walsh had a recurring role on Karen Sisco as Detective Marley Novak in 2003 and 2004. In 2005, she was cast in her breakout role in the ABC series Grey’s Anatomy, as Dr. Addison Montgomery, the estranged spouse of Derek Shepherd (“Dr. McDreamy”, played by Patrick Dempsey).

In February 2007, Walsh’s Grey’s Anatomy character received a spin-off of Grey’s Anatomy that began airing in September 2007. Taye Diggs, Tim Daly, Amy Brenneman, Chris Lowell, and Audra McDonald were cast in the spin-off, Private Practice. Walsh would return for six episodes across the fourth through eighth seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, including the musical episode “Song Beneath the Song”.

In 2013, Walsh appeared in Full Circle, a 10-episode ensemble drama series created by Neil LaBute and airing on DirecTV’s Audience Network channel.

In 2014, Walsh had a supporting role in the first season of FX’s television series Fargo. She had a guest starring role in Hulu’s original series The Hotwives of Orlando and later starred in the NBC series Bad Judge, which aired for one season. As of 2017, Walsh stars in the Netflix drama series 13 Reasons Why, as the mother of a child who commits suicide. Her performance was met with critical acclaim, having been dubbed the “best work” of her career.

In 2019 and 2020, Walsh had a significant recurring role as “the Handler” in the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy. Her most recent role has been on Netflix Original, Emily in Paris, where she plays Emily’s boss who gets pregnant and can no longer move to Paris for their marketing job, so she sends Emily instead.

In 1995, Walsh starred in her first film. Normal Life, a crime drama, was her film debut; she played the sister of a bank robber played by Luke Perry. In Peppermills, she portrayed a kleptomaniac. Walsh appeared in the cult film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part II. She gained attention in a major Hollywood production as Will Ferrell’s character’s wife in the family comedy, Kicking & Screaming. Walsh has appeared in several other films with Ferrell, including Bewitched and in Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie, an “alternate film” to Anchorman.

Walsh founded Boyfriend LLC, a beauty and lifestyle company in 2010. The company launched its first product in November 2010: a perfume called “Boyfriend”. HSN, a leading multichannel retailer, and Walsh partnered to launch the “Boyfriend” fragrance with live appearances by the actress/entrepreneur on HSN, November 11 and 12. Walsh’s fragrance train case, including Boyfriend eau de perfume, pulse point oil and votive candles, sold out on day one exceeding sales expectations.

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