The two pictures to the left are varnished to the side of a bookcase, along with a lot of early chalk drawings I did years ago. For a long time, any woman I drew slightly resembled Ida Lupino. I think it was because the length of her philtrum and the way the width of it met the cupid's bow of her upper lip were etched in my memory of how beautiful I thought she was and how involved I was with her relationship to Howard Duff. I was in elementary school when I became aware of Ida and Howard. I was at an age when I watched TV Divorce Court reenactments and thought if the judge would just have them kiss, certainly they would get back together. Howard and Ida separated and got back together a lot and as a highly emotional girl, it tore me up. I always thought she was more than "a poor man's Betty Davis." She was on a par with Lauren Bacall.
She was born on this day, as Kirk mentions in his post, in 1918. She was estranged from her daughter, Bridgette, but due to her advancing colon cancer, got to try to reconcile about twenty years of problems over the course of two weeks. For clips of her movies and more information, see Kirk's post.
