Film Hero No.2 - Ida Lupino

Selected Filmography

Not Wanted (1949)
High Sierra (1941)
The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
The Bigamist (1953)



Ida Lupino was one of those rare, exotic breeds from the early days of Hollywood cinema, a female film director. Thought to be the exclusive profession of men, she was a pioneer for women in this field, directing six feature films before moving onto television. She acted alongside such notables as Bing Crosby and Humphrey Bogart before setting up a production company in 1949, making films that tackled difficult issues, such as rape and bigamy.  A noir icon in her own right (see They Drive By Night, High Sierra and Out Of The Fog, she went on to be the first woman to direct a film noir (The Hitch-Hiker)

Film Hero No.1 - Katherine Hepburn

Selected Filmography

Bringing Up Baby (1938)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Adam's Rib (1949)
The African Queen (1951)

From my first glimpse of Katherine Hepburn in Bringing up Baby I knew it was love. That wildly coiffed hair, that drawling cultured voice, those outfits! I thought she was hilarious, and more importantly, she was strong. Not in the boxing sense (though all the golf she played probably meant she had a killer right hook) but in her determination to get what she wanted, in this case Cary Grant. From start to finish, she is the one moving the story forward; her actions determine what happens to the characters around her. Admittedly she does cause rather lot of chaos, but hysterical witty chaos.

Whilst the Hollywood of Hepburn’s time often produced strong female leads, their behaviour throughout the film was usually contradicted by the ending (see Gilda, Double Indemnity).
However, a drippy ending will not erase the hour and a half of entertainment an audience has sat through, and although Hepburn's films often involve her embarrassing herself in front of her male lead, she somehow always manages to come out of it with her dignity intact.