HIGH SIERRA, 1941, Warner Bros., 100 min. Dir. Raoul Walsh. The quintessential gangster romance, from the pen of W. R. Burnett, one of America’s most important crime writers. Humphrey Bogart plays Mad Dog Earle, an outlaw looking for one last score, sidetracked by love, hounded by inescapable fate. With the incomparable Ida Lupino and Joan Leslie, under Walsh’s typically rugged direction.
THE HARD WAY, 1942, Warner Bros., 102 min. Dir. Vincent Sherman. Ida Lupino is a magnificent, domineering Svengali who bullies the entire movie into believing her younger sister is a star -- and by the end, we believe it, too! Supposedly inspired by Ginger Rogers’ early career, THE HARD WAY won Lupino the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress. Lupino transforms her kid sister (Joan Leslie) from a mining-town nobody into a Broadway headliner, but loses everything in the process. Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan are the men unfortunate enough to cross Ida’s path.