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The Lupinos are one of England's most celebrated theatrical
families.
The earliest traceable Lupino, who spelled his name "Luppino", lived
most probably in Italy, c. 1612, and billed himself as Signor Luppino. His descendant,
George William (1632-93), a singer, reciter, and puppet master, went to England
as a political refugee. His son, George Charles (1662-1725), was a performer and
puppeteer at the age of eight. After the Restoration, the Luppino family was granted
a license to play in the service of King Charles II. John Rich, the theatre manager
and actor who originated the English pantomime, had as an apprentice a boy called
George Richard Eastcourt Luppino (1710-87), whose son Thomas Frederick (1749-1845),
the first to spell the family name Lupino, became a scenic artist and dancer.
The family tree shows nearly all descendants to have been connected with the stage.
George Hook Lupino (1820-1902) had 16 children, at least 10 of whom became professional
dancers, two marrying into the family of the well-known actress Sara Lane, manager
(1871-99) of the Britannia Theatre, London. Almost the last of the old-style clowns
was George Hook's eldest son, George (1853-1932), born in a dressing room of the
Theatre Royal, Birmingham, who was immediately carried onto the stage in swaddling
clothes. He died at the age of 79, shortly after his last performance as the clown
in a harlequinade, with his son Barry as Harlequin. His two brothers, Arthur (1864-1908)
and Henry Charles (called Harry, 1865-1925), were well-known music-hall performers
at the turn of the century. Arthur, an incomparable animal impersonator, was chosen
by Sir James Barrie to be Nana, the dog, in the premiere (1904) of his play Peter
Pan.
Of George Lupino's children, Barry (1884-1962), besides being an actor, was the
family archivist and Stanley (1894-1942) was a popular comedian who played variety
for several years at the Drury Lane Theatre, London. Barry Lupino served some
years as company comedian at the Britannia and then made extensive tours that
included Australia (1913), South Africa, and the Far East. He excelled in pantomime
and musical comedy, and he wrote or was coauthor of about 50 pantomimes, made
numerous tours of the United States, and appeared in several films. Stanley, best
remembered for his performances in revue and musical comedy, wrote plays, novels,
and From the Stocks to the Stars (1934), a collection of reminiscences.
His nephew Henry George (1892-1959), taking Sara Lane's name, was known under
the stage name of Lupino Lane. Lane became a well-known cockney comedian and toured
extensively in variety, musical comedy, and pantomime. In 1937 he scored a tremendous
success as Bill Snibson in the British musical Me and My Girl, in which
he created the "Lambeth walk," a ballroom dance supposedly representing
the strut of the cockney residents of the Lambeth section of London.
Stanley Lupino's daughter, Ida (1916-95), made her British motion-picture debut
in 1932 in Her First Affair. As a child she acted in a model theatre built
by her father, and she entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at age 13. After
her film debut, she appeared in several inconsequential roles before being cast
as a vengeful prostitute in The Light That Failed (1939). That led to meaty
roles in such films as They Drive by Night (1940), High Sierra (1941),
The Sea Wolf (1941), Ladies in Retirement (1941), and The Hard
Way (1942), for which she won a New York Film Critics award. With her second
husband, Collier Young (her first husband was actor Louis Hayward), Lupino founded
(1949) a production company and began writing scripts, tackling such controversial
topics as rape, unmarried mothers, and bigamy. When the director of Not Wanted
(1949) had a heart attack three days after filming began, she took over. Her official
directing debut came a year later with The Young Lovers, and she followed
that with several other gritty features. Especially notable were the 1953 films
The Bigamist and The Hitch-Hiker. Lupino was a star (1952-56) of
the dramatic television anthology "Four Star Playhouse" and appeared
with her third husband, Howard Duff, in the situation comedy "Mr. Adams and
Eve" for three seasons in the late 1950s. She also directed episodes of numerous
television series, among them "The Untouchables," "Have Gun, Will
Travel," "The Fugitive," "The Twilight Zone," and "Alfred
Hitchcock Presents." The most notable of her later motion-picture performances
came in Junior Bonner (1972).
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