Almost Famous III

After Ida Lupino left Warner Bros in 1947 she found that freelancing was not getting her enough of the kinds of scripts she wanted.  Then after her 1948 marriage to producer-writer Collier Young, they and a couple of friends decided to form their own company where she would not only produce but direct and write and occasionally star.  The decision was quickly made to make low-budget but hopefully profitable films.  Lupino's dream was also to discover new talent.  Here are three of them:

Keefe Brasselle, born in Ohio in 1923, wanted to be an actor from early on.  In time two things that were often said about him  was that he had no discernible talent and he was unctuous and a suck-up.  He had made 11 films, most of them in uncredited roles, before he walked into Lupino's living room to audition for a role in the first film she would direct, Not Wanted (1949).  It is bewildering what Lupino saw in him but then, in fairness, she wanted to develop new talent.

Not Wanted dealt with the then-bold look into the pregnancy of an unmarried woman, played by Sally Forrest (coming up).  Brasselle plays a man who befriends her when the child's father gives her the heave-ho.  It received decent reviews but mainly because of Lupino's directing and co-writing debuts.  She liked Brasselle and Forrest enough to re-team then in the following year's Never Fear in which they are on the nightclub circuit as dancing partners when she contracts polio.

The public apparently thought enough of the pair for MGM (without Lupino) to star them in Bannerline (1951) where Brasselle is a reporter who engages in some fake news to make a man's dying days more pleasant.  The story is hokey and Brasselle is hammy and embarrassing.  How he didn't stop making movies right here is beyond me, although Lupino didn't use him again.

He did manage to act like an actor in 1951's A Place in the Sun in a small role as Monty Clift's cousin.  (It's likely Brasselle was hired for his resemblance to Clift.)  What fame he had came from starring in The Eddie Cantor Story in 1953, which the public flocked to at the time but history has shown it to be one of the lesser bios... thanks to Brasselle's painful performance.

He moved into television as an actor and producer.  He befriended CBS honcho Jim Aubrey who allowed Brasselle to have his way in producing three series.  When they all flopped, the friendship ended acrimoniously.  Threats were made both ways and there were whispers that Brasselle had mob ties.  

Whatever went down, it virtually ended his career.  He died in 1981, virtually forgotten, at age 58 of cirrhosis of the liver.

Sally Forrest was born to ballroom dancers so it came as no surprise that her performing career started as a dancer and choreographer.  Out of high school she was signed by MGM initially as a dancer and then as an actress but none of the roles earned her any screen credit.

She auditioned for Not Wanted in that same Lupino living room that Brasselle did and was told immediately that she had the right stuff.  She was impressive, too, as the woman who gives up her baby for adoption and then wants him back.  It would be her starring debut.  Oddly, however, even after starring for Lupino in Never Fear, Forrest also continued with uncredited bit parts at MGM.

In 1951 Lupino used her for the third and final time as the tennis prodigy who has off-court battles with her mother (the total pro Claire Trevor) in Hard, Fast and Beautiful.  (I don't think Lupino ever particularly pulled off good film titles.)  The same year Forrest was overshadowed by Burt Lancaster, Joanne Dru and Robert Walker in the western Vengeance Valley.  Neither of these films found much success.

Forrest married writer-producer Milo Frank (and remained so for over 50 years) and followed him to New York.  There she took up stage work, performing well as the lead in The Seven-Year Itch,  and did much television. It must have been patently obvious to her that though she had worked in films, television and on the stage,  stardom had managed to elude her.

She returned to films for the corny Son of Sinbad (1955), in a role that Piper Laurie had turned down.  Forrest did, however, look fetching in the period costumes and performed a dance that remains my sole remembrance of the film.  Her finest dramatic work and the role for which she is best remembered is as a reporter in Fritz Lang's tense 1956 production of While the City Sleeps.  She stood out in a cast that included Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Vincent Price, Thomas Mitchell and Lupino.

Good as she was in the film, it was her last.  She did some TV until 1967 when she disappeared from the performing world.  My guess is she is remembered by few.

Mala Powers was the third newcomer Lupino was juggling at the same time and although they only worked together once, they became life-long friends.  Powers is probably the best-known of this trio and arguably the best actor but she, too, had a career that  ended up in guest shots on episodic television.

Both of her parents were journalists, although her mother was also a minister.  As a child living in Los Angeles, she joined Max Reinhardt's Junior Acting Workshop and was forever hooked on becoming an actress.  Given what was to come, it's worth noting that Lupino was Powers' father's favorite actress and he was always speaking of her and seeing her films.

She had an early role (at age 11) in a film and due chiefly to possessing a lovely voice, she worked on radio.  It was at one of these broadcasts that she met Lupino who was prowling the halls looking for that talented newbie.  It's been said Powers was so good in her quick audition that Lupino jumped up and down.  (Funny, she never impressed me as the type to do that.)

The film was Outrage (1950) which dealt with rape in a manner more straight-forward than films were used to.  The movie continued Lupino's quest to show women attempting to overcome dramatic circumstances.  The film is to be commended for addressing a subject in so open a manner.  Powers also had a small role in Edge of Doom (1950), with Farley Granger and Dana Andrews, a noir about a mentally unstable young man who kills a priest. 

Producer Stanley Kramer saw her in Outrage and thought she would be the perfect Roxanne opposite Jose Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac, a role he had played on Broadway.  His acclaimed film performance would win him the Oscar.  Powers would garner notices that went from so-so to glowing.  Regardless, it's her most well-known role.

A bout with illness took her out of films for a long spell and she lost whatever momentum she'd acquired.  She resumed her career in B films... largely westerns and horror films.  Though she was impressive as Leslie Nielsen's jilted fiancée in 1957's Tammy and the Bachelor, Powers became a staple of television.  She lectured throughout the country on Chekhov's acting techniques.  Her name popped up in the news when Lupino died and it was revealed that she was the executrix of her estate.  Powers died in 2007 at age 75.



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