The Man I Love

I had never been an big Ida Lupino fan until I recently saw THE MAN I LOVE. The film was fun, frothy and, ultimately, forgettable, but Ida was terrific. As the eldest of four siblings, she holds the clan, as well as the film, together with her tough, wisecracking, heart of gold persona. Even while lip syncing the title song, Ida makes an impression. Check out her reading of the lines, "From which I'll never roam, Who would, would you?" She really nails it.

THE MAN I LOVE is a fun way to pass an evening but Ida Lupino is a revelation.

Ida Lupino was a magnificent actress who fulfilled the promise of intelligence and talent that always seemed to burn in her eyes by demonstrating her creative moxie as a director. Unfortunately, her career in front of the camera often found her in cast off looking pot-boilers (she got to rummage through what was rejected by Davis, Crawford, and whoever else might be hot at the moment).

This noir-ish romantic weepy with a bad nicotine cough was typical of the sows ears she tried to make fit like silk. Filmed in 1945....and not widely released til early in 1947...it is filled with competent but rather second string talent...many of whom never quite made it to the top rung. Bruce Bennett (who deserves great credit for being one of the few actors to survive being cast as Tarzan without forever being typed and stymied) does his usual low key but very sincere turn as Ida's Piano whiz turned world weary seaman (don't ask). Robert Alda is effectively smarmy as the dame hungry club owner...after Ida and just about every other female with a pulse...it is a shame that playing George Gershwin (in "Rhapsody in Blue") and having this meaty part in a film based around one of the Gershwin's greatest standards didn't lead to bigger and better film roles.

The world weary atmosphere of jaded postwar funk that lingers over the film like a cloud of smoke and stale perfume is More persuasive than the rather clunky script...( you have to give the writers credit for gaul however...the final clinch lines are lifted almost verbatim from "Now Voyager" and "Casablanca"...and tend to make this end up looking more shallow and tacky than it is).

The musical sequences are great...and Ida seems ideally suited for the role of a jam session diva...even if she did have to borrow a voice for the part. The atmosphere of electric bluesy ambiance was seldom captured better on film until Garland nailed it to perfection wailing about "the Man that got away" in 1954.

Unfortunately several numbers are missing from the print shown on TCM (which runs only 89 minutes...and is in DREADFUL shape...with many scratches, spices, breaks, and reals where the images look like something from a cheap public domain dupe of a dupe).

Here's hoping someone in the Warner Brother's Library does some digging...finds the original negative...and restores this..because Ida deserved the very best...even if she seldom got it.

I saw this movie and feel it is truly one of the all American classics along with Body & Soul and The Helen Morgan Story. Ida Lupino was magnificent in the role as well as Robert Alda. Bruce Bennett was well cast as the piano man and if nothing else, The Man I Love by Ira and George Gershwin is the most beautiful song ever written. The music is outstanding and the simple lyric by Ira Gershwin compliments this most haunting refrain.

I had the opportunity to become friends with George Gershwin's sister, Frances who performed at Carnegie Hall singing her brother's memorable song Embraceable You. I sent her a tape of my version of The Man I Love and after her death, her maid LaLa said she played it every night for one year. This was the highest compliment for me. I have always been an avid fan of the Gershwin Brothers and as a professional cabaret singer, I have included many of their beautiful songs in my shows. God Bless All of Them. They have gifted the world with the most beautiful music.

The plot of "The Man I Love" to me is not as important as the snappy dialog and atmosphere...the reasons to see this film. The story just meanders....and I can live with that.

Petey (Ida Lupino) comes to town to see her sisters and brother. During this time, Petey gets a job with a slick but somewhat notorious nightclub owner (Robert Alda) and he's nuts for her. But instead of responding to his many advances, she falls like a ton of bricks over a down and out pianist (Bruce Bennett/Herman Brix). Other stuff happens.

The reason to see the film is to watch and listen to Ida Lupino. She captures the camera with her radiance...and her self-assured and VERY snappy dialog. She's like a combination of a feminist with a touch of NICE femme fatale! Well worth seeing despite the story itself only being mildly interesting.

Raoul Walsh's The Man I Love opens during an after-hours jam session at a Manhattan jazz boîte, the 39 Club, where Petey Brown (Ida Lupino, dubbed by Peg La Centra) sings the title song while expelling cigarette smoke. And it seems there was a man she loved, but we don't hear much about him, except that their parting has given her wanderlust, leading her back home to California.

Living there is what's left of the family of which she becomes de facto matriarch: Her sister Sally (Andrea King), whose shell-shocked husband (John Ridgely) is in a psychiatric hospital; younger sister Ginny (Martha Vickers); and ne'er-do-well brother Joe (Warren Douglas). Almost part of the family are next-apartment neighbors, the O'Connors - doting and deluded Johnny (Don McGuire) and discontented, two-timing Gloria (Dolores Moran, in a deliciously slutty turn).

They keep Lupino's hands full, but a girl's gotta make a living, too, so she slaps on the war-paint and slithers into a gown, landing a job as `canary' in a nightspot operated by womanizing Nicky Toresca (Robert Alda). She keeps rather tepid company with him, until circumstance brings legendary jazz-piano man San Thomas (Bruce Bennett) into her life; the victim of an unhappy marriage, he's currently AWOL from the Merchant Marine and thinks he's lost his gift for the ivories. They kindle a volatile liaison (apparently the template from which Martin Scorsese struck the romance between Francine Evans and Jimmy Doyle in New York, New York). But Lupino's two lives, family and romantic, start to interlock disruptively....

An unlikely amalgam of freighted, '40s romance, low-key musical and a touch of film noir, The Man I Love relies less on plot than on old-fashioned story. It's a complicated and ever-shifting story that Walsh manages to juggle adroitly (though he lets a couple of Indian clubs clatter to the floor - the shut-away husband and the Vickers character don't come to much, and the usually glamorous King is ill-garbed as the long-suffering hausfrau).

But Lupino, though she shares the movie with a large cast, stays at its center - strong and smart-mouthed but compassionate and vulnerable. (Her grand exit, smiling through tears on the waterfront, recall's Barbara Stanwyck's in Stella Dallas.) Bennett proves a good match for her, in a strong, shaded performance (though top billing among the males goes to Alda, looking like a young Danny Thomas and delivering no more than a bland, generic heavy).

The Man I Love exerts a nostalgic pull that avoids (barely) the campy and the overwrought. Though there's a violent death, it's not a violent film, nor even, really, a crime story. Coming from the immediate post-war era when emotions were still running high and not yet subject to over-analysis, it serves up its thick stew with gusto. Yes, it ends a little too daintily, but with its torch songs, its messy relationships, and unabashed commitment, it still makes a memorable meal.