Here's to Ida Lupino on her birthday (February 4).
The Bigamist
I saw The Bigamist, maybe the best
of the brilliant noir movies
Ida Lupino directed, though
The Hitchhiker gives it a run for the money.
Edmund O’Brien has
one wife in San Francisco
(Joan Fontaine, who wants a baby),
and another wife in Los Angels
(Ida herself, who has a baby).
Watching The Bigamist you realize
how hard it is to be a bigamist.
Bigamy is a full-time job,
especially in 1953,
requiring
two wardrobes with one or two overlapping suits
enough money to pay the bills for both households
an excellent memory to keep everything straight
a poker face
a creative mind
a happy childhood but troubled adolescence
no siblings
deceased parents
an active libido
plus the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in the mind at the same time
and continue to function.
an even more difficult conundrum when the contradictory ideas are
Joan Fontaine and Ida Lupino.
