When television first took hold in America in the 1950s, many movie stars of the era swore off the medium like the plague. For example, for years, until she finally acquiesced much later in life, Claudette Colbert wouldn’t be caught dead on that brand-new box inside people’s living rooms.
But many other major movie stars had no qualms about heading to the tube and, often when they did, it revitalized their careers. It’s hard to assess the legacies of Loretta Young or Ann Sothern or Barbara Stanwyck without taking into account their impressive “second acts” on the small screen.
For Ida Lupino, while her (and her then-husband’s) foray into television might not have endured as long as some, we can add her solidly to the list of women who brought their talents (personas) to television and, in retrospect, enhanced their legend and successfully lengthened their careers. And, in doing so, made early TV a far more interesting and - dare we say it? - diverse place.
From 1957 to 1958, Ida Lupino (one of the screen’s great big screen broads, in films like “High Sierra” and “They Drive By Night,” as well as one of its first female directors) starred a glamours movie star Eve Drake on the CBS sitcom “Mr. Adams and Eve.”
By the time she came to her sitcom, Lupino was not a complete stranger to the medium. She stuck her toe in the TV waters in 1956, by serving as one of the four rotating stars on the appropriately named “Four Star Playhouse.” Along with often hosting the program, Lupino also appeared in a handful of its episodes.
Then, that same year, this time as a director, she helmed for the small screen an installment of the “Screen Directors Playhouse.” This half hour was titled “No. 5 Checked Out” and featured Teresa Wright and Peter Lorre; it was also written by Lupino. Lupino would also be in the director’s chair of installments of the Joseph Cotten show “On Trial” and an episode of “Climax!”
And then she surprised many by taking on a sitcom.
At the time of her sitcom debut, Lupino was married to handsome fellow actor Howard Duff. (They wed in 1951 and, by this time, had a daughter, Bridget.) Following in the formidable footsteps of Lucy and Desi, in their new comedy show, this real-life married couple would also play a married couple. But they were going to do Mr. and Mrs. Arnaz a bit better by playing, not a working-class New York couple, but major movie stars!
These fictional stars were named Howard Adams and Eve Drake. And they lived in a plush manse in or near Hollywood. According to the pre-show publicity for the show, the show was going to draw many of its weekly plots straight from the lives of its stars. (Celebrities - they’re just like us!) Near the time of the launch of the show, Lupino told the press, “We’re being tongue-in-cheek about ourselves and some aspects of Hollywood.”
The show, which debuted on January 4, 1957, was seemingly quite welcomed by that some of the press who wrote that audiences “may be growing bored with some of the home screen domestic comedies.”
Just like “I Love Lucy,” each episode of the Lupino-Duff series began with a playful animated opening credits sequence that depicted the two stars.
Along with Lupino and Duff, the rest of he cast included such future familiar faces as Hayden Rorke as the couples’ agent, Steve; Alan Reed (the later voice of Fred Flintstone) as the big studio boss, J.B., and Olive Carey as their blunt-talking housekeeper, Elsie.
Since being truly relatable as the movie stars next door might have been a little hard to pull off, “Adams & Eve” often had episodes that focused on more universal themes, especially those known to married couples i.e. their respective mothers don’t really care of each other; Eve tries to drop some extra weight; Eve’s plans for a surprise party for her husband goes awry; Howard has insomnia, and the like.
Making good on their promise, however, the real lives of the starring duo did often carry over to their show. Their on-set décor was sometimes borrowed from their real home which, like Ozzie and Harriett’s, was said to be modeled on their own abode and they often cast their friends in guest star parts (David Niven, Joan Fontaine and Ed Sullivan). There daughter would have a cameo in an episode as well.
Sometimes episodes could, though, be even more specific. This was certainly the case when, in episode five of the series, Eve Drake is ambushed on camera by the TV series “This is Your Life” where Eve is less than happy about it just as Ida Lupino, who was featured on the show for real not long before, didn’t much care for it. (She didn’t like the surprise aspect of it or that so much of her personal history got trotted out in front of the TV cameras.)
Then in episode #55, from season two, titled “Adam and Eve and Ida,” Ida Lupino makes a cameo as Ida Lupino! (Got that?) In perhaps the ultimate “in” joke, in this ep, Lupino was labeled a “difficult director.”
Sometimes, the series was a true send-up of the Hollywood system. For example, there was an episode on annual angst surrounding the Academy Awards as well as one on the perils of “Method acting” (in this episode, set to play a juror in a movie, Eve must first join a real-life jury to get just the right feel).
Thanks to their mutual big-screen fame and the heavy publicity the show got just before it debuted--the couple appeared as the “mystery guest” on “I’ve Got a Secret” in January of 1957 - “Mr. Adams and…” got off to a good start, even if critics didn’t fall all over themselves in praising the new series; one early commentator called the show “routine.”
But curiosity will often carry you, at least for a time. And this bona fide Hollywood couple granting even a distorted look into their lives prove too tempting to resist for some Friday night TV watchers.
After airing 25 episodes as part of the show’s first season, “Adams” got renewed for a second. The show’s second season began in September of 1957.
Unfortunately, the series’ ratings never became exceptional and after 41 more installments, CBS lowered the ax on the show.
Of course, neither the careers of Lupino nor Duff seemed to suffer too much after the demise of their sitcom. In 1959, Lupino starred in one of the original “Twilight Zone’s” most famous episodes, “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” and, after that, she reteamed with her husband for a guest turn on a 1959 installment of the “Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.” In this “Lucy-Desi” installment, abandoning all pretense, this time Lupino and Duff just straight up played themselves. Later, the duo would be reunited as a pair of super villains on a 1968, third-season installment of TV’s campy, beloved “Batman.”
For Lupino, she spent the following decades both in front of and behind the TV cameras, as either guest star or director. As a “lady director,” Lupino lensed episodes of everything from “Gilligan’s Island” to “Honey West” and “Bewitched.”
As for Duff, he continued to act on both the big and small screens including appearing in such major motion pictures as “The Late Show,” Altman’s “A Wedding,” and the Oscar-winning “Kramer vs. Kramer.”
Unfortunately, much like Lucy and Desi, the Lupino-Duff marriage did not endure. Though they did outlast the end of their sitcom by almost a decade, the couple eventually separated in 1966. (But they never officially divorced until 1984). Duff remarried in 1986 and passed away in 1990.
Lupino passed away in 1995, thankfully, living long enough to see her work as both an actress and proto-feminist film director rediscovered first.
If “Mr. Adams & Eve” falls a bit short of a being a classic, it nevertheless does expand our common assumptions about the television of its era. While many programs of the era - both dramas and comedy - were of the working class/kitchen sink or middle class variety, there was a sophisticated glamour present on the medium, too. And while the women of the era - especially those in its 30-minute comedies - often worked (hard) in their homes, Eve Drake does not, by any stretch, fit the any sort of housewife stereotype, nor is she a character defined by her husband or her children (or her lack thereof).
Like the woman who played her, Eve Drake defies any easy classification.
by Cary O'Dell
The show, which debuted on January 4, 1957, was seemingly quite welcomed by that some of the press who wrote that audiences “may be growing bored with some of the home screen domestic comedies.”
Thanks to their mutual big-screen fame and the heavy publicity the show got just before it debuted--the couple appeared as the “mystery guest” on “I’ve Got a Secret” in January of 1957 - “Mr. Adams and…” got off to a good start, even if critics didn’t fall all over themselves in praising the new series; one early commentator called the show “routine.”