A melodrama about a mother and a daughter entangled in a dream of an athletic career. Teenage Florence (Sally Forrest) is a tennis prodigy. Her frustrated mother (Claire Trevor) sees her daughter’s talent as a chance to change their lives. She could finally escape her boring middle-class existence, while the daughter could climb up the social ladder and join the elite of professional sportspeople. Meddling in the girl’s life and manipulating the girl’s managers, she puts Flo’s career onto new tracks. As it turns out, though, Flo hopes for something more than sport results. The movie protagonist is a typical teenager who slowly but surely loses her childhood trust in her mother and grows up to take independent decisions. At the same time, what Florence shares with the other Lupinian ‘nice girls’ is a sincere but naive belief in true love. Sports turn out to be another corrupt game adults play. The parents are nothing else but prisoners of two typical postwar roles, that of a bored housewife and that of a failing breadwinner.
Ida Lupino (1918–1995) was born into a British artistic family. She began her acting career when still a teenager, which gave her very early insight into the mechanisms that drive Hollywood. She got her big break in noir productions starring opposite Humphrey Bogart in They Drive by Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941). At 32, she gave up a lucrative studio contract and founded the independent label "The Filmakers" with two friends, which produced twelve feature films. Lupine directed or co-directed six of the films, she wrote the scripts for five, and starred in three.
1949 Niechciane / Not Wanted
1950 Pokonać lęk / Never Fear
1950 Zniewaga / Outrage
1951 Wygrać siebie / Hard, Fast and Beautiful!
1953 Autostopowicz / The Hitch-Hiker
1953 Bigamista / The Bigamist