Random Non-Louise Photo: Ida Lupino in a publicity portrait for “Ready for Love” (1934). (Thread)

Two years before “Ready for Love,” Ida, just 15, arrived in Hollywood from London where she’d worked with her family on stage and then in a few British films. But while only a mid-teen, Ida had a sharp, sultry and feisty ingenue appeal that Paramount execs found marketable.

In “Ready,” Ida plays a runaway girl visiting her aunt in a small town but the locals think she’s a husband-stealing harlot and and subject her to snobby gossip. Richard Arlen (L) plays the newsman who falls for her but who also loves the good local story unfolding. More Ida (R):

Later, in a fit of mistaken frenzy, the local women decide to give Ida’s character a Puritan-styled “witch dunking” but Ida, naturally, looks fetching in her underwear and slicked back hair. Arlen rescues her and the locals get their comeuppance via his scandalous news stories.

Oddly, “Ready for Love” was loosely based on “The Whipping,” a 1934 play by noted black NYC writer Eulalie Spence (L), who sold the drama to Paramount for $5k after her drama, set for a pre-B’way opening with Queenie Smith (R) in the lead, was suddenly pulled without explanation.

Spence’s play involved a promiscuous young white woman subjected to bigotry but instead of gabby gossips, it was the Klan. The studio cut out the Klan and the sex (and then added a blackface number!) and the film became a queasy, breezy rom-com. Spence got paid but no credit.

For years Spence’s play was thought to be unused by the studio. Finally, someone found that “Ready for Love” was “that” script. Spence, a gifted voice in the Harlem Renaissance era who worked with civil rights legend W.E.B. Du Bois, never wrote another play. Ida in a press still: