Ida Lupino (4 February 1918 – 3 August 1995) was a British-American actress, director, writer, and producer. Throughout her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed eight, working primarily in the United States, where she became a citizen in 1948. She is widely regarded as the most prominent female filmmaker working in the 1950s during the Hollywood studio system. With her independent production company, she co-wrote and co-produced several social-message films and became the first woman to direct a film noir, The Hitch-Hiker, in 1953.
Among Lupino's other directed films, the best known are Not Wanted (1949), about unwed pregnancy (she took over for a sick director and refused directorial credit); Never Fear (1950), loosely based upon her own experiences battling paralyzing polio; Outrage (1950), one of the first films about rape; The Bigamist (1953), and The Trouble with Angels (1966). Her short yet immensely influential directorial career, tackling themes of women trapped by social conventions, usually under melodramatic or noir coverings, is a pioneering example of proto-feminist filmmaking.
As an actress, Lupino's best known films are The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) with Basil Rathbone; They Drive by Night (1940) with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart; High Sierra (1941) with Bogart; The Sea Wolf (1941) with Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield; Ladies in Retirement (1941) with Louis Hayward; Moontide (1942) with Jean Gabin; The Hard Way (1943); Deep Valley (1947) with Dane Clark; Road House (1948) with Cornel Wilde and Richard Widmark; While the City Sleeps (1956) with Dana Andrews and Vincent Price; and Junior Bonner (1972) with Steve McQueen.
Lupino also directed more than 100 episodes of television shows in a variety of genres, including westerns, supernatural tales, situation comedies, murder mysteries, and gangster stories. She was the only woman to direct an episode of the original The Twilight Zone series ("The Masks"), and the only director to star in an episode ("The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine").
Early life and family
right|thumb|Lupino in 1937
Lupino was born at 33 Ardbeg Road in Herne Hill, London, to actress Connie O'Shea (also known as Connie Emerald) and music hall comedian Stanley Lupino, a member of the theatrical Lupino family, which included Lupino Lane, a song-and-dance man. Her great-grandfather George Hook Lupino (1828–1902) was an acrobatic clown, descended from an Italian family of puppeteers. Her father, a top name in musical comedy in the UK, encouraged her to perform at an early age. He built an outdoor theatre for Lupino and her sister Rita (1921–2016), who also became an actress and dancer. By the age of ten, Lupino had memorised the leading female roles in Shakespeare's plays. After her childhood training for stage plays, Ida's uncle Lupino Lane assisted her in moving towards film acting by getting her work as a background actress at British International Studios.
She wanted to be a writer, but to please her father Lupino enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She excelled in a number of "bad girl" film roles, often playing prostitutes. Lupino did not enjoy being an actress and felt uncomfortable with many of the early roles she was given. She felt that she was pushed into the profession due to her family history.
Career
Actress
right|thumb|Publicity photograph of Lupino for [[Moontide (1942)]]
Lupino made her first film appearance in The Love Race (1931) and the following year, aged 14, she worked under director Allan Dwan in Her First Affaire, in a role for which her mother had previously tested. She played leading roles in five British films in 1933 at Warner Bros.' Teddington studios and for Julius Hagen at Twickenham, including The Ghost Camera with John Mills and I Lived with You with Ivor Novello. She said of her early roles "My father once said to me: 'You're born to be bad', and it was true. I made eight films in England before I came to America, and I played a tramp or a slut in all of them".
Lupino starred in over a dozen films in the mid-1930s while under contract to Paramount. She left the studio in late 1937 after becoming unsatisfied with her roles and remained off screen for over a year. Warner Bros. offered her a contract which she negotiated to include some freelance rights.
Her performance in The Hard Way (1943) won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. In 1941, she rejected a supporting role in Kings Row and a lead role in Juke Girl and was put on suspension at the studio. Within a few months, a rapprochement was brokered, but her relationship with the studio remained strained over the next few years. After the drama Deep Valley (1947) finished shooting, Lupino left Warner Brothers having turned down a four-year exclusive contract. She described how bored she was on set while "someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work",
She and her then-husband, producer and writer Collier Young, formed an independent company, The Filmakers Inc., to "produce, direct, and write low-budget, issue-oriented films". It was formed in 1948 with Lupino as vice-president, Collier Young as president, and screenwriter Malvin Wald as treasurer. The Filmakers' mission was to make socially conscious films, encourage new talent, and bring realism to the screen. Their goal was to tell "how America lives" through independent B pictures shot in two weeks for less than US$200,000 with a creative "family", "the ring of truth" emphasized by fact-based stories – a combination of "social significance" and entertainment. In short, low-budget pictures, they explored virtually taboo subjects Lupino's best-known directorial effort, The Hitch-Hiker, a 1953 RKO release, is the only film noir from the genre's classic period directed by a woman.
Her first directing job came unexpectedly in 1949 when director Elmer Clifton suffered a mild heart attack and was unable to finish Not Wanted, a film Lupino co-produced and co-wrote.
After producing four more films about social issues, including Outrage (1950), a film about rape (while this word is never used in the movie), Lupino directed her first hard-paced, all-male-cast film, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), making her the first woman to direct a film noir.
right|thumb|Cinematographer [[Ted McCord (cinematographer)|Ted McCord, Lupino and Dane Clark in Deep Valley (1947)]]
Lupino once called herself a "bulldozer" to secure financing for her production company, but she referred to herself as "mother" while on set.
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:left; border:1"
|-
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" |Year
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" |Title
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" |The Filmakers Inc. <br> function
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" |Screenplay / <br>Writers
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" |Producers
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" |Directors
|-
| 1949 || Not Wanted || Production Company <br> (Emerald Productions) || Paul Jarrico <br> Ida Lupino <br> Malvin Wald || Anson Bond <br> Ida Lupino || Elmer Clifton <br> Ida Lupino (uncredited)
|-
| 1949 || Never Fear || Production Company || Ida Lupino <br> Collier Young || Norman A. Cook <br> Ida Lupino <br> Collier Young || Ida Lupino <br> James Anderson (assistant)
|-
| 1950 || Outrage || Production Company || Ida Lupino <br/> Malvin Wald <br/> Collier Young || Collier Young <br/> Malvin Wald || Ida Lupino
|-
| 1951 || Hard, Fast and Beautiful || Production Company || Martha Wilkerson || Norman A. Cook <br> Collier Young || Ida Lupino <br> James Anderson (assistant)
|-
| 1951 || On the Loose || Production Company || Dale Eunson <br> Katherine Albert || Collier Young || Charles Lederer <br> James Anderson (assistant)
|-
| 1952 || Beware, My Lovely || Presented by || Mel Dinelli || Collier Young <br> Mel Dinelli || Harry Horner
|-
| 1953 || The Hitch-Hiker || Present || Ida Lupino <br> Collier Young || Collier Young <br> Christian Nyby || Ida Lupino
|-
| 1953 || The Bigamist || Production Company <br> © || Collier Young || Robert Eggenweiler <br> Collier Young || Ida Lupino
|-
| 1954 || Private Hell 36 || Presents <br> © || Collier Young <br> Ida Lupino || Robert Eggenweiler <br> Collier Young || Don Siegel
|-
| 1955 || Mad at the World|| Production Company || Harry Essex || James H. Anderson <br> Collier Young || Harry Essex
|-
|}
Television
thumb|right|Lupino in [[It Takes a Thief (1968 TV series)|It Takes a Thief in 1968]]
Lupino's career as a director continued through 1968. Her directing efforts during these years were almost exclusively for television productions such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, The Twilight Zone, Have Gun – Will Travel, Honey West, The Donna Reed Show, Gilligan's Island, 77 Sunset Strip, The Rifleman, The Virginian, Sam Benedict, The Untouchables, Hong Kong, The Fugitive, and Bewitched.
After the demise of The Filmakers, Lupino continued working as an actress until the end of the 1970s, mainly in television. Lupino appeared in 19 episodes of Four Star Playhouse from 1952 to 1956, an endeavor involving partners Charles Boyer, Dick Powell and David Niven. From January 1957 to September 1958, Lupino starred with her then-husband Howard Duff in the sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve, in which the duo played husband-and-wife film stars named Howard Adams and Eve Drake, living in Beverly Hills, California. Duff and Lupino also co-starred as themselves in 1959 in one of the 13 one-hour installments of The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour and an episode of The Dinah Shore Chevy Show in 1960. Lupino guest-starred in numerous television shows, including The Ford Television Theatre (1954), Bonanza (1959), Burke's Law (1963–64), The Virginian (1963–65), Batman (1968), The Mod Squad (1969), Family Affair (1969–70), The Wild, Wild West (1969), Nanny and the Professor (1971), Columbo: Short Fuse (1972), Columbo: Swan Song (1974) in which she plays Johnny Cash's character's zealous wife, Barnaby Jones (1974), The Streets of San Francisco, Ellery Queen (1975), Police Woman (1975), and Charlie's Angels (1977). Her final acting appearance was in the 1979 film My Boys Are Good Boys.
Lupino has two distinctions with The Twilight Zone series, as the only woman to have directed an episode ("The Masks") and the only person to have worked as both actor for one episode ("The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine"), and director for another.
Themes
Lupino's Filmakers movies deal with unconventional and controversial subject matter that studio producers would not touch, including out-of-wedlock pregnancy, bigamy, and rape. She described her independent work as "films that had social significance and yet were entertainment ... based on true stories, things the public could understand because they had happened or been of news value." She focused on women's issues for many of her films and she liked strong characters, "[Not] women who have masculine qualities about them, but [a role] that has intestinal fortitude, some guts to it."
In the film The Bigamist, the two women characters represent the career woman and the homemaker. The title character is married to a woman (Joan Fontaine) who, unable to have children, has devoted her energy to her career. While on one of many business trips, he meets a waitress (Lupino) with whom he has a child, and then marries her. Marsha Orgeron, in her book Hollywood Ambitions, describes these characters as "struggling to figure out their place in environments that mirror the social constraints that Lupino faced".
Director Martin Scorsese noted that, "As a star, Lupino had no taste for glamour, and the same was true as a director. The stories she told in Outrage, Never Fear, Hard, Fast and Beautiful, The Bigamist and The Hitch-Hiker were intimate, always set within a precise social milieu: she wanted to "do pictures with poor, bewildered people, because that's what we are." Her heroines were young women whose middle-class security was shattered by trauma – unwanted pregnancy, polio, rape, bigamy, parental abuse. There's a sense of pain, panic and cruelty that colors every frame."
Lupino rejected the commodification of female stars, and as an actress she resisted becoming an object of desire. She said in 1949, "Hollywood careers are perishable commodities", and sought to avoid such a fate for herself. The New York Times reported that the outbreak of polio within the Hollywood community was due to contaminated swimming pools. She recovered and eventually directed, produced, and wrote many films, including a film loosely based upon her travails with polio titled Never Fear in 1949, the first film that she was credited for directing (she had earlier stepped in for an ill director on Not Wanted and refused directorial credit out of respect for her colleague). Her experience with the disease gave her the courage to focus on her intellectual abilities over simply her physical appearance. In an interview with Hollywood, she said, "I realized that my life and my courage and my hopes did not lie in my body. If that body was paralyzed, my brain could still work industriously...If I weren't able to act, I would be able to write. Even if I weren't able to use a pencil or typewriter, I could dictate."
Lupino's interests outside the entertainment industry included writing short stories and children's books, and composing music. Her composition "Aladdin's Suite" was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1937.
Citizenship
She became an American citizen in June 1948.
Politics
She supported the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
Her second marriage was to producer Collier Young on 5 August 1948. They divorced in 1951. When Lupino filed for divorce in September that year, she was already pregnant from an affair with future husband Howard Duff. The child was born seven months after she filed for divorce from Young.
Lupino's third and final marriage was to actor Howard Duff, whom she wed on 21 October 1951. Six months later, they had a daughter, Bridget, on 23 April 1952. They separated in 1966 and divorced in 1983.
She petitioned a California court in 1984 to appoint her business manager, Mary Ann Anderson, as her conservator due to poor business dealings from her prior business management company and her long separation from Howard Duff.
Death
Lupino died from a stroke while undergoing treatment for colon cancer in Los Angeles on 3 August 1995, at the age of 77. Her memoirs, Ida Lupino: Beyond the Camera, were edited after her death and published by Mary Ann Anderson.
Influences and legacy
thumb|upright|Ida Lupino's [[The Hitch-Hiker (1953) was the first American film noir directed by a woman.]]
Lupino learned filmmaking from everyone she observed on set, including William Ziegler, the cameraman for Not Wanted. When in preproduction on Never Fear, she conferred with Michael Gordon on directorial technique, organization, and plotting. Cinematographer Archie Stout said of Ms. Lupino, "Ida has more knowledge of camera angles and lenses than any director I've ever worked with, with the exception of Victor Fleming. She knows how a woman looks on the screen and what light that woman should have, probably better than I do." Lupino also worked with editor Stanford Tischler, who said of her, "She wasn't the kind of director who would shoot something, then hope any flaws could be fixed in the cutting room. The acting was always there, to her credit." On whether Lupino should be considered a feminist filmmaker, Scheib states, "I don't think Lupino was concerned with showing strong people, men or women. She often said that she was interested in lost, bewildered people, and I think she was talking about the postwar trauma of people who couldn't go home again."
Lupino did not consider herself a feminist, saying, "I had to do something to fill up my time between contracts. Keeping a feminine approach is vital – men hate bossy females ... Often I pretended to a cameraman to know less than I did. That way I got more cooperation."
Eddie Muller is a fan:
<blockquote>Although her ambition exceeded her achievements, she left a body of work that proved her to be a capable director, a good writer, an excellent producer, and a superior actress. Most important, she was a total pro, and the most multitalented woman in the history of Hollywood.</blockquote>
Accolades
right|thumb|
- Lupino has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for contributions to the fields of television and film – located at 1724 Vine Street and 6821 Hollywood Boulevard.
- New York Film Critics Circle Award – Best Actress, The Hard Way, 1943
- Inaugural Saturn Award - Best Supporting Actress, The Devil's Rain, 1975
- A Commemorative Blue Plaque is dedicated to Lupino and her father Stanley Lupino by The Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America and the Theatre and Film Guild of Great Britain and America at the house where she was born in Herne Hill, London, 16 February 2016
- Composer Carla Bley paid tribute to Lupino with her jazz composition "Ida Lupino" in 1964.
- The Hitch-Hiker and Outrage were inducted into the National Film Registry in 1998 and 2020 respectively.
- Starring Ida Lupino, a series on the Criterion Channel in November 2024 starts with Lupino's story, followed by several of her films.
|-
! scope="row" | Mr. Adams and Eve
| Align=center | 1957–1958
| Align=center | Yes
| Eve Adams/Eve Drake
| Align=center | Yes
| Main cast (66 episodes); 1 episode 1958
|-
! scope="row" | The Twilight Zone
| Align=center | 1959
| Align=center | Yes
| Barbara Jean Trenton
|
| "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine"
|-
! scope="row" | Bonanza
| Align=center | 1959
| Align=center | Yes
| Annie O'Toole
|
| "The Saga of Annie O'Toole"
|-
! scope="row" | Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour
| Align=center | 1959
| Align=center | Yes
| Herself
|
| "Lucy's Summer Vacation"
|-
! scope="row" | Death Valley Days
| Align=center | 1960
| Align=center | Yes
| Pamela Mann
|
| "Pamela's Oxen"
|-
! scope="row" | The Rifleman
| Align=center | 1961
|
|
| Align=center | Yes
| "Assault"
|-
! scope="row" | Thriller
| Align=center | 1961
|
|
| Align=center | Yes
| "The Last of the Sommervilles"
|-
! scope="row" | The Investigators
| Align=center | 1961
| Align=center | Yes
|
|
| "Something for Charity"
|-
! scope="row" | Kraft Suspense Theatre
| Align=center | 1963
| Align=center | Yes
| Harriet Whitney
|
| "One Step Down"
|-
! scope="row" | The Virginian
| Align=center | 1963
| Align=center | Yes
| Helen Blaine
|
| "A Distant Fury"
|-
! scope="row" | The Twilight Zone
| Align=center | 1964
|
|
| Align=center | Yes
| "The Masks"
|-
! scope="row" | Gilligan's Island
| Align=center | 1964
|
|
| Align=center | Yes
| "Goodnight, Sweet Skipper"
|-
! scope="row" | Gilligan's Island
| Align=center | 1964
|
|
| Align=center | Yes
| "Wrongway Feldman"
|-
! scope="row" | Bewitched
| Align=center | 1965
|
|
| Align=center | Yes
| "A is for Aardvark"
|-
! scope="row" | Honey West
| Align=center | 1965
|
|
| Align=center | Yes
| "How Brillig, O, Beamish Boy"
|-
! scope="row" | Gilligan's Island
| Align=center | 1966
|
|
| Align=center | Yes
| "The Producer"
|-
! scope="row"| It Takes A Thief
| Align=center | 1968
| Align=center | Yes
| Doctor Schneider
|
| "Turnabout"
|-
!scope="row" | Batman
| Align=center |1968
| Align=center |Yes
|"Doctor Cassandra" Spellcraft
|
|"The Entrancing Dr. Cassandra"
|-
! scope="row"| Family Affair
| Align=center | 1969
| Align=center | Yes
| Lady "Maudie" Marchwood
|
| "Maudie"
|-
!Scope="row" | Family Affair
|Align=center | 1970
|Align=center | Yes
|Lady "Maudie" Marchwood
|
| "Return of Maudie"
|-
! scope="row" | Columbo
| Align=center | 1972
| Align=center | Yes
| Roger Stanford's Aunt
|
| "Short Fuse"
|-
! scope="row" | The Streets of San Francisco
| Align=center | 1973
| Align=center | Yes
| Wilma Jamison
|
| "Blockade"
|-
! scope="row" | Columbo
| Align=center | 1974
| Align=center | Yes
| Mrs. Edna Brown
|
| "Swan Song"
|-
! scope="row"| Police Woman
| Align=center | 1975
| Align=center | Yes
| Hilda Morris
|
| "The Chasers"
|-
! scope="row" | Charlie's Angels
| Align=center | 1977
| Align=center | Yes
| Gloria Gibson
|
| "I Will Be Remembered"
|}
Radio appearances
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year !! Program !! Episode/source
|-
| 1937|| The Chase and Sanborn Hour ||
|-
| 1937|| Lux Radio Theatre || The 39 Steps
|-
| 1938|| The Silver Theatre || Challenge for Three
|-
| 1939|| The Campbell Playhouse || The Bad Man
|-
| 1939|| The Chase and Sanborn Hour ||
|-
| 1939|| Lux Radio Theatre || Wuthering Heights
|-
| 1939|| Woodbury's Hollywood Playhouse || For All Our Lives
|-
| 1940|| Lux Radio Theatre || The Young in Heart
|-
| 1940|| Good News of 1940 || The Light That Failed
|-
| 1940|| Lux Radio Theatre || Wuthering Heights
|-
| 1940|| Lux Radio Theatre || Rebecca
|-
| 1942|| Charlie McCarthy Show ||
|-
| 1942|| It's Time to Smile ||
|-
| 1942|| Lux Radio Theatre || A Woman's Face
|-
| 1943|| Lux Radio Theatre || Now, Voyager
|-
| 1943|| Lux Radio Theatre || Ladies in Retirement
|-
| 1943|| Duffy's Tavern ||
|-
| 1943|| Command Performance ||
|-
| 1943|| Burns and Allen ||
|-
| 1944|| Everything for the Boys || The Citadel
|-
| 1944|| Mail Call ||
|-
| 1944|| Screen Guild Players || High Sierra
|-
| 1944|| Suspense || The Sisters
|-
| 1944|| Suspense || Fugue in C Minor
|-
| 1944|| This Is My Best || Brighton Rock
|-
| 1945|| Cavalcade of America || Immortal Wife
|-
| 1945|| Lux Radio Theatre || Only Yesterday
|-
| 1945|| Screen Guild Players || Pillow to Post
|-
| 1946|| Cavalcade of America || Star in the West
|-
| 1946|| Theatre of Romance || The Hard Way
|-
| 1946|| Encore Theatre || Nurse Edith Cavell
|-
| 1946|| Tell Me a Story || The Pond
|-
| 1947|| Cavalcade of America || Abigail Opens the White House
|-
| 1947|| Cavalcade of America || A Lady of Distinction
|-
| 1947|| Cavalcade of America || Kitchen Scientist
|-
| 1947|| Lux Radio Theatre || The Seventh Veil
|-
| 1947|| Lux Radio Theatre || Saratoga Trunk
|-
| 1948|| Lux Radio Theatre || Daisy Kenyon
|-
| 1948|| Suspense || Summer Night
|-
| 1948|| Lux Radio Theatre || The Razor's Edge
|-
| 1948|| Hallmark Playhouse || Woman with a Sword
|-
| 1949|| Bill Stern Colgate Sports Newsreel ||
|-
| 1949|| Suspense || The Bullet
|-
| 1950|| Hollywood Calling ||
|-
| 1950|| Hallmark Playhouse || The Love Story of Elizabeth Barrett
|-
| 1953|| Guest Star || Fear
|-
| 1953|| Stars over Hollywood || Chasten Thy Son
|-
| 1954|| Lux Radio Theatre || The Star
|-
| 1954|| Lux Radio Theatre || So Big
|-
| 1959|| Suspense || On a Country Road
|}
See also
- Lupino family
References
External links
- Ida Lupino at Virtual History