Ida Lupino (February 4, 1918-August 3, 1995) was a British-American actress, director, writer, and producer.
Throughout her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed 8, working primarily in the US, 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 influential directorial career, tackling themes of women trapped by social conventions, usually in melodramas or noir stories, 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 TV 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”)
Lupino was born at 33 Ardbeg Road in Herne Hill, London, to actress Connie O’Shea (aka Connie Emerald) and music hall comedian Stanley Lupino, a member of the theatrical Lupino family, which included Lupino Lane, song-and-dance man.[6] She was raised Catholic.
Her great-grandfather, George Hook, changed his name to Lupino. Her father, a top name in musical comedy in the UK, encouraged her to perform at early age. He built an outdoor theatre for Lupino and her sister Rita (1921–2016), who also became an actress. Lupino wrote her first play at age 7 and toured with travelling theatre company as a child.
By the age of 10, Lupino had memorised the 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 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 “bad girl” film roles, often playing prostitutes. Lupino did not enjoy being an actress and felt uncomfortable with the early roles she was given. She felt that she was pushed into the profession due to her family history.
Lupino made her first film appearance in The Love Race (1931) and the following year, aged 14, she worked under Allan Dwan in Her First Affaire, in a role for which her mother had previously tested.
She played lead roles in 5 British films in 1933 at Warner Teddington studios and for Julius Hagen at Twickenham, including The Ghost Camera with John Mills and I Lived with You with Ivor Novello.
Playing Tramp or Slut
“My father once said to me: ‘You’re born to be bad’, and it was true. I made 8 films in England before I came to America, and I played a tramp or a slut in all of them”.
Dubbed “the English Jean Harlow,” she was discovered by Paramount in the 1933 film Money for Speed, playing a good girl/bad girl dual role. Lupino claimed the talent scouts saw her play only the sweet girl and not the part of the prostitute, so she was asked to try out for the lead role in Alice in Wonderland (1933).
When she arrived in Hollywood, the Paramount producers did not know what to make of their sultry potential leading lady, but she got five-year contract. While at Paramount, Lupino played the lead in a stage production of The Pursuit of Happiness at the Paramount Studio Theatre.
Lupino starred in over a dozen films in the mid-1930s, working with Columbia in a two-film deal, one of which, The Light That Failed (1939), was a role she acquired after running into the director’s office unannounced, demanding an audition. After this breakthrough performance as a spiteful cockney model who torments Ronald Colman, she began to be taken seriously as dramatic actress. As a result, her parts improved during the 1940s, and she referred to herself as “the poor man’s Bette Davis,” taking the roles that Davis refused.
Mark Hellinger, associate producer at Warner, was impressed by Lupino’s performance in The Light That Failed, and hired her for femme-fatale role in Raoul Walsh’s They Drive by Night (1940), opposite George Raft, Ann Sheridan and Humphrey Bogart. The film did well and the critical consensus was that Lupino stole the movie, particularly in her unhinged courtroom scene.
Warner offered her a contract which she negotiated to include some freelance rights. She worked with Walsh and Bogart again in High Sierra (1941).
Her performance in The Hard Way (1943) won the NYFCC Award for Best Actress. She starred in Pillow to Post (1945), which was her only comedic leading role. Although in demand in the 1940s, she never became a major star although she often had top billing in her pictures, above actors such as Bogart, and was repeatedly critically lauded for her realistic acting style.
She often incurred the ire of studio boss Jack Warner by objecting to her casting, refusing poorly written roles that she felt were beneath her dignity as an actress, and making script revisions deemed unacceptable by the studio. As a result, she spent a great deal of her time at Warner suspended.
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 few months, rapprochement was brokered, but her relationship with the studio remained strained. After the drama Deep Valley (1947) finished shooting, Lupino left Warner having turned down a four-year exclusive contract.
A year later, she appeared for 20th Century Fox as nightclub singer in the noir Road House, performing her musical numbers. She starred in On Dangerous Ground in 1951, and took on some of the directing tasks while director Nicholas Ray was ill.
The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
While on suspension, Lupino had time to observe filming and editing processes, and she became interested in directing. She described how bored she was on set while “someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work,” and said “It’s so much more fun. Creating it yourself, not just parading in front of a camera.”
The Filmakers Inc.
She and her then-husband, producer and writer Collier Young, formed 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 produced 12 feature films, six of which Lupino directed or co-directed, five of which she wrote or co-wrote, three of which she acted in, and one of which she co-produced. 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 $200,000 with a creative “family”, “the ring of truth” emphasized by fact-based stories – a combination of “social significance” and entertainment, low-budget pictures, they explored virtually taboo subjects, such as rape in Outrage (1950) and The Bigamist (1953). The latter received rave reviews at the time of release.
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 mild heart attack and was unable to finish Not Wanted, a film Lupino co-produced and co-wrote. Lupino stepped in to finish the film without taking directorial credit out of respect for Clifton. Although the film’s subject of out-of-wedlock pregnancy was controversial, it received publicity, and she was invited to discuss the film with Eleanor Roosevelt on a national radio program.
Never Fear (1949), a film about polio, which she had personally experienced at age 16 , was her first director’s credit.
The film was noticed by Howard Hughes, who was looking for suppliers of low-budget features for distribution by his recently acquired RKO Pictures. Hughes agreed to put up financing and distribute The Filmakers’ next three features through RKO, leaving The Filmakers total control over the content and the production of the films.[28] 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.
Lupino once called herself a “bulldozer” to secure financing for her production company, but she referred to herself as “mother” while on set. Her director’s chair was labeled “Mother of Us All.” Her studio emphasized her femininity, often at the urging of Lupino herself. She said of her refusal to renew her contract with Warner. “I had decided that nothing lay ahead of me but the life of the neurotic star with no family and no home.” She made a point to seem non-threatening in a male-dominated environment, stating, “That’s where being a man makes a great deal of difference. I don’t suppose the men particularly care about leaving their wives and children. During the vacation period, the wife can always fly over and be with him. It’s difficult for a wife to say to her husband, come sit on the set and watch.”[10]
Although directing became Lupino’s passion, she continued acting to make enough money to make her own productions. She became a wily low-budget filmmaker, reusing sets from other studio productions and talking her physician into appearing as a doctor in the delivery scene of Not Wanted. She used what is now called product placement, placing Coca-Cola, United Airlines, Cadillac, and other brands in her films, such as The Bigamist. She was acutely conscious of budget considerations, planning scenes in pre-production to avoid technical mistakes and retakes, and shooting in public places such as MacArthur Park and Chinatown to avoid set-rental costs.
Lupino joked that if she had been the “poor man’s Bette Davis” as an actress, she had now become the “poor man’s Don Siegel” as a director.
The Filmakers production company ceased operations in 1955, and Lupino turned almost to TV, directing episodes of more than thirty US TV series from 1956 through 1968. She also directed a feature film in 1965, the Catholic schoolgirl comedy The Trouble With Angels, released in 1966, starring Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell; this was Lupino’s last theatrical film as director. She also continued acting, with a successful TV career throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Filmography
1949
Not Wanted
Production Company
(Emerald Productions) Paul Jarrico
Ida Lupino
Malvin Wald Anson Bond
Ida Lupino Elmer Clifton
Ida Lupino (uncredited)
Never Fear
Production Company Ida Lupino
Collier Young Norman A. Cook
Ida Lupino
Collier Young Ida Lupino
James Anderson (assistant)
1950
Outrage
Production Company Ida Lupino
Malvin Wald
Collier Young Collier Young
Malvin Wald Ida Lupino
1951
Hard, Fast and Beautiful
Production Company Martha Wilkerson Norman A. Cook
Collier Young Ida Lupino
James Anderson (assistant)
On the Loose
Production Company Dale Eunson
Katherine Albert Collier Young Charles Lederer
James Anderson (assistant)
1952
Beware, My Lovely Presented by Mel Dinelli Collier Young
Mel Dinelli Harry Horner
1953
The Hitch-Hiker Present Ida Lupino
Collier Young Collier Young
Christian Nyby Ida Lupino
The Bigamist Production Company
© Collier Young Robert Eggenweiler
Collier Young Ida Lupino
1954
Private Hell
36 Presents
© Collier Young
Ida Lupino Robert Eggenweiler
Collier Young Don Siegel
1955
Mad at the World
Production Company Harry Essex James H. Anderson
Collier Young Harry Essex
Television
Lupino’s career as a director continued through 1968, her efforts 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 actress until the end of the 1970s, mainly in TV.
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.[32] 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 controversial subject matter that studio producers would not touch, 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 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.[35] 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”.
However, Donati, in biography of Lupino, said “The solutions to the character’s problems within the films were often conventional, even conservative, reinforcing the 1950s’ ideology rather than undercutting it.”
Ahead of her time within the studio system, Lupino was intent on creating films rooted in reality. On Never Fear, Lupino said, “People are tired of having the wool pulled over their eyes. They pay out good money for their theatre tickets and they want something in return. They want realism. And you can’t be realistic with the same glamorous mugs on the screen all the time.”
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.
Personal life
Lupino was diagnosed with polio in 1934. 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). Her experience with the disease gave her the courage to focus on intellectual abilities over her physical appearance.
“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.” Film magazines from the 1930s and 1940s frequently published updates on her condition. Lupino worked for various nonprofit organizations to raise funds for polio research.
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. She composed it while recovering from polio in 1935.
Citizenship
She became an American citizen in June 1948
Politics
She supported the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
Marriages
Lupino was married and divorced 3 times. She married actor Louis Hayward in November 1938. They separated in May 1944 and divorced in May 1945.
Her second marriage was to producer Collier Young on August 5, 1948. They divorced in 1951. When Lupino filed for divorce in September, 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 October 21, 1951. Six months later, they had a daughter, Bridget, April 23, 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 company and her long separation from Howard Duff.
Death
Lupino died from a stroke while undergoing treatment for colon cancer in Los Angeles on August 3, 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
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 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: “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.”
Author Ally Acker compares Lupino to pioneering silent-film director Lois Weber for their focus on controversial, socially relevant topics. With their ambiguous endings, Lupino’s films never offered simple solutions for her troubled characters, and Acker finds parallels to her storytelling style in the work of the modern European “New Wave” directors, such as Margarethe von Trotta.
Critic Ronnie Scheib, who issued a Kino release of three of Lupino’s films, likens her themes and directorial style to directors Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, and Robert Aldrich, saying, “Lupino very much belongs to that generation of modernist filmmakers.”
“I don’t think Lupino was concerned with showing strong people, men or women. She 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.”
Scorsese calls Lupino’s thematic work “essential,” noting that “What is at stake in Lupino’s films is the psyche of the victim. Her films addressed the wounded soul and traced the slow, painful process of women trying to wrestle with despair and reclaim their lives. Her work is resilient, with remarkable empathy for the fragile and the heart-broken.”
Richard Koszarski noted Lupino’s choice to play with gender roles regarding women’s film stereotypes during the studio era: “Her films display the obsessions and consistencies of a true auteur… In her films The Bigamist and The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino was able to reduce the male to the same sort of dangerous, irrational force that women represented in most male-directed examples of Hollywood film noir.”
Lupino did not consider herself a feminist: “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.” That said, her movies addresses the brutal repercussions of sexuality, independence and dependence.
By 1972, Lupino wished more women were hired as directors and producers in Hollywood, noting that only very powerful actresses or writers had the chance to work in the field.m She directed or costarred a number of times with young, fellow British actresses on a similar journey of developing their American film careers like Hayley Mills and Pamela Franklin.
Actress Bea Arthur, best remembered for Maude and The Golden Girls, was motivated to escape her stifling hometown by following in Lupino’s footsteps and becoming an actress, saying, “My dream was to become a very small blonde movie star like Ida Lupino and those other women I saw up there on the screen during the Depression.”
Accolades
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.[62][13]
Filmography as Actress
The Love Race 1931, Minor supporting role Uncredited
Her First Affaire 1932 Yes Ann Brent
Money for Speed 1933 Yes Jane
I Lived with You 1933 Yes Ada Wallis
Prince of Arcadia 1933 Yes The Princess
The Ghost Camera 1933 Yes Mary Elton
High Finance 1933 Yes Jill
Search for Beauty 1934 Yes Barbara Hilton
Come On, Marines! 1934 Yes Esther Smith-Hamilton
Ready for Love 1934 Yes Marigold Tate
Paris in Spring 1935 Yes Mignon de Charelle
Smart Girl 1935 Yes Pat Reynolds
Peter Ibbetson 1935 Yes Agnes
La Fiesta de Santa Barbara 1935, Herself Short film made in Technicolor, with celebrities appearing as themselves
Anything Goes 1936 Yes Hope Harcourt
One Rainy Afternoon 1936 Yes Monique Pelerin
Yours for the Asking 1936 Yes Gert Malloy
The Gay Desperado 1936 Yes Jane
Sea Devils 1937 Yes Doris Malone
Let’s Get Married 1937 Yes Paula Quinn
Artists and Models 1937 Yes Paula Sewell / Paula Monterey
Fight for Your Lady 1937 Yes Marietta
The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt 1939 Yes Val Carson
The Lady and the Mob 1939 Yes Lila Thorne
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1939 Yes Ann Brandon
The Light That Failed 1939 Yes Bessie Broke
Screen Snapshots Series 18, No. 6 1939 Yes Herself Promotional short film
They Drive by Night 1940 Yes Lana Carlsen
High Sierra 1941 Yes Marie
The Sea Wolf 1941 Yes Ruth Webster
Out of the Fog 1941 Yes Stella Goodwin
Ladies in Retirement 1941 Yes Ellen Creed
Moontide 1942 Yes Anna
Life Begins at Eight-Thirty 1942 Yes Kathy Thomas
The Hard Way 1943 Yes Mrs. Helen Chernen, NY Film Critics, Best Actress
Forever and a Day 1943 Yes Jenny
Thank Your Lucky Stars 1943 Yes Herself
In Our Time 1944, Jennifer Whittredge
Hollywood Canteen 1944 Yes Herself
Pillow to Post 1945 Yes Jean Howard
Devotion 1946 Yes Emily Brontë
The Man I Love 1947 Yes Petey Brown
Deep Valley 1947 Yes Libby Saul
Escape Me Never 1947 Yes Gemma Smith
Road House 1948 Yes Lily Stevens
Lust for Gold 1949, Julia Thomas
Not Wanted 1949, Uncredited (completed film started by Elmer Clifton); also co-writer, producer
Never Fear 1950, malso co-writer, producer
Woman in Hiding 1950, Deborah Chandler Clark
Outrage 1950 Yes Country Dance Attendee Yes Uncredited cameo as actress
Hard, Fast and Beautiful 1951 Yes Seabright Tennis Match Supervisor Yes Uncredited cameo as actress
On the Loose 1951 Yes Narrator Voice, Uncredited
On Dangerous Ground 1952 Yes Mary Malden
Beware, My Lovely 1952 Yes Mrs. Helen Gordon
The Hitch-Hiker 1953 Yes also co-writer
Jennifer 1953 Yes Agnes Langley
The Bigamist 1953 Yes Phyllis Martin Yes
Private Hell 36 1954 Yes Lilli Marlowe also co-writer
Women’s Prison 1955 Yes Amelia van Zandt
The Big Knife 1955 Yes Marion Castle
While the City Sleeps 1956 Yes Mildred Donner
Strange Intruder 1956 Yes Alice Carmichael
Teenage Idol 1958 Yes TV movie
The Trouble with Angels 1966 Yes
Women in Chains 1972 Yes Claire Tyson TV movie
Deadhead Miles 1972 Yes Herself
Junior Bonner 1972 Yes Elvira Bonner
The Strangers in 7A 1972 Yes Iris Sawyer TV movie
Female Artillery 1973 Yes Martha Lindstrom TV movie
I Love a Mystery 1973 Yes Randolph Cheyne TV movie
The Letters 1973 Yes Mrs. Forrester TV movie
The Devil’s Rain 1975 Yes Mrs. Presto
The Food of the Gods 1976 Yes Mrs. Skinner
My Boys Are Good Boys 1978 Yes Mrs. Morton Final film role
