Ida Lupino

In 1950, the director and actor Ida Lupino (b. 1914, London, England–d. 1995, Los Angeles, California) became the second woman, after Dorothy Arzner, admitted to the Directors Guild of America. She acted in over sixty-four films between 1932 and 1978. As an actor, Lupino was compared to Jean Harlow early in her career, and later identified herself as “the poor man’s Betty Davis,” since she was regularly offered roles that Davis, also under contract to Warner Brothers, refused. She started four production companies beginning in the late 1940s, including Arcadia and Emerald Productions, and later The Filmakers and Bridget Productions. She produced or coproduced at least twelve movies, scripted five, and directed seven feature films (one uncredited) between 1949 and 1953. She directed another, The Trouble with Angels, in 1966. As a director, she called herself “the poor man’s Don Siegel,” and was often identified as “the female Hitch.” Like Siegel, she directed hard-boiled and spare films; like Hitchcock, she capably created suspense and often implied violence but did not show it. Lupino acknowledged the influence of Italian neorealist filmmaking on her work, and in 1950 The Filmakers published a full-page “Declaration of Independents” in Variety to publicly assert their autonomy from mainstream Hollywood. She joined three other actors, David Niven, Dick Powell, and Charles Boyer, in Four Star Productions in 1953, which produced the Four Star Playhouse for CBS. She starred in nineteen Playhouse episodes, writing and performing in six episodes. She directed episodes for at least thirty-three television series from 1955 until 1969, including multiple shows for Have Gun, Will Travel; The Untouchables; Thriller; and Gilligan’s Island. She acted in over one hundred television shows from 1953 until 1977, half of those as the star along with her third husband, Howard Duff, in the popular series Mr. Adams and Eve. She and Duff produced the series through their company, Bridget Productions. Her prolificacy points to her proficiency, but perhaps also obscures Lupino’s remarkable contribution to film history in terms of independent film production, the postwar neorealist aesthetic in Hollywood, and television direction. The fact that she was a woman working behind the camera in the male-dominated entertainment industry makes the relative lack of attention to her oeuvre even more startling. Despite her productivity and skill, her film work has been disparaged as unexceptional and even anti-feminist, a disconcerting accusation given the misogyny implicit in the enforced containment of female agency in classical Hollywood. Ida Lupino’s remarkable output has gained more positive attention since the 1970s. Her work deserves and will reward assiduous reevaluation.