Ida Lupino

Ida LupinoNBC Radio [Public domain]Ida Lupino first started out as an actress and became the only female Hollywood director during the late nineteen forties and fifties. She also produced and directed movies, and wrote screenplays for television and films. Her accomplishments and tenacity are astounding, especially for a woman who made a living in a profession that used to be controlled by men. Nowadays her impact in the motion picture industry is not widely remembered. Ida Lupino must not be forgotten; she is a true hero for breaking the barriers of which jobs should be run by men and women. Also, she worked hard to achieve success in her profession. She stood alone as the only woman triumphant in the directing business. Ida Lupino should not be looked upon with indifference, but with the utmost regard and respect as a female legacy.

On the 4th of February in 1918, Ida Lupino was born in London, England. She attended the Clarence House School in Sussex and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London while growing up. In 1932 she had a debut leading film role as an actress in many British films. In these movies, her roles required her to look older than her actual age, with heavy makeup and bleached blond hair. As she once put it, “Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen... I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.” Within the next year, in 1933, she got her big break in American films under a contract with Paramount Studios. She played small roles in films such as Peter Ibbetson (1935), Anything Goes (1936), and Artists and Models (1937). Unhappy with the way her career was going, she left Paramount Studios in 1937. Ida Lupino was under a contract with Warner Brothers from 1940 to 1947. This was where Lupino was given a chance to be a lead in a major movie, called “The Light That Failed” (1939). Her co-star for this movie was Ronald Colman. Supposedly, she stole the script to this movie, memorized a scene from the script, and busted into the director's, William Wellman’s, office, forcing him to give her an opportunity to audition. This was a difficult role for Ida Lupino to play and Colman did not want Lupino to star with him at first because he was hoping to act with the famous actress Vivien Leigh. With hard work, Ida Lupino managed to make an impression on Colman and the movie critics who gave raving reviews about her performance. Mary G. Hurd states in her book Women Directors that it “introduced Lupino’s signature acting style which emerged as a cynical outwardly tough persona.” Ida Lupino was famous for playing tough-girl roles and was typecast, as she put it, as “the poor man’s Bette Davis” and "Queen of the B's.” "They Drive by Night" (1940) and "High Sierra" (1941), for which she co-starred with Humphrey Bogart, were two of her most famous films. Lupino was the Recipient for the New York Film Critics Best Actress in 1943.

Ida Lupino became interested in directing in the middle of the nineteen forties. When she left Warner Brothers in 1947, Ida Lupino decided to look into other careers in the filming industry and to not be attached to any one studio. She watched how directors worked on movie sets. She became friends with many of them and learned their techniques. It was her inability to attain a steady acting career that made her turn to directing and producing films. “'For about eighteen months in the mid-forties, I could not get a job [as an actress] in pictures. I was on suspension,' said Ida. 'When you turned down something you were suspended. I had to do something to fill up my time.'” She was tired of waiting by sets for films while “someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work.” From this experience, Lupino decided to try directing and producing movies, television shows and creating screenplays on her own. In 1949 she got her first directing job when Elmer Clifton suffered a mild heart attack. Elmer Clifton was the director of the independent feature called “Not Wanted,” prompting Ida Lupino, who was the film’s producer as well, to finish the rest of the movie. He died shortly afterwards within the same year, but he became inadvertently responsible for her directing debut. When Ida Lupino stepped in, she became Hollywood’s only female film director ever. She created The Emerald Productions, which later came to be called the Filmmakers, with her then-husband, Collier Young. "Where there is human courage, there is drama... When everyday people fight for life and love, you have the very essence of heroism. I tried to capture this in every film I directed,” said Lupino. Most of the films she directed where ones she produced as well. They dealt with controversial issues such as rape, bigamy, polio, and unwed motherhood. Most of these topics in movies were rarely raised in American society at the time.

Ida Lupino wrote over a dozen movies and teleplays, which are plays adapted for television programs. Lupino fell into screenwriting by chance. Making her first appearance as an actress on CBS Television’s “Four Star Playhouse” in December of 1953, it was three years later when Lupino was commissioned to direct and write the script of an episode called “NO.5 Checked Out.” After an increase of writers coming to her for editing help with episodes from many different series on television, Lupino established a reputation as the most active woman working behind the cameras over the next couple decades in the entertainment industry. The most famous movie she wrote was called “The Hitchhiker.” She directed this as well. "The Hitchhiker" is about two friends that hunt together, and they happen to pick up a mysterious hitchhiker. She continued to make and direct films from 1950 to 1980. Lupino was a producer, screenwriter, director and actress for “Not Wanted” that same year, and “Never Fear” which she made in 1950. Most of her movies delved into psychological issues, portraying misfits, lost people, problem women and other outcasts. These were hit movies in the 1950s. She worked exclusively in television from 1957 to 1966.

Ida Lupino manned four jobs at once with great effort, and it was very rare for women to hold all of those positions of power. She followed her dreams and produced movies that were different from what other film makers did. On August 3, 1995 she died in Burbank, California. She was able to produce movies and remained outstanding, skilled and successful all during her long-time occupation, despite how the filming industry was dominated by men. “I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers. Today it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power . . I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented woman if the subject matter were right.” -Ida Lupino