Ida Lupino Movies
4 videos • 135 views • by Donald P. Borchers Ida Lupino (1918-1995) was a British 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" (1953). 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. 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 an early age. He built a backyard theatre for Lupino and her sister Rita (1921–2016), who also became an actress and dancer. Lupino wrote her first play at age seven and toured with a traveling theatre company as a child. By the age of ten, Lupino had memorized 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. 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. Dubbed "the English Jean Harlow", she was discovered by Paramount in "Money for Speed" (1933), playing a good girl/bad girl dual role. Lupino claimed the talent scouts saw her play only the sweet girl in the film 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 did get a 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, her parts improved during the 1940s, and she jokingly referred to herself as "the poor man's Bette Davis", taking the roles that Davis refused. 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. In 1942, she rejected an offer to star with Ronald Reagan in "Kings Row", and was immediately put on suspension at the studio. Eventually, a tentative rapprochement was brokered, but her relationship with the studio remained strained. After the drama "Deep Valley" (1947) finished shooting, neither Warner Bros. nor Lupino moved to renew her contract and she left the studio in 1947. Lupino then appeared for 20th Century Fox as a nightclub singer in the film noir "Road House" (1948), performing her musical numbers in the film. She starred in "On Dangerous Ground" (1951), and may have taken on some of the directing tasks of the film while director Nicholas Ray was ill. While on suspension, Lupino had ample time to observe filming and editing processes, and she became interested in directing. 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". Her first directing job came unexpectedly when director Elmer Clifton suffered a mild heart attack and was unable to finish "Not Wanted" (1949), 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 a vast amount of publicity, and she was invited to discuss the film with Eleanor Roosevelt on a national radio program. Lupino has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for contributions to the fields of television and film.