Ida Lupino

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 paralysis by 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.[3] 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.[4] 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").[5]

Ida Lupino studied at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Brighton Girls and Professional Children's School. The recorded working language is English. Employment is recorded with Warner Bros. Distinctions recorded are Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress and star on Hollywood Walk of Fame.

• Name — Ida Lupino • Born — 4 February 1918 • Birthplace — Herne Hill, Surrey, England • Died — 3 August 1995 • Place of death — Los Angeles, California, US • Citizenship — * United Kingdom • United States • Education — Royal Academy of Dramatic Art[11][12] • Occupation — * Actress • director • writer • producer • Years Active — 1931–1978 • Political Party — Democratic • Children — 1 • Mother — Connie Emerald • Father — Stanley Lupino • Family — Lupino

• Illustration — 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.[6] Her great-grandfather George Hook Lupino (1828–1902) was an acrobatic clown[7] descended from an Italian family of puppeteers.[8] Her father, a top name in musical comedy in the UK, encouraged her to perform at an early age, building an outdoor theatre for her and her sister Rita (1921–2016), who also became an actress and dancer. Ida wrote her first play at age seven and toured with a travelling theatre company as a child.[9] By the age of ten Lupino had memorised the leading female roles in Shakespeare's plays. After all this training and experience in theatre acting, Ida's uncle Lupino Lane assisted her in moving toward film acting by getting her work as a background actress at British International Studios.[10] Ida wanted to be a writer but, in order to please her father, enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She excelled in a number of "bad girl" film roles, often playing prostitutes;[13] however, she did not enjoy being an actress. Lupino was uncomfortable with many of the early parts she was given and felt she was pushed into the profession due to her family history.[14]

• Illustration — 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.[15] 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". 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 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.[16] 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. She then worked at Columbia Pictures in a two-film deal in 1939, and at 20th Century-Fox in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939), after which she returned to Paramount for an important role in The Light That Failed (1939). This was a role she acquired after running into director William Wellman'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 a dramatic actress. As a result, her parts improved during the 1940s and her stardom grew. Mark Hellinger, associate producer at Warner Bros., was impressed by Lupino's performance in The Light That Failed, and hired her for the femme-fatale role in the Raoul Walsh-directed They Drive by Night (1940), opposite stars 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.[17] Warner Bros. offered her a contract which she negotiated to include some freelance rights. She worked with Walsh and Bogart again in High Sierra (1941), where she impressed critic Bosley Crowther in her role as an "adoring moll".[18] Her performance in The Hard Way (1943) won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. She starred in Pillow to Post (1945), which was her only comedic leading role. Although in demand throughout the 1940s, she arguably never became a major star although she often had top billing in her pictures, above actors such as Humphrey Bogart, and was repeatedly critically lauded for her realistic, direct 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 Bros. suspended.[19] 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. A year later, she appeared for 20th Century Fox as a nightclub singer in the film noir Road House, performing her musical numbers in the film. She starred in On Dangerous Ground in 1951.

• Illustration — Lupino in 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.[33] 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.[34]

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."[35] 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.[36] 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 his biography of Lupino, said "The solutions to the character's problems within the films were often conventional, even conservative, more reinforcing the 1950s' ideology than undercutting it." Ahead of her time within the studio system, Lupino was intent on creating films that were 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."[37] 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."[38] 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.

Lupino was diagnosed with polio in 1934.[39][40] The New York Times reported that the outbreak of polio within the Hollywood community was due to contaminated swimming pools.[41] 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.[42] 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." Film magazines from the 1930s and 1940s, such as The Hollywood Reporter and Motion Picture Daily, frequently published updates on her condition.[43] Lupino worked for various nonprofit organizations to raise funds for polio research.[44] 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.[45]

She supported the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

Lupino was married and divorced three times. She married actor Louis Hayward in November 1938. They separated in May 1944 and divorced in May 1945.[48][49] 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.[50] Lupino's third and final marriage was to actor Howard Duff, whom she wed on 21 October 1951.[51] Six months later, they had a daughter, Bridget, on 23 April 1952.[52] They separated in 1966 and divorced in 1983.[53][54] 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.

Lupino died from a stroke while undergoing treatment for colon cancer in Los Angeles on 3 August 1995, at the age of 77.[55] Her memoirs, Ida Lupino: Beyond the Camera, were edited after her death and published by Mary Ann Anderson.[56]

• Illustration — The Hard Way (1943) • 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[61] • 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[62] • Composer Carla Bley paid tribute to Lupino with her jazz composition "Ida Lupino" in 1964.[63] • The Hitch-Hiker and Outrage were inducted into the National Film Registry in 1998 and 2020 respectively.[64] • Starring Ida Lupino, a series on the Criterion Channel in November 2024 starts with Lupino's story, followed by several of her films.[65]

Selected credits as actress and/or director • Title — Year — As actress — Role — As director — Notes • The — 1931 — Yes — 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 — 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 — Yes — Herself — Short film made in Technicolor, with several 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 — 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 — 1939 — Yes — Val Carson • The — 1939 — Yes — Lila Thorne • The — 1939 — Yes — Ann Brandon • The — 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 — 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 — 1943 — Yes — Mrs. Helen Chernen — New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress • Forever and a Day — 1943 — Yes — Jenny • Thank Your Lucky Stars — 1943 — Yes — Herself • In Our Time — 1944 — Yes — Jennifer Whittredge • Hollywood Canteen — 1944 — Yes — Herself • Pillow to Post — 1945 — Yes — Jean Howard • Devotion — 1946 — Yes — Emily Brontë • The — 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 — Yes — Julia Thomas • Not Wanted — 1949 — Yes — Uncredited (completed film started by Elmer Clifton); also co-writer, producer • Never Fear — 1950 — Yes — also co-writer, producer • Woman in Hiding — 1950 — Yes — 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 — 1953 — Yes — also co-writer • Jennifer — 1953 — Yes — Agnes Langley • The — 1953 — Yes — Phyllis Martin — Yes • Private Hell 36 — 1954 — Yes — Lilli Marlowe — also co-writer • Women's Prison — 1955 — Yes — Amelia van Zandt • The — 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 — 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 — 1975 — Yes — Mrs. Preston — Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress • The — 1976 — Yes — Mrs. Skinner • My Boys Are Good Boys — 1978 — Yes — Mrs. Morton — Final film role

As actress and/or director • Title — Year — As actress — Role — As director — Episode • The Ford Television Theatre — 1954 — Yes — Petra Manning — "Marriageable Male" episode aired Feb 25, 1954[66][67] • Mr. Adams and Eve — 1957–1958 — Yes — Eve Adams/Eve Drake — Yes — Main cast (66 episodes); 1 episode 1958[68] • The Twilight Zone — 1959 — Yes — Barbara Jean Trenton — "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" • Bonanza — 1959 — Yes — Annie O'Toole — "The Saga of Annie O'Toole" • Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour — 1959 — Yes — Herself — "Lucy's Summer Vacation" • Death Valley Days — 1960 — Yes — Pamela Mann — "Pamela's Oxen" • The Rifleman — 1961 — Yes — "Assault" • Thriller — 1961 — Yes — "The Last of the Sommervilles" • The Investigators — 1961 — Yes — "Something for Charity" • Kraft Suspense Theatre — 1963 — Yes — Harriet Whitney — "One Step Down" • The Virginian — 1963 — Yes — Helen Blaine — "A Distant Fury" • The Twilight Zone — 1964 — Yes — "The Masks" • Gilligan's Island — 1964 — Yes — "Goodnight, Sweet Skipper" • Gilligan's Island — 1964 — Yes — "Wrongway Feldman" • Bewitched — 1965 — Yes — "A is for Aardvark" • Honey West — 1965 — Yes — "How Brillig, O, Beamish Boy" • Gilligan's Island — 1966 — Yes — "The Producer" • It Takes A Thief — 1968 — Yes — Doctor Schneider — "Turnabout" • Batman — 1968 — Yes — "Doctor Cassandra" Spellcraft — "The Entrancing Dr. Cassandra" • Family Affair — 1969 — Yes — Lady "Maudie" Marchwood — "Maudie" • Family Affair — 1970 — Yes — Lady "Maudie" Marchwood — "Return of Maudie" • Columbo — 1972 — Yes — Roger Stanford's Aunt — "Short Fuse" • The Streets of San Francisco — 1973 — Yes — Wilma Jamison — "Blockade" • Columbo — 1974 — Yes — Mrs. Edna Brown — "Swan Song" • Police Woman — 1975 — Yes — Hilda Morris — "The Chasers" • Charlie's Angels — 1977 — Yes — Gloria Gibson — "I Will Be Remembered"

• 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[69] • 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[70] • 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[71] • 1954 — Lux Radio Theatre — The Star • 1954 — Lux Radio Theatre — So Big • 1959 — Suspense — On a Country Road

Ida Lupino is recorded as having studied at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Brighton Girls and Professional Children's School. Identity and origins. Her recorded language was English. She was the child of Stanley Lupino and Connie Emerald. She married Louis Hayward, Collier Young and Howard Duff.