Ida lupino biography wikipedia wikipedia

The desert wasteland outside serves as a pitiless counterpoint to the interior claustrophobics, while William Talman — and his malfunctioning eyelid — delivers one the great screen wackos. Parting ways, the production company went wholly independent, self-distributing The Bigamist at profit-crippling expense. Following the dissolution of The Filmakers, Lupino embarked on what would soon become steady employment directing for television.

In fact, with only seven features to her name, the plus episodes of TV she directed make up the vast majority of her body of work behind the camera. Very much a director-for-hire gig, The Trouble with Angels was compromised by the studio deleting several scenes. Skip to content. Louis Hayward November 16, - May 11, divorced. Bridget Duff.

Stanley Lupino. Connie Emerald. Calls everyone "Darling". Her seductive, deep voice. As rigid and tough-minded as Bette Davis , Lupino would often refuse to play a Davis hand-me-down role and was often suspended by Warner Brothers for doing so. It was during those breaks that she learned the craft of directing. Widely respected as a pioneer for women filmmakers, Lupino was the second woman to be admitted to the Director's Guild Dorothy Arzner.

She was also the only woman to have directed an episode of the series. She was an active board member of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Richard Boone told columnist Erskine Johnson in about her skills as a director, "Ida stimulates me as an actor because she knows acting. In a weekly show, you get into acting patterns. Ida's portrayal of Lana Carson, a bored wife who falls for a boozy truck driver but is driven insane by his infidelities, prompted Newsweek to point out to its readers: "Every so often, Hollywood discovers Ida Lupino.

This time, she will undoubtedly stay discovered. She played hard women, sympathetic women, scatterbrained women, and murderous women for Warner's, but all along she knew she was, as she described herself, "a poor man's Bette Davis. I used to ask if I could sit in the cutting room, and I'd see how a film was put together. And … you learn why a director asked you to do such and such.

Lupino made her decision to explore other areas of the business at a fortuitous time. Hollywood was just then entering a period of nervous conservatism, partly due to impending government anti-trust investigations and partly due to Senator Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee , which would produce the infamous "black list" of writers, directors, and actors suspected of Communist sympathies.

Many of them would be forced to either retire from the business or seek work overseas. As a result of all the scrutiny, the major Hollywood studios were wary of anything that might appear to be outside what a later age would term "American family values," and it would be up to a growing number of independent filmmakers to handle serious social issues on the screen.

British actress-singer. The decision to leave Warner's was just the first of several major events in Lupino's personal and professional life. She became a naturalized American citizen in June , and later that year married Collier Young, an executive at Columbia Pictures her earlier marriage to Louis Hayward had ended in divorce in Like Lupino, Young wanted to expand his professional horizons and thought he had the script with which to do it—a gritty social melodrama written by Marvin Wald The Naked City called Not Wanted , the story of a young woman who has a child out of wedlock, gives it up for adoption, then tries to regain her baby through a kidnap plot.

Young tried to interest Columbia in the script, but given the controversial subject matter, the studio refused. Almost at the same time, Lupino met Anson Bond, the wealthy heir to a chain of men's clothing stores, who agreed to finance the picture. Only days into the shoot, however, Clifton suffered a heart attack , and, because there was no money to hire a new director, Lupino stepped in and put her Warner Bros.

The film featured two unknown actors, Sally Forrest and Keefe Brasselle, and, because Emerald Productions lacked a distribution deal with a large studio, played in a limited number of theaters. Nonetheless, it was noticed. Its dirty children, dilapidated porches, and stuffy hall bedrooms are authentically grimy; its dialogue often catches the nagging overtones of everyday frustration and defeat.

Emerald Productions was renamed The Filmakers, with Young as president, Lupino as vice-president, and Wald as treasurer Bond had dropped out of the partnership after its first film. Never Fear was the company's next production, and the first picture to bear Lupino's name as director. She and Young wrote the script, about a nightclub performer who is stricken with polio, and Ida once again cast Forrest and Brasselle as her two leads.

The new arrangement with RKO wasn't yet in effect, however, and the film suffered from an erratic release pattern, even after it was more sympathetically renamed The Young Lovers and re-released. It went virtually unnoticed. Next came The Filmakers' most controversial picture, 's Outrage , which tackled the taboo subject of rape. This time, Lupino made sure she was working with a bigger budget, and hired Mala Powers —who was just making a name for herself—as her heroine.

Lupino would later identify Outrage as the film in which she matured as a director, both technically and stylistically. The critics were respectful, if not enthusiastic. But," he added, "they are merely doing just that, and nothing more. Late in , Lupino and Collier Young were divorced, although they would maintain a close professional relationship for many years to come, with Collier remaining as producer on her pictures.

The next year, she married actor Howard Duff, with whom she had worked as an actress during her Warner years. The couple had a daughter, Bridget, in Throughout these upheavals in her personal life, however, Lupino kept working. Early in her pregnancy, she acted for the first time in one of her own films—released in as Beware, My Lovely , a two-character thriller in which she is terrorized by a psychopathic handyman, played by Robert Ryan.

The picture was conveniently shot in Lupino's home. The next year brought The Filmakers' most successful film, The Hitch-Hiker , a taut little drama about two men on a fishing vacation who are kidnapped by an escaped convict. Lupino would consider it her best directing effort; audiences and critics agreed. The Hitch-Hiker is still considered a classic of 's Hollywood film noir.

Almost as successful was The Bigamist , in which Lupino again doubled as director and actress, playing opposite Joan Fontaine who had become the second Mrs. Lupino also directed more than episodes of television shows in a variety of genres, including westerns, supernatural tales, situation comedies, murder mysteries, and gangster stories. 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 — , who also became an actress and dancer.

Ida lupino biography wikipedia wikipedia

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.

She felt that she was pushed into the profession due to her family history. Lupino made her first film appearance in The Love Race 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 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". 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 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.

Lupino starred in over a dozen films in the mids, working with Columbia in a two-film deal, one of which, The Light That Failed , was a role she acquired after running into the director's office unannounced, demanding an audition. As a result, her parts improved during the s, and she jokingly referred to herself as "the poor man's Bette Davis ", taking the roles that Davis refused.

Mark Hellinger , associate producer at Warner Bros. The film did well and the critical consensus was that Lupino stole the movie, particularly in her unhinged courtroom scene. 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. Eventually, a tentative rapprochement was brokered, but her relationship with the studio remained strained. After the drama Deep Valley finished shooting, neither Warner Bros. She starred in On Dangerous Ground in , 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. Creating it yourself, not just parading in front of a camera". She and her then-husband, producer and writer Collier Young , formed an independent company, The Filmakers Inc. Her first directing job came unexpectedly in when director Elmer Clifton suffered a mild heart attack and was unable to finish Not Wanted , a film Lupino co-produced and co-wrote.

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. Never Fear , a film about polio, which she had personally experienced at age 16 , was her first director's credit. 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.

Lupino once called herself a "bulldozer" to secure financing for her production company, but she referred to herself as "mother" while on set. She said of her refusal to renew her contract with Warner Bros. 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. Although directing became Lupino's passion, she continued acting to make enough money to make her own productions. 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. The Filmakers production company ceased operations in , and Lupino turned almost immediately to television, directing episodes of more than thirty US TV series from through She also directed a feature film in , the Catholic schoolgirl comedy The Trouble With Angels , released in , starring Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell ; this was Lupino's last theatrical film as a director.

She also continued acting, going on to a successful television career throughout the s and s. Lupino's career as a director continued through After the demise of The Filmakers, Lupino continued working as an actress until the end of the s, mainly in television. 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.

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 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. 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. 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. 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 , "Hollywood careers are perishable commodities", and sought to avoid such a fate for herself. Lupino was diagnosed with polio in The New York Times reported that the outbreak of polio within the Hollywood community was due to contaminated swimming pools. Her experience with the disease gave her the courage to focus on her intellectual abilities over simply her physical appearance.

If that body was paralyzed, my brain could still work industriously