Italian American Heritage Month: Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino

Ida was born in London to a show business family.

In 1932, her mother took Ida with her to an audition and young Ida actually got the part her mother wanted. The picture was Her First Affaire (1932). Ida, a bleached blonde, went to Hollywood in 1934 playing small, insignificant parts.

Peter Ibbetson (1935) was one of her few noteworthy movies and it was not until The Light That Failed (1939) that she got a chance to get better parts. In many of her movies, she was cast as the hard, but sympathetic woman from the wrong side of the tracks. In The Sea Wolf (1941) and High Sierra (1941), she played the part magnificently. It has been said that no one could do hard-luck dames the way Lupino could do them

She played tough, knowing characters who held their own against some of the biggest leading men of the day - Humphrey Borgat, Ronald Coleman, John Garfield and Edward G. Robinson. She then made a handful of films during the forties playing different characters ranging from Pillow to Post (1945), where she played a traveling saleswoman to the tough nightclub singer in The Man I Love (1946). But good roles for women were hard to get and there were many young actresses and established stars competing for those roles.

So, she left Warner Brothers in 1947 and set out as a freelance actress. When better roles did not materialize, Ida Lupino became a trailblazer for all women as she stepped behind the camera as a director, writer and producer. Her first directing job came when director Elmer Clifton fell ill on a script that she co-wrote Not Wanted (1949). Ida had joked that as an actress, she was the poor man's Bette Davis. Now, she said that as a director, she became the poor man's Don Siegel.

The films that she wrote, or directed, or appeared in during the fifties were mostly inexpensive melodramas. She later turned to television where she directed episodes in shows such as The Untouchables (1959) and The Fugitive (1963). In the seventies, she made guest appearances on various television show and appeared in small parts in a few movies.

Ida Lupino was a member of the Lupino theatrical dynasty dating back to the Italian Renaissance and she was also the first woman to direct a film noir, The Hitch-Hiker, which also had an all-male cast (1953); the only woman to direct episodes of the original Twilight Zone television series and the only director to star in the show. Quite an accomplished star!