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If Samuel Fuller has a female counterpart it would have been Ida Lupino. A pioneering female filmmaker, she carved out her own world out of a raw cinematic wilderness . She took instead of waiting to have someone or some male hand it to her. To me she was a stock actor in Hollywood and it was all that she was . But her own movies should not obscure Ida Lupino the actress. She knew how to play routine roles and play them well. But there are a few occasions when she had an out-of-the-ordinary part, and then she was riveting.<\/p>\n
In the Hollywood of the forties and fifties, women directors (with the exception of Dorothy Arzner) did not exist. Ida Lupino, daughter of Birtish musical legend Stanley Lupino was the exception. On screen she consistently presented compelling performance in films like High Sierra and They Drive By Night. Bu in the late ’40s, as a result of a lull in her career as a result of a studio suspension director, she searched for what she called \u201cinteresting work\u201d with her then husband Collier Young she formed \u201cThe Filmakers\u201d, then she went to work making socially relevant exploitation fare. <\/p>\n
She initially just produced films like , Young Widow and The Judge . The Filmakers Company began work on the film \u201cNot Wanted\u201d its director Elmer Clifton suffered a near fatal heart attack on the third day of filming. Ida Lupino lunged at the opportunity to take his place behind the camera took and in the golden Hollywood tradition of the show must go on the filming continued. <\/p>\n
Between 1949 through 1953, Ida Lupino directed six movies, a noir-ish collection of morality tales of films. Made for small budgets Lupino transcended her budget limitation by giving the audience raw stories and transcendant camera movement. Lupino abandoned Hollywood glamour, for her subjects were common people\u2014door to door salesmen, short order cooks and long shoremen. Her character brush revealed masterful direction of subjects that Hollywood often would ignore.
\nLupino continued acting over the next here decades, and her directing efforts during these years were all her directorial efforts were on such wildly diverse TV shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, The Twilight Zone, Have Gun \u2013 Will Travel, The Donna Reed Show, Gilligan’s Island, 77 Sunset Strip, The Investigators, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, The Rifleman, The Virginian, Batman, Sam Benedict, Bonanza, The Untouchables, The Fugitive, Columbo, Family Affair, and Bewitched.<\/p>\n
Lupino often joked that if she had been the “poor man’s Bette Davis” as an actress, then she had become the “poor man’s Don Siegel” as a director <\/p>\n
After battling cancer, Ida Lupino died on August 3, 1995, in Burbank, California.