Ida Lupino (4 February 1918 – 3 August 1995) Was An English-American Film Actress And Director, And

Ida Lupino (4 February 1918 – 3 August 1995) was an English-American film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her forty-eight-year career, she appeared in fifty-nine films and directed seven others. She co-wrote and co-produced some of her own films as well. She appeared in serial television programmes fifty-eight times and directed fifty other episodes. Additionally, she contributed as a writer to five films and four TV episodes. She and her husband Collier Young formed an independent company, The Filmakers, and Lupino became a producer, director and screenwriter of low-budget, issue-oriented films.

In an article for the Village Voice, Carrie Rickey wrote that Lupino was a model of modern feminist filmmaking: “Not only did Lupino take control of production, direction and screenplay, but each of her movies addresses the brutal repercussions of sexuality, independence and dependence.”

After four “woman’s” films about social issues – including Outrage (1950), a film about rape – Lupino directed her first hard-paced, fast-moving film, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), making her the first woman to direct a film noir. Writer Richard Koszarski noted: “Her films display the obsessions and consistencies of a true auteur…. In her films The Bigamist and The Hitch-Hiker Lupino was able to reduce the male to the same sort of dangerous, irrational force that women represented in most male-directed examples of Hollywood film noir.” x