Suspended by Warner Bros., Ida Lupino used the time to learn directing
Studio suspensions were meant to punish actors who turned down roles. For Ida Lupino they became film school: stuck idle on set, she studied filming and editing, then founded her own company. In 1953 she directed The Hitch-Hiker, the only classic-era film noir made by a woman.
Lupino was born in London in 1918 into a theatrical dynasty; her great-grandfather was an acrobatic clown from a family of Italian puppeteers, and her father, the comedian Stanley Lupino, built an outdoor theatre for his daughters. She wrote a play at seven and knew Shakespeare's leading female roles by ten. She wanted to write, but trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to please her father, and by 14 was acting in films, usually cast as the bad girl. Paramount signed her after spotting her in Money for Speed (1933).
Her breakthrough came when she burst into William Wellman's office uninvited to demand an audition for The Light That Failed (1939). At Warner Bros. she stole They Drive by Night (1940) from its stars and won the New York Film Critics Circle award for The Hard Way (1943). But she kept rejecting weak scripts and rewriting lines, and spent long stretches on suspension. She left in 1947 after refusing a four-year exclusive deal.
In 1948 she and her husband Collier Young set up The Filmakers to make low-budget films about social problems, shot in about two weeks for under $200,000. Her first directing job was unplanned: when Elmer Clifton had a mild heart attack during Not Wanted (1949), about pregnancy outside marriage, she finished it and declined the credit. Never Fear drew on her own bout of polio at 16. Outrage (1950) dealt with rape without ever using the word. Howard Hughes liked her work enough to finance and distribute three features through RKO while leaving her full control.
She was a frugal operator, borrowing sets, placing brands such as Coca-Cola and Cadillac in shots, and filming in MacArthur Park and Chinatown to avoid rental fees. Her chair read Mother of Us All. She later directed more than 100 television episodes, and remains the only woman to have directed an episode of the original Twilight Zone.
Source: Ida Lupino
