IDA as a director: Behind the camera                                      ACTRESS, DIRECTOR and AUTHOR - IDA LUPINO

AS AN ACTRESS  :

        Ida was born in London in 1918, the daughter of stage performer Stanley LUPINO. In her early twenties she was in HOLLYWOOD working as an actress. Even though she worked with great directors like Raoul Walsh, Allan Dwan and Robert Aldrich, she put a hold on her career as actress to dedicate herself to her real passion : directing feature films.

AS A DIRECTOR :

Forming her independent production in 1949, she started making films with social themes, treating intelligent and serious issues  such as taboo matters of bigamy, wedlock, domineering parents, schizophrenia and women as the under-dogs in society.

As the only female director in the late forties and early fifties, she gleaned on her own experience of the roles she had previously as a 'problem woman' and paid attention to the simple nature of her photography, inspired by the Italian neo-realistic school and Rossellini, who she was impressed with.

Her frankness is depicting women as victims won her sympathy from American audiences and her low-budget works actually were successful in box-office revenues.

AS AN AUTHOR :    

No doubt, her finest achievements were her early feature films where she called the shots and wrote her own screenplays with Collier Young, her second husband. In her television work, she was not free to chose her own subjects nor scripts as television was controlled by the producers. These more stereotyped action plots were therefore evident in what she signed in programs like THE UNTOUCHABLES, THE FUGITIVE or GILLIGANS ISLAND.

After making 6 critical successes under her 'THE FILMAKERS' banner, by the mid-fifties her activities dwindled down to television production where her action-style programs earned her the nickname of 'female Hitch'.

Furthermore, her working relationship with her actors and actresses from whom she wrenched the very performances she wanted through cooing and cajoling them, got her the reputation of 'Mother of Us All', written on the back of her chair, in esteem and reveration.