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Ida Lupino: Directors
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In the 1950’s, Ida Lupino was the only female director in Hollywood, and was only the second woman to be inducted into the Director’s Guild (the first being Dorothy Arzner). Her films were not block-busters and at the time were not critical successes, but they featured strong women and touched upon subjects that could not even be named – her film Outrage (1950) was about rape and its aftermath on the victim. Although her directing career moved into television by the late 1950s and she would only direct one other motion picture The Trouble with Angels (1966), Ida Lupino’s career helped to break down barriers for women in Hollywood.
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At a time when women were all but shut out of the Hollywood power structure, the actress Ida Lupino used her clout as a leading lady to develop and direct her own films. Recognition was not forthcoming. When Andrew Sarris imported the French "auteur theory" to pen The American Cinema (1968), he gave the pioneering actress-turned-director only half a page. (Otto Preminger got four.) In fact, Sarris wrote no more than one sentence about Lupino before reviewing the status of two dozen other women directors as footnotes--and without acknowledging his own role in their fate.
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While her film acting career waned in the 1950s, Ida Lupino found work as a director. She did a lot of television, helming such shows as Have Gun, Will Travel; Thriller; The Untouchables; Bewitched; and Daniel Boone. Lupino ... made numerous television guest appearances on many popular series, including Bonanza, The Virginian, Batman, The Mod Squad, Police Woman, and Charlie’s Angels.
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Ida Lupino's career in television plays much like a rerun of her career in the cinema. Originally charting her course in each medium primarily as an actress, she apparently fell into directing as a matter of circumstance. Making her debut on CBS Television's Four Star Playhouse in December of 1953 as a performer, it was not until three years later that Lupino was commissioned to direct an episode for Screen Directors Playhouse, "No. 5 Checked Out," for which she ... wrote the script. Eventually, after more frequent invitations to helm episodes from a variety of series, Lupino would, over the course of the next 15 years, establish a reputation as the most active woman working behind the cameras during this formative period in television's history.
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When she could not find film acting jobs, Lupino worked on radio and wrote short stories, scripts, and even music. In the late forties, in partnership with her second husband, Collier Young, she embarked upon a new phase of her career—producing independent features with social issues as themes. When the director of their inaugural effort (1949’s Not Wanted, with a script cowritten by Lupino) fell ill during filming, Lupino took over. She directed five more similarly noirish features, including The Hitch-Hiker, and became the second woman admitted into the Directors Guild. She is sometimes referred to as “The Queen of the B’s” for this body of directorial work, which has been much examined by film scholars.
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I[D]a was born in London on February 4, 1918, a member of a family of entertainers for many generations. Her father Stanley was a very famous stage comedian, her mother Connie an actress as well. From a very early age, against her family's wishes, Ida worked very hard to become an actress. She was picked by visiting American film director Allan Dwan for a part her mother had attempted. After several minor roles, Ida came to the United States to play in Alice in Wonderland. She was simply too mature and sexy at 16 and the studio decided to create another Jean Harlow, platinum hair and
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