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Ida Lupino
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Although Ida Lupino was the first (and perhaps only) woman director during the early years of American television production, it is odd that she is rarely referenced as a "ground breaker" for other women entering the industry. Unlike Lucille Ball, Loretta Young, Joan Davis, and other women who were involved as producers in early television programming, Lupino had little creative control over the programs she directed. To contextualize Lupino's role as a director in relation to other women working contemporaneously as producers is not meant to suggest... that a critical analysis of Lupino's work is irrelevant to television history and feminist inquiry. What remains significant about Lupino as a "woman director" was her unique ability to succeed in an occupation which was (and still is) dominantly coded as "masculine." Constructed as an outsider and an anomaly, Lupino as a TV director was more often than not represented merely as a woman, her directorial skill either de-emphasized or ignored altogether in the popular press.
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Co-starring Robert Preston and Ida Lupino in "excellent, well-turned" (Variety) performances, Junior Bonner is "an extraordinarily graceful yet unflinching rendering of a slice of Americana" (Los Angeles Times). With his bronco-busting career on its last legs, Junior Bonner (McQueen) heads to his hometown to try his luck in the annual rodeo. But his fond childhood memories are shattered when he finds his family torn apart by his greedy brother and hard-drinking father. Now Junior must break the wildest bull in the West to bring his family togetherfor one final moment of cowboy glory in the roughest, rowdiest ride of his life!
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The second woman to be admitted to the Directors Guild of America (following Dorothy Arzner), Ida Lupino has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the fields of television and motion pictures. They are located at 1724 Vine Street and 6821 Hollywood Boulevard.
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London-born actress/director/screenwriter Ida Lupino came from a family of performers. She played small parts in Hollywood films through the 1930s until she starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra (1941), which led to bigger roles in films of the '40s. Early on, she appeared in Peter Ibbetson (1935), Anything Goes (1936), Artists and Models (1937), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), and The Light That Failed (1939), among others. Later, she appeared in Ladies in Retirement (1941), The Sea Wolf (1941), Life Begins at Eight-Thirty (1942), and Forever and a Day (1943), and continued performing on into the 1960s, but not in major films. Starting with Not Wanted (1949), which she ... co-wrote, she became the only female movie director of her time. She specialized in dramatic and suspense films, including Never Fear (1949), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), The Bigamist (1953), and the comedy The Trouble with Angels (1966).
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Ida Lupino occupies a rare place in the history of cinema. Not only was she an actress, but she ... wrote, directed, and produced movies in an era when it was rare for a woman to hold that kind of position and power. Born into a British acting dynasty, Lupino came to Hollywood in the '30s. Her acting roles in many films brought her fame long before she began working behind the camera in the 1950s. The program presents clips from Lupino's films and television show, as well as the recollections of colleagues, family, and friends. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide
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Although Ida Lupino is best known as a leading actress in many Hollywood B movies, her work as a filmmaker has been neglected by critics, historians, and audiences. In the late 1940s, Lupino turned writer, producer, and director in her own independent production company. The films she made, beginning with Not Wanted in 1949, were low-budget pictures taking an uncompromising approach to controversial subject matter -- unmarried motherhood, disability, rape, bigamy. Lupino is exceptional as the only woman to have directed a visible body of films in the male-dominated Hollywood of the 1950s. The continuation of that directorial career in television throughout the 1960s strengthens the claim that Lupino is the most prolific and creatively powerful woman director ever to have worked in the moving image industry.
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Ida Lupino