Ida Lupino - Directing Career

Directing Career

In the mid-1940s, while on suspension for turning down a role, Lupino became interested in directing. Her time on suspension allowed her to spend her time observing the filming and editing processes, which would aid her in her directorial endeavors. She described herself as being bored on set while "someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work."She co-wrote and co-produced some of her own films as well. 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. This company would go on to produce 12 feature films, six of which she directed or co-directed, five of which she wrote or co-wrote, three of which she acted in, and 1 of which she co-produced. Lupino claims she “…did not set out to be a director,” but it was a reality she had to face when her first directing job came unexpectedly in 1949 when Elmer Clifton suffered a mild heart attack and could not finish Not Wanted, a film she co-produced and co-wrote. Lupino stepped in to finish the film but did not take directorial credit out of respect of Clifton. Although the subject of the film was controversial, it received a vast amount of publicity. She was even invited to discuss the film with Eleanor Roosevelt on a national radio programme. She went on to direct her own projects, becoming Hollywood's only female film director of the time and the first actress to produce, direct and write her own product.

In an article for the Village Voice, Carrie Rickey wrote that Lupino was a model of modern feminist filmmaking, stating:

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 that:

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.

Lupino often joked that if she had been the "poor man's Bette Davis" as an actress, then she had become the "poor man's Don Siegel" as a director. In 1952, Lupino was invited to become the "fourth star" in Four Star Productions by Dick Powell, David Niven and Charles Boyer, after Joel McCrea and Rosalind Russell had dropped out of the company.

Because she was a female director, her studio emphasized her femininity, often at the urging of Lupino herself. As one professor puts it “…Lupino’s cinematic tenure can be understood as a varied and complex attempt to control both image and image reception.” She even credited her refusal to renew her contract with Warner Bros. under the pretences of her domesticity, claiming “I had decided that nothing lay ahead of me but the life of the neurotic star with no family and no home.” She wanted to seem unthreatening in a male dominated environment, which is made clear by a statement she made in which she says, “That’s where being a man makes a great deal of difference. I don’t suppose the men particularly care about leaving their wives and children. During the vacation period the wife can always fly over and be with him. It’s difficult for a wife to say to her husband, come sit on the set and watch,” in regards to the benefit of being a male director. Although directing became Lupino’s passion, the drive for money kept her on camera, so that she could acquire the appropriate funds to make her own productions.