Ida Lupino

' Teddington studios and for Julius Hagen at Twickenham, including in The Ghost Camera with John Mills and I Lived with You with Ivor Novello. She moved to Hollywood at the end of that year for the opportunity to play the lead role in "Alice in Wonderland". (1933) <br /><br /> Lupino starred in over a dozen films in the mid-1930s. She worked with Columbia in a two picture deal, one of which being The Light That Failed (1939), a role she had acquired after running into the director’s office unannounced and demanding an audition. After this performance, she began to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress. As a result, her parts improved during the 1940s, and she described herself as "the poor man's Bette Davis." as she acquired the leftover roles that Bette Davis refused.<br /><br /> Mark Hellinger, associate producer at Warner Bros. was particularly impressed by this performance, and hired her for her next role in They Drive by Night (1940), a film that earned her a Warner’s Bros. contract, which she negotiated to include some free-lance rights. She starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in this film and High Sierra (1941). Warner Bros. received a great amount of defiance from Lupino, who refused roles that she felt were “beneath her dignity as an actress.” As a result, she spent a great deal of her time at Warner Bros. suspended. Read Less

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 program. 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.<br /><br /> In an article for the Village Voice, Carrie Rickey wrote that Lupino was a model of modern feminist filmmaking, stating: <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br /> After four "woman's" films about social issues – including Outrage (1950), a film about rape – Lupino directed her first hard-paced, fast-moving picture, 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. Read Less

Lupino guest-starred on numerous television programs, including The Ford Television Theatre (1954), The Twilight Zone (1959), Bonanza (1959), Burke's Law (1963–64), The Virginian (1963–65), Batman (1968), The Mod Squad (1969), Family Affair (1969–70), Columbo (1972–74), Barnaby Jones (1974), The Streets of San Francisco ("Blockade", 1974), Ellery Queen (1975), Police Woman (1975) and Charlie's Angels (1977), to name a few. She made her final film appearance in 1978 and retired at the age of 60.<br /><br /> 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. Read Less