{"id":143677,"date":"2026-02-04T08:00:54","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T13:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=143677"},"modified":"2026-02-03T11:19:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T16:19:40","slug":"happy-birthday-ida-lupino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=143677","title":{"rendered":"“Often I pretended to a cameraman to know less than I did. That way I got more cooperation.” — Ida Lupino"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It’s the birthday of actress and director Ida Lupino. To give some perspective on her unlikely and inspiring trajectory: she was born into a theatre family dynasty. By the time she was 14, 15, she was playing adult roles. She was British, but Hollywood beckoned. She was in a couple of pre-Codes, a glamorous “woman” (still a teenager), with platinum blonde hair. <\/p>\n

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\nMuch more after the jump: <\/p>\n

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\nBy the mid-1930s, she was starting to get better and more substantial roles, although she was basically getting Bette-Davis-knockoff roles (the two were seen as competitors. Ida Lupino joked that she was “the poor man’s Bette Davis”). The blonde hair turned to brunette, and she grew into her adult face, a spiky strange beauty, fiery and tragic at the same time. She “read” older onscreen. She was not interested in glamour. Or in being a star, really. She was interested in acting. In 1939 came a kind of breakthrough, with her unforgettable performance as Bessie in The Light That Failed<\/i> (similar in style\/feel to Bette Davis’ breakthrough in Of Human Bondage<\/i>). <\/p>\n

Then came They Drive By Night<\/i>, where Lupino strolls into this gritty movie starring Humphrey Bogart and George Raft, and steals it from under their noses. Her courtroom scene at the end is rightly famous. <\/p>\n

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\nShe pushes it PAST the limit, the limit where most actresses would go, “Okay. That’s far enough.” What is also noticeable in They Drive By Night<\/i> is how TOTALLY uninterested Lupino was in being liked. This, too, made her a kindred spirit to Bette Davis. Right after They Drive By Night<\/i> came High Sierra<\/i>, where she was placed opposite Bogart, and got top billing (she was a bigger star than he was at that point).<\/p>\n

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\nThrough the 1940s, she appeared in a number of memorable films, all of which are worth tracking down: the film adaptation of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf<\/i>, directed by Michael Curtiz, the excellent Ladies in Retirement<\/i> (don’t let the title fool you: this is a deeply distressing family melodrama, with great supporting performances from Elsa Lanchester and Evelyn Keyes), the moody-gorgeous Moontide<\/i>, starring Jean Gabin, with Thomas Mitchell in a terrifying performance (which I wrote about for Film Comment<\/i><\/a>), The Hard Way, In Our Time<\/i>, Raoul Walsh’s The Man I Love<\/i>, and Roadhouse<\/i>, which I hold dear. In the 1950s, she embraced the new medium of television, appearing in a number of live productions, as well as movies like Women’s Prison<\/i>, where she plays a literally psychotic prison warden, and Clifford Odets’ The Big Knife<\/i>, where she plays the sympathetic wife of a tormented movie star (played by Jack Palance). <\/p>\n

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It’s a very good career for an actress. She was a star. But she knew the career of an actress was short-lived. She didn’t want to be limited, she didn’t want to ride the waves of uncertainty in a career that paid high premium on youth and beauty.<\/p>\n

Almost by accident, she became a director. In 1949, she stepped in to finish a film, when a director became too ill to complete the job. This was the start. She and her husband started their own production company. They developed scripts together. Ida Lupino directed them. She was the only female director working in Hollywood in that time. There hadn’t been a female director since the 30s. Lupino did films about issues that interested her: a film about polio (she had had polio as a child), a film about rape, a film about bigamy. She is probably most well-known for The Hitch-hiker<\/i>, a truly frightening film about two men on a road trip who pick up a hitch-hiker. The hitch-hiker turns out to be a guy fleeing from a recent murder spree. <\/p>\n

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\nThey made the film for very little money, so it turned a profit. I love a lot about The Hitch-hiker<\/i>: it’s an incredible intense and claustrophobic psychological thriller. It’s notable that there isn’t one woman in it. It’s not a romance. It’s not a “chick flick.” She was a woman working in a man’s world making a man’s movie, and she did a brilliant job. <\/p>\n

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\nIt should have been precedent-setting. She predicts Kathryn Bigelow, for example. Not all “women directors” are going to make small intimate stories about domestic life. <\/p>\n

Lupino’s directing career is as vast and diverse as her acting career. <\/p>\n

A fascinating woman, and a true pioneer. Standing out there, all alone, a woman behind a movie camera. My friend Dan Callahan wrote a great piece about her<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wrote a long post about Outrage<\/i><\/a>, Lupino’s 1950 film about a young woman who is raped. See this film. <\/p>\n

A couple years ago, the Film Forum did a retrospective of Lupino’s career. Farran Smith Nehme and I were guests on the Film Comment<\/i> podcast, to talk about her work. You can listen to the whole thing here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

And recently, Farran wrote a gorgeous retrospective piece on Ida Lupino’s career as an actor<\/a> (as opposed to a director: Her directing work is indeed important and pioneering, but with the corrective lens it can take precedent over what was an extraordinary acting career.) <\/p>\n

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\nThank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account<\/a>. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0<\/a>, if you’d like to subscribe.<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n