Actresses who find roles dwindling as they age would do well to follow the example of 1940s screen siren Ida Lupino, who supplemented her work before the camera by stepping behind it. Her career augmentation (not career change, for she never completely abandoned acting) was prompted in part by a dearth of jobs, and partly by her substantial energies; acting alone was not enough to sustain her over the long haul. After directing several groundbreaking independent feature films in the late forties and early fifties, Lupino began directing television. Though women had been working as television directors since the early fifties—most notably Lela Swift—Lupino was the first to make a name for herself in episodic television. While her feature films were primarily aimed at female audiences, on television Lupino quickly became known for her skill at directing westerns, mysteries, and detective dramas—shows mostly aimed at male viewers and many featuring all-male casts. “Directing is much easier than acting,” said Lupino in an early fifties interview. “The actor deals in false emotions, produced on cue. The director has his problems, but they’re all normal. He doesn’t have to smile into a camera while suffering through an early morning grouch.”
Born in London in 1914 to parents who were well-known theatrical performers, Lupino was able to date the stage tradition in her family back to Grimaldi, the Renaissance clown. She began writing and staging plays as a child, and in 1931 entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. After appearing in several films in England, the teenage Lupino came to Hollywood with her mother and became a contract player. After an ingénue phase and a battle with polio, Lupino asked Paramount to release her from her contract. She crafted a new image (including the return of her naturally dark hair) and sought serious dramatic roles. It was never easy, and even as a young actress, Lupino experienced a fallow period. But she persevered and ultimately appeared, often as the villainess, in a number of memorable films, including High Sierra, They Drive by Night (both costarring Humphrey Bogart), and The Sea Wolf. She won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress in 1943 for her part in The Hard Way.
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.
Lupino first participated in television as an actress, despite reservations about the new medium. “I was snobbish toward TV at first,” she said. “But that changed fast. The pressure, the opportunities, the fantastic challenges—it’s all fantastic, darling.” Had the films she directed been romantic comedies, she might have ended up directing mostly sitcom work on television, but the type of stories she had tackled as a director of features led her at first to be offered television work that can best be described as hard-boiled. Actor Richard Boone was responsible for one early assignment, an episode of Have Gun—Will Travel that featured a rape, eight murders, and a sandstorm. In the midsixties, a crew member on The Virginian gave what was at the time considered high praise to Lupino: “She directs like a man.” At one point, offered a part by Alfred Hitchcock on his television show for a fee of $5,000, Lupino said she’d rather direct it, for $1,250.
Lupino’s directorial style was both efficient and maternal. Indeed, many of the cast and crew members she worked with called her “Mother.” “Any rocks up there to give you a problem, darlin’?” she asked a worker on the set of The Virginian. “Now, Walter, baby, while we’re here we might as well take the posse through. I want my camera here . . . that’s right. You read my mind, love. . . Now, are we lathering the horses in this sequence, sweetie? If not, we should be.”
Though Lupino was lauded for certain technical achievements—creative camera transitions, for example—she essentially worked as a freelance gun for hire and never put an authoritative stamp on the composition of an entire series. This was partly due to the medium itself; unlike film, in which the director’s vision is paramount, a television series is controlled more by its writer/producers, and television directors are rarely auteurs. Still, Lupino had an extensive association with Thriller, the suspense series starring Boris Karloff, and she directed three episodes of The Untouchables. She achieved two marks of distinction on The Twilight Zone—the only woman ever to direct an episode and the only person to both act in and direct episodes of the show.
Lupino’s final feature, The Trouble with Angels, was released in 1966. Her last television assignment was The Bill Cosby Show in 1969. All told, Lupino directed more than 100 television episodes—with Bewitched, Gilligan’s Island, and other sitcoms ultimately mixed in with more macho fare. She said she directed because she needed the work and because she wanted to do it—not to chalk up achievements for her gender. “It was more of a personal challenge,” she said. “I never felt like I was on a crusade for a cause.”