Ida Lupino, Forgotten Auteur
Ida Lupino, Forgotten Auteur
From Film Noir to the Director's Chair
An archival study of Ida Lupino’s work in film and television directing, writing, producing, and acting from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Though her acting career is well known, Ida Lupino was, until very recently, either unknown or overlooked as an influential director. One of the few female directors in Classical Hollywood, Lupino was the only woman with membership in the Directors Guild of America between 1948 and 1971. Her films were about women without power in society and engaged with highly controversial topics despite Hollywood’s strict production code. Working in a male-dominated field, Lupino was forced to manage her public persona carefully, resisting attempts by the press to paint her solely as a dutiful wife and mother—a continual feminization—just so that she could continue directing.
Filmmaker Alexandra Seros retells the story of Ida Lupino’s career, from actor to director, first in film, then in television, using archival materials from collections housed around the world. The result provides rich insights into three of Lupino’s independently directed films and a number of episodes from her vast television oeuvre. Seros contextualizes this analysis with discussions of gendered labor in the film industry, the rise of consumerism in the United States after World War II, and the expectations put on women in their family lives during the postwar era. Seros’s portrait of Lupino ultimately paints her life and career as an exemplar of collaborative auteurship.
With this excellent, highly readable critical and archival study, Alexandra Seros joins a community of writers and fans who recognize the tremendous skills and collaborative vision of Ida Lupino. Heretofore unseen photos and a focus on archival documents make Ida Lupino, Forgotten Auteur: From Film Noir to the Director's Chair a compelling reminder of Lupino’s major contributions to the history of American film and television.
Alexandra Seros brings new depth to the auteur study by mapping Ida Lupino across the domestic and industrial terrain of the postwar period and presents a captivating portrait of a great director, filmmaker, and artist, equal parts hard-boiled and glamorous.
A discerning reevaluation of the directorial career of Ida Lupino. . . Seros’s nuanced takes on Lupino’s films and legacy reveal the frustrating strictures of the male-dominated mid-century film industry while making a strong case that her oeuvre deserves critical reappraisal. It’s an overdue celebration of an overlooked trailblazer.
Alexandra Seros is a screenwriter with a PhD in cinema and media studies. She is currently working with UCLA to preserve film and early television movies directed and written by Ida Lupino.
- Preface. The Authenticity of a Fragment
- Introduction. Ambiguity and Paradox in Ida Lupino
- Part I. Auteur-in-Waiting
- Chapter 1. A Star Study
- Chapter 2. Certain Women of Post World-War II
- Chapter 3. Six Movies, Five Years
- Part II. Case Studies: Three Independent Films 000
- Chapter 4. Not Wanted
- Chapter 5. Never Fear
- Chapter 6. The Hitch-Hiker
- Part III. Television
- Chapter 7. Lupino and Early Television
- Chapter 8. Across Media with Ray, Aldrich, and Hitchcock
- Chapter 9. Patterns and Strategies in Lupino’s Television Directing
- Conclusion. Lupinian Collaboration, the New Auteurism
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Illustration Credits
- Index
- Bio
