Biography for
Ida Lupino More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

4 February 1914, Camberwell, London, England, UK

Date of Death

3 August 1995, Los Angeles, California, USA (died of a stroke while battling colon cancer)

Nickname

Little Scout

Height

5' 4" (1.63 m)

Mini Biography

Ida was born in London to a show business family. In 1933, her mother brought Ida with her to an audition and Ida got the part her mother wanted. The picture was Her First Affaire (1932). Ida, a bleached blonde, came to Hollywood in 1934 and played small and insignificant parts. Peter Ibbetson (1935) was one of her few noteworthy movies and it was not until The Light That Failed (1939) that she got a chance to get better parts. In most of her movies, she was cast as the hard, but sympathetic woman from the wrong side of the tracks. In The Sea Wolf (1941) and High Sierra (1941), she played the part magnificently. It has been said that no one could do hard-luck dames the way Lupino could do them. She played tough, knowing characters who held their own against some of the biggest leading men of the day - Humphrey Bogart, Ronald Colman, John Garfield and Edward G. Robinson. She made a handful of films during the forties playing different characters ranging from Pillow to Post (1945), where she played a traveling saleswoman to the tough nightclub singer in The Man I Love (1947). But good roles for women were hard to get and there were many young actresses and established stars competing for those roles. She left Warner Brothers in 1947 and became a freelance actress. When better roles did not materialize, Ida stepped behind the camera as a director, writer and producer. Her first directing job came when director Elmer Clifton fell ill on a script that she co-wrote Not Wanted (1949). Ida had joked that as an actress, she was the poor man's Bette Davis. Now, she said that as a director, she became the poor man's Don Siegel. The films that she wrote, or directed, or appeared in during the fifties were mostly inexpensive melodramas. She later turned to Television where she directed episodes in shows such as "The Untouchables" (1959) and "The Fugitive" (1963). In the seventies, she did guest appearances on various television show and small parts in a few movies.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana

Spouse

Howard Duff	(21 October 1951 - 1984) (divorced) 1 child
Collier Young	(5 August 1948 - 20 October 1951) (divorced)
Louis Hayward	(16 November 1938 - 11 May 1945) (divorced)

Trivia

Child of British revue star and film comedian Stanley Lupino.

Daughter Bridget Duff by ex-husband Howard Duff.

Niece of Lupino Lane.

Widely respected as a pioneer for women filmmakers.

As rigid and tough-minded as Bette Davis, Ida would often refuse to play a Davis hand-me-down role and was often suspended by Warner Bros. for doing so. It was during those breaks that she would go on movie sets, chum around with the male directors and learned the craft of directing. Blazing new trails, she became the only notable and respected female filmmaker of her era in Hollywood.

The second woman to be admitted to the Director's Guild.

Arrived from England aboard the Berengaria at New York on August 25, 1933, age 19.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945- 1985". Pages 617-621. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Her daughter was born on April 23, 1952. She only weighed 4 pounds and almost died.

Cousin of actor Richard Lupino

Niece of actor Wallace Lupino

Not only is she the only woman to direct an episode of "The Twilight Zone" (1959) ("The Masks"), she is also the only person to star in an episode ("The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine") and direct one.

Daughter of Connie Emerald and Stanley Lupino.

In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by either Lidia Simoneschi, Renata Marini or Rosetta Calavetta. She was occasionally dubbed by Clelia Bernacchi, most notably in Hollywood Canteen (1944).

Profiled in "Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames" bu Ray Hagen and Laura Wagner (McFarland, 2004).

Became a lifelong friend of Mala Powers (whom she directed in Outrage (1950/I)). When Ida died in 1995, Mala was the executor of her estate.

Personal Quotes

My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England - I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.

I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers. Today it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power . . . I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented woman if the subject matter were right.

Salary

Out of the Fog (1941)

$40,000

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