The Hitch-Hiker

Ida Lupino (4 February 1918 – 3 August 1995) was an English-American film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her forty-eight year career, she appeared in fifty-nine films, and directed nine others. She also appeared in episodic television fifty-eight times and directed fifty other episodes. In addition, she contributed as a writer to five films and four TV episodes.

Lupino was born into a family of performers. Her father, Stanley Lupino, was a music-hall comedian, and her mother, Connie Emerald, was an actress. As a girl, Ida was encouraged to enter show business by both her parents and her uncle, Lupino Lane. She made her first movie appearance in 1931, in The Love Race, and spent the next several years playing minor roles.

It was after her appearance in The Light That Failed in 1939 that Lupino began to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress. As a result, her parts improved during the 1940s and she began to describe herself as “the poor man’s Bette Davis.”

During this period, Lupino became known for her hard-boiled roles, as in such films as They Drive by Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941), both opposite Humphrey Bogart. For her performance in The Hard Way (1943), Lupino won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. She acted regularly, and was in demand throughout the 1940s without becoming a major star until later. In 1947, Lupino left the Warner Brothers company to become a freelance actress. Notable films she appeared in around that time include Road House and On Dangerous Ground.

In the mid-40s, while on suspension for turning down a role, Lupino became interested in directing. She described herself as being bored on set while “someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work.” She and her husband Collier Young formed an independent company, The Filmmakers, and Lupino became a producer, director and screenplay-writer of low-budget, issue-oriented movies.

Her first directing job came unexpectedly in 1949 when Elmer Clifton suffered a mild heart attack and couldn’t finish Not Wanted, the film he was directing for Filmmakers. Lupino stepped in to finish the film, and went on to direct her own projects, becoming Hollywood’s only female film director of the time.

In an article for the Village Voice, Carrie Rickey wrote that Lupino was a model of modern feminist moviemaking, stating: “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.”

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.]”

Lupino often joked that if she had been the “poor man’s Bette Davis” as an actress, then she had become the “poor man’s Don Siegel” as a director. In 1952, Lupino was invited to become the “fourth star” in Four Star Productions by Dick Powell, David Niven, and Charles Boyer, after Joel McCrea and Rosalind Russell had dropped out of the company.

Lupino continued acting throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and her directing efforts during these years were almost exclusively television productions such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Have Gun – Will Travel, The Donna Reed Show, Gilligan’s Island, 77 Sunset Strip, The Investigators, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, The Rifleman, Batman, Sam Benedict, Bonanza, The Untouchables, The Fugitive, Columbo, and Bewitched. She guest starred on The Streets of San Francisco (CBS), Season 2, episode Blockade, that aired on 1974 January 24.

From January 1957 through September 1958, Lupino starred with her then husband, Howard Duff, in the CBS sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve, in which the duo played husband and wife film stars named Howard Adams and Eve Drake, living in Beverly Hills, California. Olive Carey played their housekeeper, Elsie, in the 66-episode series, and Alan Reed played J.B. Hafter, their studio boss. Duff and Lupino also co-starred as themselves in 1959 in one of the 13 one-hour installments of the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. Later on in her acting career, Lupino guest-starred on numerous television programs, before she retired at the age of sixty. She made her final movie appearance in 1978. —Wikipedia