From Golden Age Starlet to Trailblazing Director: Why Ida Lupino Is an Old Hollywood Name You Should Know

In the realm of Golden Age Hollywood, Ida Lupino may not be as well-known as other stars, but her achievements cannot be overlooked. The British actress rose to prominence in the '30s and '40s, with roles in movies like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, They Drive by Night and High Sierra, and in the '50s, she had a remarkable second act when she became the most prominent female director of the era.

Much has been said about how difficult it is for women directors to find mainstream success. While some improvement has been made in recent years, the film industry still has a long way to go — which makes Lupino an even more impressive figure.

Read on to learn some of the reasons why Ida Lupino is an underrated Hollywood icon.

Ida Lupino was born to be a star — and wasn't afraid to rebel

Lupino was born into a showbiz family, with a comedian father and an actress mother. From her earliest days, she was a precocious performer and was destined to go into the family business. As a teenager in the '30s, she began acting in British films, and soon enough she set out for Hollywood and signed with Paramount. 

While Paramount wanted her to be the next big bombshell, Lupino preferred to revel in her eccentricities and was known for writing music, stories and screenplays and keeping a variety of pets when she wasn’t acting. 

As an actress, Lupino became a go-to for tough-girl roles, and famously costarred with Humphrey Bogart in the 1941 film noir High Sierra. She and Bogart shared a surprising connection, and she told her biographer, “[Humphrey Bogart] and I called ourselves the gruesome twosome. We swore that tough characters were all we would play.”

While Lupino worked consistently as an actress, she longed to do more creatively, and she bristled against people who saw her desire for autonomy as a negative. As she once said, “I’m mad, they say. I am temperamental and dizzy and disagreeable. Well, let them talk. Only one person can hurt me. Her name is Ida Lupino.”

A trailblazer behind the camera

In 1949, Lupino moved behind the camera for the first time, codirecting the low-budget drama Not Wanted. Lupino continued acting through the '70s, but directing was her true passion, and when she started out, no other actresses were taking her path, and there were barely any female directors to speak of.

Lupino knew she had the talent, creativity and grit that a great director requires, and she refused to let Hollywood sexism stand in her way, observing, “There was an absolute and iron-clad system in the film capital in the 1940s and 1950s which, it seems to me, had its primary purpose to exclude females.”

Lupino became the second woman ever admitted to the Directors Guild of America, and she was a master of working with low budgets and choosing provocative projects. Not Wanted told the story of a woman becoming pregnant out of wedlock, while her 1950 film Outrage was one of the first to deal with rape. With the 1953 film The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino became the first woman to direct a film noir, which was quite the accomplishment given the machismo often associated with that genre.

Some of Lupino’s other films as director included the 1951 tennis drama Hard, Fast and Beautiful! and the 1953 film noir The Bigamist, which she also starred in, marking the first time a woman directed and starred in her own film.

In 1966, Lupino directed her most beloved film, the Catholic school comedy The Trouble With Angels, starring teen idol Hayley Mills. She was also a prolific TV director during this time, helming episodes of classic shows like The Twilight Zone, Bewitched and Gilligan’s Island. 

In recent years, more and more actresses have made the leap to directing — and they have Ida Lupino to thank. The feisty actress turned director blazed a powerful trail, as she refused to take no for an answer and made compelling films on her own terms. Her story still inspires today, and her legacy of being a strikingly modern renaissance woman lives on.

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