A Magical Career

She was born in Londinium, errr, London, and trained at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, just as did Joan Collins (Siren). She was an accomplished director, much like Otto Preminger (Mr. Freeze). When she appeared on Batman along with her husband, Howard Duff, they were the second real-life husband and wife duo of that era to appear on the show together. The previous ones were Cliff Robertson (Shame) and Dina Merrill (Calamity Jan).

Despite all these similarities to other Bat-performers, though, Ida Lupino was one of a kind.

Her career as an actress spanned 46 years, and she was a pioneer among female directors, helming her first film in 1949 and directing episodes of 27 different television shows from 1956-68, according to IMDb. She was only the second woman admitted to the Directors' Guild of America. (The first was Dorothy Arzner.)

Ida Lupino was born in London on February 4, 1918, to a show-business family. Her father, Stanley, was a music-hall comedian and her mother, Connie, was an actress and a dancer. (The year of Ida's birth is in some dispute. Most sources list it as 1918, but IMDb lists it as 1914.) The first picture she acted in was a British film, Her First Affaire, in 1933. Legend has it she went to the audition with her mother, who was testing for a role, but Ida got it instead. The natural brunette, with her hair dyed platinum blonde, came to Hollywood shortly thereafter and soon became known as the "English Jean Harlow."

According to IMDb, she acted in 24 films in England and the U.S. during the 1930s. By the late 1930s she had stopped bleaching her hair and was a brunette again. In the 1940s, she gained a reputation for playing the "tough broad" and acted in seventeen movies in that decade.

One of her best-known roles in that era came in 1941, when she co-starred in High Sierra opposite Humphrey Bogart. The review in Variety called the film, "purely and simply an action story that's partially salvaged by the fine performances of Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino. They actually carry a film that is weighted down by too much extraneous story and production matter."

The New York Times review said, "Credit Ida Lupino and her associates in The Filmakers with restraint and a modicum of courage in jousting with another social problem in Outrage.

“As in last year's Not Wanted, when Miss Lupino and some other movie-makers tackled the doleful case of the unwed mother, the actress-in the more important roles of co-scenarist and director-is equally forthright in her approach to rape and its tragic aftermath. But the drama, which began a stand at the Criterion on Saturday, is an indictment which loses a great deal of its effect by lapsing into run-of-the-mill plot lines. Its preachment is indeed honorable, but its execution lacks punch and conviction.”

The review summed up, “Miss Lupino and company, in short, are pointing-in good taste-to a social blight. But they are merely doing just that and nothing more.”

Still, it obviously took plenty of vision to even address the subject, and that film is looked upon more favorably today. (Coincidentally, Mala Powers, who played the rape victim in Outrage, appeared in the same episode of The Wild, Wild West with Lupino in 1966, although they didn't have any scenes together.)

In The Bigamist, Lupino not only directed, but also played one of the two wives of the title character. After that 1953 movie, Lupino turned her attention to television, as both a performer and director.

She was nominated for an Emmy as an actress three consecutive years, from 1957-59. The first nomination was for Four Star Playhouse, and the next two were for Mr. Adams and Eve, in which she co-starred with Howard Duff, her third husband. (Her second husband, Collier Young, also was part of The Filmakers group.) She also directed some episodes of that show, although for the most part, she tended not to appear in the particular episodes of shows that she directed.

Those shows included such light, escapist fare as Gilligan's Island, Bewitched and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, but also included were such shows as The Untouchables, The Fugitive and The Rifleman.

In fact, despite her early background directing films with sensitive issues, she also directed film noir thrillers, such as the 1953 movie The Hitch-Hiker, action shows and westerns.

On set, her director’s chair referred to Lupino as “Mother of Us All,” and she indeed tried to be a motherly presence as she attempted to get the best out of the actors and actresses with whom she worked. She was the only person to star in and direct episodes of the sci-fi anthology series, The Twilight Zone, appearing as a fading actress in “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” in season 1, and directing “The Masks” in season 5.

Interestingly, she also directed three episodes of a legal drama called Sam Benedict in the early 1960s. One of the eps she directed featured both Yvonne Craig and Burgess Meredith!

Of course, she would work with Craig again (but not Meredith) in the next-to-last Batman episode, "The Entrancing Dr. Cassandra," in which she played a strange, but evil, mad alchemist. Her nuanced portrayal of the character rose above a mostly silly script.

Two years earlier, on The Wild, Wild West, Lupino gave a very interesting and excellent performance as a mad scientist even more unhinged than Dr. Cassandra Spellcraft. This character was called Dr. Faustina, and was a female variation on Dr. Frankenstein.

That was just part of a prolific period from 1959-75 in which she appeared on 33 different television shows, but the parts started to dry up after that. Her last acting job was in 1978.

Lupino and Duff, who were married in 1951, divorced in 1984. They had one child, Bridget Duff. Lupino died on August 3, 1995, in Los Angeles of a stroke. She also was beset with colon cancer at the time.

The films Lupino directed seem to be appreciated more now than when they were released. Film historian Richard Koszarski said, "her films display the obsessions and consistencies of a true auteur."

In the book Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, 1896 to the Present by Ally Acker, film critic Carrie Rickey said Lupino’s "work for The Filmmakers could serve as a model of modern feminist moviemaking. 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."

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