Ida Lupino: The Lone Woman in Hollywood’s Golden Era
So far, the women I have focused on in this series have benefited greatly from the advent of the women’s liberation movement. Sure, the women working in the 1960s and 70s had to carve out their own path with very little help, but the women who came before had to machete their way through the rigid Old Hollywood system. Ida Lupino was such a woman. Often forgotten in conversations about great women directors, Lupino was the only working woman director in the 1950s and the first to direct a film noir movie.
Her films gave life to controversial subjects with great care; something other directors were too afraid to do. To quote Steven Spielberg, “What is at stake in Lupino’s films is the psyche of the victim. They addressed the wounded soul and traced the slow, painful process of women trying to wrestle with despair and reclaim their lives. Her work is resilient, with a remarkable empathy for the fragile and the heartbroken. It is essential.”
Ida Lupino in The Light That Failed
Born to a famous British theatrical family, Ida Lupino immigrated to the US at 15 to audition for a Hollywood movie. Originally an actress, Lupino got her big break with the film, The Light That Failed in 1939. After that she was signed by Warner Brothers where, due to her similar acting style and look, she took on all of the roles that Bette Davis rejected or was too busy to take. As Lupino says, she was the poor man’s Bette Davis. Though she was successful, she started to feel limited by the studio system and she started hanging around the Warner lot even when she wasn’t acting. She started her own film company with her husband Collier Young called, The Filmakers. There she sought to tell authentic stories on real locations not sets and utilised a lot of non actors.
Early on, she tackled taboo subjects. Having survived polio, she made many short documentaries and a narrative feature, Never Fear, about the disease. She also tackled rape and its pyschological effects in Outrage. Though her first experience in directing would come with Not Wanted in 1949; a film about a girl faced with the reality of an unwanted and out of wedlock pregnancy. She practically (and thankfully) fell into the director’s chair when the first director, Elmer Clifton, had a heart attack. Her company couldn’t afford a new hire and since she was already the producer and co-writer, she was the natural choice. Though her work as director remains uncredited.
She continued her career with The Hitchhiker in 1953; an inventive and dark noir piece about two men who pick up a hitchhiker. He turns out to be a murderer and forces them to drive him across the border. A haunting visual touch, this murderer sleeps with one eye open leaving the two men unable to tell when or how they can escape. That same year, she made The Bigamist which she also starred in and gave a sympathetic lens to a man who has two different wives in different states. These films granted her the acceptance of Hollywood. She became the second woman director in the Director’s Guild and she presented the Best Director Oscar to her contemporary, Joe Mankiewicz who opened his speech by saying, “Thank You, Brother Lupino”.
Lupino was not viewed as a threat to the patriarchal film institution but as a curiosity, since her small film company would never become competition for MGM or Warner Brothers. Lupino was also very aware that her status could be offensive to an all male cast and crew and took pains to create a non-threatening environment. Lupino said “I’ve walked on sets and felt resentment from actors and crew members because I was a woman… While I have encountered some resentment from the male species for intruding into their world, I give them no opportunity to think I’ve strayed where I don’t belong.”
In order to keep her male employees happy, she made sure she always wore a dress and makeup (no masculine clothes) and declared the most important advice for aspiring women directors was that they always keep their powder dry and their puff handy. However, while she adhered to the gender roles of the day, does not mean she did not know how to wield them in her favor.
She gained a reputation for being a smart and tough director who got what she wanted when she wanted it. She adopted the nickname “Mother” on set and wore it on the back of her director’s chair. Mother gave her the means to take control on set without threatening male coworkers. Lupino declared “You do not tell a man, you suggest to him, ‘Darlings, Mother has a problem, I’d love to do this, can you do it? It sounds kooky, I know, but can you do it for Mother?’ And then they do it. And that way I get more cooperation.”
By the end of her career, she had transitioned to television for the most part, in an effort to make more money, since her divorce with Collier Young created financial limitations to her production company. She became one of the more celebrated television director’s of her day. She worked on the shows Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and Gilligan’s Island. She directed her last film for Colombia in 1966, The Trouble with Angels. No other woman would direct a film for a major studio until 1971 when last week’s focus, Elaine May, directed A New Leaf. Lupino remains one of not even a handful of women to work successfully in Hollywood before there was a movement of people like her advocating for her work.
One of her most compelling films — one that was only last year inducted into the National Film Registry — remains her 1951 classic, Outrage. It tells the story of Ann Walton, a young working girl who after getting engaged seems to be living her dream. That is until an acquaintance chases and rapes her on her way home from work. Unable to deal with the traumatic event and lacking a support system that is equipped to understand, she runs away to the countryside where she meets a well-meaning reverend. He helps her get back on her feet, but when she attacks a man coming on to her, her identity is revealed to everyone.
In the Post-Code Era, this was only the second film in Hollywood to tackle rape, after 1948’s Johnny Belinda, but the two are very different. Johnny Belinda lives in the past in a rural farming town. The story does not really belong in the 20th century, but Outrage does. Like many young women in the 50s, Ann has joined the workforce in the city and leaves at night for her house in the suburbs. And Lupino’s first scenes are an indictment on the everpresent rape culture and objectification of women in her time. The first scene shows us her future assailant, an employee at a food stand, who makes Ann uncomfortable as he talks about how she must really like him if she comes over all the time. The next scene finds Ann having a lunch date with her fiance in the middle of a hectic and very opinionated crowd at a park.
During their date, a young man tries to convince her fiance to get his shoes shined and when he refuses the shoeshine says “You won’t get anywhere with her with shoes like that.” And then when they go in to kiss, her fiance stops her because people are leering over them. For a puritanical society, the entire city seems to have an unnecessary and unrequited obsession with Ann. The world and its desires seem to be slowly closing in on her. The chase and assault scene really magnifies this sense. Lupino, a noir aficionado, employs a high angle shot for the chase. The bird's eye view makes Ann seem small and powerless as she runs away. Her assailant may be slowly walking up to her but we know he will get her. She is too powerless to stop it. Later when he catches her, Lupino employs a low angle shot from Ann’s perspective as her rapist towers over her. It's claustrophobic and very effective.
The real horror actually begins after the assault. Before director, Douglas Sirk, made this aspect a pillar in his films, Lupino brought the invasive and destructive culture of suburban gossip to the fore. After the assault, Ann’s father comments “They look at me as if I had done something.” Without proper knowledge about trauma and rape, her neighbors treat Ann as somewhat of a tragic curiosity with little care for what she actually feels. Even the police seem to treat her with indifference rather than attentiveness during the retraumatizing act of doing a police lineup. Her fiance is no help either. He tries to rush their marriage and further smothers her, leaving her with no option but to run away.
Given the growing belief at that time that cities were hotbeds of crime and immorality and that rural America was peaceful, you might assume that Ann’s stay their is unencumbered by rape culture. Well, you would be wrong. While at a local festival, another young man comes onto her, employing the same tactics as that manipulative food stand employee. Feeling uncomfortable, she tries to run away but he keeps coming to her. He tells her again and again that he’s a nice guy, but for some reason he won’t leave her alone. With everything we know about Ann, her fragile psyche, and this man’s brand of stubbornness, we can’t find any blame in her for attacking him.
Outrage seems to be extremely understanding of the complexities of trauma; that is until the end. It emphasizes that the cure for this kind of ailment is very easily solved by a singular male presence who, in this case, wholeheartedly believes that the young man at the festival had nothing but the best intentions. Once he realizes she is a victim, he simply sends her off to a year of therapy and then back to her suburban town, completely cured. It seems like an addition needed to pass through the censorship boards without a problem and feels very out of place. Though the ending disappoints, it remains a rare attempt to show how pervasive and longlasting the effects of trauma can be. Spielberg was right. Lupino delved into the psyche of those cast aside and violated better than most working alongside her.
