╘PARA ╠PAR@ ` ÉTEXT ` éLupino, Ida1918╨ filmmaker and actorBorn on February 4, 1918, in London to actress Connie Emerald and stage comedian Stanley Lupino, Ida Lupino was a member, on her father╒s side, of one of England╒s oldest theatrical families. The first woman of that family to achieve professional recognition, she started acting while still in her early teens, playing a flapper in director Allan Dwan╒s Her First Affair, 1932. In 1934 she moved to the U.S. and began acting in Hollywood, where she attained stardom with her portrayal in 1939 of Bessie in William Wellman╒s The Light That Failed. Her film career blossomed throughout the 1940s, when she starred in eight films and won a 1942 New York Critics╒ Best Actress Award for her work in Vincent Sherman╒s The Hard Way. But Lupino was dissatisfied as an actress; she needed a bigger playing field for her enormous energy and talent. In 1949 she co-founded a production company originally called Emerald Productions, later known as Filmmakers. By the 1950s she had fast become the only female director of major films. Her low-budget, no-glamour projects were aimed at showing ╥how America lives,╙ using off-beat scripts and little-known performers to tell stories that were down-to earth, provocative, and suggestive of the human spirit╒s ability to survive adversity. Her pioneering work as an independent filmmaker helped gain her a reputation as one of the most talented and gutsy women in Hollywood. She took over the direction of her first feature in 1949 from Elmer Clifton, who had suffered a heart attack during filming. Called Not Wanted, it told the melodramatic story of a young woman who became pregnant out of wedlock, gave up her baby for adoption, and was sent to jail when she tried to kidnap the child. Her second film, Never Fear, 1950, celebrated the determination of a young woman who, struck with polio, had to give up dancing. Outrage, 1950, recounted a woman╒s attempt to cope with rape and its aftermath, and Hard, Fast and Beautiful, 1951, tells the story of the relationship between a young woman tennis player and her ambitious mother. Lupino╒s two final films of the 1950s were The Bigamist, 1953, about a man married to two women, one of whom was played by Lupino herself, and The Hitchhiker, 1953, a critically acclaimed thriller about two men victimized by a psychopathic killer╤Lupino╒s favorite of the films she directed. Lupino returned to directing in 1966 to make The Trouble with Angels, a Walt Disney film about the relationship between a mischievous student at a convent school and the school╒s mother superior. She produced, but did not direct, two more films during the fifties, On the Loose and Beware My Lovely, both in 1951. Although best known for her work in film, both as an actress and as a director, she directed many television films, and also at times worked as a dancer, artist, singer, designer, composer and musician. styl ` ' ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ + !I Ä !I ₧ !I ¿ 5¬ ⌐ !I ; !I P !I ∙ !I !I 5¬
