Ida Lupino - by Gillian Kelly (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book delivers a critical study of British-born Ida Lupino as both a constructed star image and an underappreciated filmmaker who worked across independent and mainstream cinema during Hollywood's classical era.

Book Synopsis

This book contributes to a welcome new wave focusing on the importance of female filmmakers, providing a reappraisal of Ida Lupino, a cinematic figure of significant importance. Given her ability to move between popular and independent cinemas and her status as both a Hollywood star and director/writer/producer of socially relevant films overlooked by the mainstream, Lupino is a particularly interesting case study. Employing a range of critical approaches, including feminist theory, auteur theory and critical theory, this book investigates key themes and motifs that developed across Lupino's unusual and unique career as one of the most significant female players in film history. Investigating her oeuvre as actress, director, writer and producer, it discusses Lupino as a complex and important filmmaker whose career, on both sides of the camera, requires substantially more critical attention than it has been awarded thus far.

From the Back Cover

Few women in the history of cinema have taken on as many creative roles as Ida Lupino. Her forty-eight-year career spanned five decades and a variety of genres, mediums and diverse roles. This book delves into who Ida Lupino was on either side of the camera, both as a constructed screen persona and a creative individual working in the industry.

Born in London in 1918 into a prestigious and long-established theatrical family, a teenage Lupino relocated to Hollywood to pursue a career in acting, signed first to Paramount Pictures and then Warner Brothers. By the 1950s she was acting for leading Hollywood studios and directing, producing, and writing social realist films for her own independent film company, The Filmakers.

This book examines Ida Lupino's impressive cinematic and televisual career by exploring key themes that regularly occurred throughout her work and life. Concerned specifically with gender relations, alienation, and isolation and disability, the study argues both for Lupino's importance within cinematic history and the position of women within the industry more generally.

The volume aims to better highlight Lupino's legacy, shining light on her overlooked and under-researched acting skills and star persona, as well as her established position as a serious filmmaker.