"Ida Lupino: Forgotten Auteur" by Alexandra Seros

Ida Lupino's "problem" was that she constantly found herself the smartest person in the room, noted biographer Alexandra Seros, a Hollywood screenwriter and the author of Ida Lupino: Forgotten Auteur (University of Texas Press).Lupino was more than a great actress but also a successful director. The Hitch-Hiker, a film made in 1953, is now considered a film noir classic. The fact that a woman directed the movie places when few women directors worked on major film releases places her in exclusive company, said Seros."Actually The Hitch-Hiker was not straight noir, it was a crime thriller with (Nicholas) Musuraca’s noir lighting. Lupino was actually known for her noir film portrayals, but her directing was full of hybrids," Seros said. Lupino was also a television pioneer, stepping into the new medium in the 1950s, stated the author. "(In TV), she went for modernity, like satire, the grotesque, and westerns - she loved experimenting with genre. However, "No. 5 Checked out”, her first big foray into TV, though not her debut, was for Screen Directors Playhouse, a prestigious way to enter a new medium. That show was like a Whitman’s Sampler of all her work, including noir," said Seros.  "I believe after her film acting work early on, she became exhausted by noir, which was antithetical to social realism, the thematic she really wanted to expose post war," she said."(Lupino) was so multifaceted and complex, it’s difficult to talk about her without bringing in many elements from her work and influences from her life. She really was as paradox.  I wanted to understand  who she was, and one can begin to glimpse it in Ralph Edwards' “This Is Your Life, Ida Lupino”, on YouTube. .