Ida Lupino: A Biography (Paperback)

by William Donati (Author) "In the last days of January 1918, German aircraft swooped across the Kent and Essex coasts..." (more)
Key Phrases: juke girl, dialogue director, set decorator, Warner Bros, Ida Lupino, Harry Mines (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Best known as a femme fatale in films such as They Drive by Night (1940) and Road House (1948), Ida Lupino (1918-1995) was born into a British theatrical family and went to Hollywood at the age of 15. Her first contract was with Paramount Pictures, after which she moved on to Warner Brothers, where she and Bogart made their breakthrough film, High Sierra, in 1941. Thereafter followed a succession of films noirs in which she "portrayed mad and bad dames." Considering herself "a poor man's Bette Davis," Lupino rose above the glamour of the silver screen to become a respected film director. She founded her own company, Filmmakers, which specialized in low-budget films on socially controversial themes. Lupino was married at various times to actor Louis Hayward, studio exec Collier Young and actor Howard Duff, with whom she had a daughter. Donati (coauthor with Buster Wiles of My Days with Errol Flynn) adores his subject but doesn't shrink from showing blemishes, such as the high-strung personality inclined to erratic mood swings. He depicts Lupino as a spirited, multitalented artist who besides her film career wrote many songs and made numerous radio and TV appearances. The appendix includes a detailed filmography. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Despite being published by a university press, this is a typical movie star biography. What sets it somewhat apart is the subject itself: Lupino was not only an effective second-rank movie star but also Hollywood's only female director while she worked in that capacity from 1949 to 1953. Subsequently, she continued to act and directed many shows on television (and one final film in 1966). While he sometimes displays a touching faith in the veracity of press releases, Donati has done well researching print sources. He also spoke to her co-workers (but none of her three husbands), as well as interviewing Lupino once face to face and "many" times on the phone, although the notes at the end of the book show only two citations from the phone conversations. The result will interest anyone knowledgeable about the golden era of cinema.?John Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky; 1 edition (March 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813109825
• ISBN-13: 978-0813109824
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #608,351 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Donati's Work Shows How Books on Stars Should Be Done, November 6, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Ida Lupino: A Biography (Hardcover)

William Donati, also author of an excellent book on Errol Flynn, chooses to write about stars in a way they--and the reader--can appreciate: with a careful balance between what is fiction and what really happened. Thus is his approact to Ida Lupino. She is could be called one of Hollywood's first women power elite--and she had a turbulent and accomplished career to prove it. Donati should be applauded for not stooping to sacrificing fact, always more interesting (and riskier and harder) to write than empty speculative sensationalism.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Reasonable overview, many open questions, November 21, 2004

By	C. Gilbert "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Donati has written a respectful and seemingly accurate portrait of Ida Lupino as star, director and woman. A reader looking for basic biographical data on a deeper-than-encylopedia level will find what they are looking for with this book.

Donati, unfortunately, writes with a noticeable lack of flair and manages to nearly make Lupino boring. This is no mean feat, given how colorful and important she was. He does not place her films into a critical or historical context. Nor does he really explore her character on anything more than a surface psychological level. Furthermore, in his focus on her romantic life, he overlooks or skips over other important relationships that she had with other women. The most obvious omission is her adult relationship with her daughter.

Useful for class assignments, but other readers may want to wait for a better treatment.

15 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a very poorly done book!, June 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Ida Lupino: A Biography (Hardcover)

I just finished reading Ida Lupino and was so disappointed. The author is not a biographer - he's a second-rate journalist at best. He managed to cull together a great many facts and just tossed them around, hoping for a narrative. There are so many things I'd like to know that just weren't answered. An example - Ida had one child, Brigett. She's mentioned a few times, then qualified as the center of Ida's life and the main reason for her giving up her directing career - to stay home and raise her. Yet we learn absolutely nothing about this daughter. No personal description, no personality profile, no private life or professional info. All that is said is that when she grew up, she moved out of the house and moved "far away from Los Angeles." These facts would have been easy to find, but the lazy author just glossed over whatever he didn't have. The style is high school level - things repeated over and over and restated in sentence after sentence and rephrased a paragraph later. Terribly amateurish. Didn't he even have the benefit of an editor? Lastly, the author has fallen in love with his subject and lost all perspective on both her flaws and her achievements and lasting importance. There's no solid analysis of her acting technique - just carefully chosen trade reviews that are most favorable to her. Ida Lupino mastered basically one type of performance, and she gave it over and over again. For a particular type of role, she could be extremely effective by displaying her tense, neurotic personality. But she certainly wasn't any great actress, not by anybody's standards, except the author's, and definitely only a competent director, not the female William Wyler the author tries to paint her as being. Lupino deserves a far more thorough and honest bio than this.