Queen of the 'B's

Although Ida Lupino is best known as a leading actress in many Hollywood B movies, her work as a filmmaker has been neglected by critics, historians, and audiences. In the late 1940s, Lupino turned writer, producer, and director in her own independent production company. The films she made, beginning with "Not Wanted" in 1949, were low-budget pictures taking an uncompromising approach to controversial subject matter -- unmarried motherhood, disability, rape, bigamy. Lupino is exceptional as the only woman to have directed a visible body of films in the male-dominated Hollywood of the 1950s. The continuation of that directorial career in television throughout the 1960s strengthens the claim that Lupino is the most prolific and creatively powerful woman director ever to have worked in the moving image industry.

This book is the first extensive critical study of Ida Lupino's work as a director in both film and television. It features in-depth essays on each of the films she directed and on her work in television (including such popular series as The Fugitive and The Twilight Zone), with the most complete credit listing yet published of her television work. Viewing Lupino's oeuvre in historical, social, industrial, and aesthetic contexts, all the contributors demonstrate that the work repays informed and sensitive readings and many consider it in light of contemporary feminist debates on cinema. Queen of the B's is a long overdue reassessment of an important and pioneering director.

ANNETTE KUHN teaches film and television studies at the University of Glasgow, and has written widely on cultural theory, feminism and cinema, and film history. Her publications includeThe Power of the Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality, Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality, 1909 to 1925, and, as editor,The Women's Companion to International Film.