In the early 1950s, she was Hollywood's only woman director

Ida Lupino was a British-born Hollywood star who became a director at a time when almost no women were. The Library of Congress says that when she made The Hitch-Hiker in 1953, she was the only woman working as a director in Hollywood. The film is widely described as the first film noir directed by a woman, and it was selected for the National Film Registry in 1998.

Dorothy Arzner, a pioneering director, had made her last feature in 1943. Lupino got to direct through her own company, and Relay has three of the films she directed.

How did a star become a director?

Lupino began in British B films and came to the US under contract to Paramount Pictures. Her break came in The Light That Failed (1940), followed by They Drive By Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941) at Warner Bros. There she picked up the craft from the directors Raoul Walsh and Michael Curtiz and the cinematographer George Barnes.

No studio would back her as a director, so she left Warner Bros. and formed The Filmakers, a small production company that operated from 1949 to 1953. It made six films that she directed. Later she moved into television, and in 1964 she directed "The Masks," an episode of The Twilight Zone. She is the only woman to direct an episode of the series.

Which Lupino films are on Relay?

Not Wanted (1949)

Not Wanted was the first Filmakers picture, about an unmarried young woman who becomes pregnant, a subject major studios avoided. Its credited director, Elmer Clifton, had a heart attack shortly after filming began. Lupino stepped in and finished it without a directing credit.

Drama

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Two friends on a fishing trip pick up an escaped killer, who forces them to drive him toward the Mexican border. The story is based on the real 1950 crime spree of William Cook, who killed six people while hitchhiking.

The film runs 71 minutes and was shot in black and white, mostly on location in the California desert. The Library of Congress essay says Lupino took it on because it was too hot for the major studios to touch.

Crime

The Bigamist (1953)

Edmond O'Brien, the actor, plays a salesman with two wives. The first is played by Joan Fontaine, the actor, and the second, a waitress, by Lupino herself. The Film Foundation says it is the only film in which she directed herself.

Collier Young, the screenwriter and producer, had divorced Lupino and was then married to Fontaine. After RKO did not renew its distribution deal, The Filmakers released the film itself, and the company folded two years later. Director Martin Scorsese picked it for his list of must-restore movies.

Drama

What came first, and what is shortest

The Hitch-Hiker runs 71 minutes on one road, and it is the film the Library of Congress chose for its National Film Registry. The Bigamist shows her as both director and actor, and Not Wanted is the film she finished without her name on it.