Ida Lupino was more than a gorgeous image of American film noir of the forties and fifties. Although her talent before the lights made her a major star in classics such as They Drive By Night, High Sierra, and Road House, Lupino evolved into one of Hollywood's earliest female directors, one its most prolific, substantive, and innovative artists behind the camera.

Drama spilled from the stage into Lupino's personal life. William Donati chronicles the conflicts of her three important failed marriages that helped forge this determined and fearless maker of films, the spectre of communism that swept Hollywood, the obstacles that she encountered as a lone woman film director.

That she considered herself "a poor man's Bette Davis" belies her vast talents: from The Light That Failed (1939) to her exceptional performance in Sam Peckinpah's Junior Bonner (1972), she lit up the silver screen for over thirty years. Cast opposite many of the greatest American stars - Ronald Colman, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart - Lupino delivered mesmerizing work in over sixty films.

Lupino's artistic vision, however, reached farther. In the late 1940s she challenged the notion that directing was a man's world and formed an independent company, Filmakers. With the phenomenal success of Not Wanted (1949), Lupino became a major Hollywood producer and director.

Eventually, the eclectic and brilliant Lupino moved from the cinema to television, directing episodes of GE Theatre, Gilligan's Island, The Untouchables, and Gunsmoke, and starring in more than one hundred roles. Lupino's happiest years were with co-star and husband Howard Duff on the set of the hit Mr. Adams and Eve, a clever, thinly disguised comedy about her life with the actor.

Through meticulous research and lengthy interviews with Lupino and her many acquaintances, and with an extensive appendix of her work as actress, director, and producer, Donati delivers an important biocritical study of this major figure of American cinema.