Read Beat (...and repeat)
If you're like me, you like to know things but how much time to invest? That's the question. Here's the answer: Read Beat--Interviews with authors of new releases. These aren't book reviews but short (about 25-30 minutes on the average) chats with folks that usually have taken a lot of time to research a topic, enough to write a book about it. Hopefully, there's a topic or two that interests you. I try to come up with subjects that fascinate me or I need to know more about. Hopefully, listeners will agree. I'm Steve Tarter, former reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and a contributor to WCBU-FM, the Peoria public radio outlet, from 20202 to 2024. I post regularly on stevetarter.substack.com.
Read Beat (...and repeat)
"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.
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