In the “The Twilight Zone” episode “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” (October 12, 1959), Ida Lupino plays Barbara Jean Trenton, a Norma Desmond-type movie star whose glory days are behind her. She spends her days wallowing in self-pity, drinking booze, and watching 16mm reels of her old performances. Her old showbiz friends are all either retired or dead, and she resents that she can’t land any glamorous leading roles anymore. She is offered a role as a young ingénue’s mother, but she refuses to accept how old she is. The episode ends with Barbara locking herself in her projection room, wishing deeply that life could be as marvelous as it was 30 years ago. Her wish comes true. She magically, bodily shunts herself through her movie screen into the 16mm movie where she, and all her friends, are youthful forever.
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“The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” was only the first time Ida Lupino was involved with “The Twilight Zone.” Lupino, a prolific director in her own right, also helmed the rather famous episode “The Masks” (March 20, 1964). That was the episode in which a dying millionaire named Jason Foster (Robert Keith) called his four greediest relatives to his home to play a game. Jason knows that the quartet is just waiting for him to die so they can inherit his fortunes, and he confronts them about it. He says they can have his money, so long as they wear theatrical masks all night. The masks, he says, represent their weak inner character. One is brutish, another weak, etc. At the end, the guests’ faces have mutated underneath the masks to match what they look like on the outside. It’s a well-beloved episode that regularly makes top-10 lists.
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Because of these two episodes, Ida Lupino holds a few distinctions in “Twilight Zone” history.” For one, she is the only woman to have directed an episode of the show. For another, she’s the only actor to have directed on the series, and the only director to have acted.
Ida Lupino is the only person to have acted and directed on The Twilight Zone
Lupino, like her on-screen “Twilight Zone” counterpart, became a star in the 1930s, acting in multiple films a year as a young leading lady. She appeared in dozens of films throughout the 1930s and 1940s, becoming one of Hollywood’s more reliable lead actresses. In 1949, Lupino co-directed her first feature, a pregnancy drama called “Not Wanted.” She didn’t receive credit (her co-director, Elmer Clifton, was credited instead), but the experience led to further directing jobs throughout the 1950s. She helmed 1953’s “The Hitch-Hiker” and “The Bigamist” the same year.
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In 1958, Lupino directed her first episode of television, overseeing production on “Mr. Adams and Eve,” a show on which she was also the lead actress. She would go on to direct episodes of “The Rifleman,” “Gilligan’s Island” (yes, seriously), and “Bewitched.” Her film-directing career continued through 1966, when she managed “The Trouble with Angels,” starring Hayley Mills. Her directing style was naturalistic and, in many cases, documentary-like, a welcome departure from a lot of the more mannered, stylized filmmaking styles of the 1950s. Lupino continued to act throughout her directing career and made TV and film appearances through the late 1970s. She appeared in an episode of “Charlie’s Angels” in 1977 and in the film “My Boys Are Good Boys” in 1978. Lupino, as one might guess, frequently expressed frustration that more women weren’t hired to direct in Hollywood.
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One might ask oneself if “Twilight Zone” creator/writer/narrator Rod Serling ever directed an episode, but, perhaps surprisingly, he didn’t.
Some of the actors on “The Twilight Zone” would become film directors (Robert Redford for instance), and some of the directors had done some acting in other projects (TV director Abner Biberman, David Greene, and David Butler all did some acting), but none of them handled double duty, acting and directing on “The Twilight Zone.” That distinction belongs to Lupino and Lupino alone. Credit where it is due.