Considered the first Hollywood sound feature directed by its female star herself, The Bigamist marks another entry in Ida Lupino’s string of filmmaking efforts to squarely confront pressing, taboo social topics. This dramatic, haunting noir uniquely centers on fragile family man and traveling salesman Harry (Edmond O’Brien) torn between his matrimonial devotions to two women: the business-minded and barren San Francisco-based Eve (Joan Fontaine) and the independent, grounded and fertile Angeleno, Phyllis (Lupino). Caught in his lies by an adoption agent, Harry’s tangled romantic yarn is spun in a series of flashbacks. RKO was originally attached, but producers Collier Young and Lupino instead opted to self-distribute when they recognized the measly profits that were barely returning to their pockets. (UCLA Film & Television Archive)

In an op-ed in the New York Times upon her death in 1995, Martin Scorsese wrote this about Ida Lupino: “I never met Ida Lupino, but I always wanted to. Her tough, emotional acting is well remembered, but her considerable accomplishments as a filmmaker are largely forgotten. She was a true pioneer; the six films she directed between 1949 and 1953 are remarkable chamber pieces that deal with challenging subjects in a clear, almost documentary fashion, and are a singular achievement in American cinema.”