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The Wicked Lady (1945) More at IMDbPro »

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Overview

User Rating:
6.4/10   372 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Down 22% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Leslie Arliss
Writers:
Magdalen King-Hall (novel)
Leslie Arliss (screenplay)
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Contact:
View company contact information for The Wicked Lady on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
21 December 1946 (USA) more
Genre:
Adventure | Drama more
Plot:
17th-century beauty Barbara Worth starts her career of crime by stealing her best friend's bridegroom... more | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
more
User Comments:
A true classic which should be made available on DVD in North America more (19 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)
Margaret Lockwood ... Barbara Worth

James Mason ... Captain Jerry Jackson
Patricia Roc ... Caroline
Griffith Jones ... Sir Ralph Skelton
Michael Rennie ... Kit Locksby
Felix Aylmer ... Hogarth
Enid Stamp-Taylor ... Lady Henrietta Kingsclere (as Enid Stamp Taylor)
Francis Lister ... Lord Kingsclere
Beatrice Varley ... Aunt Moll
Amy Dalby ... Aunt Doll
Martita Hunt ... Cousin Agatha
David Horne ... Martin Worth
Emrys Jones ... Ned Cotterill
Helen Goss ... Mistress Betsy
Muriel Aked ... Mrs. Munce
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Additional Details

Parents Guide:
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Runtime:
104 min | USA:97 min
Country:
UK
Language:
English
Color:
Black and White
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (British Acoustic)
Certification:
UK:A (original rating) | UK:PG | Finland:K-16
Filming Locations:
Blickling Hall, Blickling, Norfolk, England, UK more
Company:
Gainsborough Pictures more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
This was the very first British film to be cut by Hollywood censors due to leading lady Margaret Lockwood's revealing cleavage more
Goofs:
Factual errors: The newspaper that first reports Barbara's and Jerry's exploits is dated Thursday, November 10th 1683. The 10th was a Saturday. more
Quotes:
Caroline: I hate cruelty.
Kit Locksby: That's unusual... in a woman.
more
Movie Connections:
Featured in Shepperton Babylon (2005) (TV) more
Soundtrack:
Love Steals Your Heart more

FAQ

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User Comments

   (Comment on this title)
17 out of 18 people found the following comment useful.
A true classic which should be made available on DVD in North America, 3 February 2005
8/10
Author: L. Denis Brown (ldbrown1@shaw.ca) from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

At the end of World War II the U.K. Gainsborough Studios had a very fine reputation based on the production of a long string of successful films, and backed by a list of very well known performers on whom they could call. November 1945 saw the release of "The Wicked Lady" - a film version of a historical novel by Magdalen King Hall which featured four of their major stars, with Margaret Lockwood in the title role supported by Jean Kent, James Mason and Patricia Roc. Initially this film was panned by many of the critics, but it was immensely successful at the U.K. box office and has now certainly achieved the status of a major black and white classic. I first saw it at quite a young age soon after it was released, and (perhaps largely because of my impressionable age) thought it must be one of the most sexy films ever released. However a few years later I saw it again and this confirmed my first impression. Margaret Lockwood was a great actress who participated in some 50 films during a career which spanned over more than 40 years. The Wicked Lady was a mid-career film made at a time when she was at the peak of her powers and she gave a memorable, if chilling, performance in the part of Lady Barbara Skelton The performances of her co-stars were perhaps not quite so memorable, but this was largely because the premise of both the book and the film was that the wicked lady had a very much stronger character than anyone else with whom she interacted, and it would be hard to seriously fault any of the acting.

For some reason this film never achieved comparable success in the U.S.A. Because the meticulously recreated seventeenth century costumes used for the original version displayed too much décolletage for the Hayes office, it was re-filmed a year after it was first released with modified costumes, specifically designed for the U.S. market. According to IMDb, Universal Pictures were the U.S. distributors; but the film does not seem to be widely known and may only have received a very limited distribution - IMDb do not even list a U.S. rating for this film. Thirty eight years later the film was remade under the same title in colour, with Faye Dunaway in the title role. As is so often the case in such circumstances I found the original version to be very much more memorable, but unfortunately it has now become very difficult to purchase in a form suitable for home viewing. A DVD in PAL format has been released in Europe, but I do not think it was ever produced in NTSC format - one hopes this was not because of continuing concern about the necklines.

This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the original film (which was never released in the United States) and I am now submitting these comments to IMDb to suggest that the anniversary provides an ideal opportunity to release a North American DVD version of it. Many classic black and white films have been released on DVD in this way during the past few years and "The Wicked Lady" would be a worthy addition to this list. Some of the listed prices for such releases tend to be rather high, suggesting that large sales of monochrome films are not expected today. If this is a concern the original version of the film could probably be paired with the 1983 colour remake in a double release which would provide viewers interested in the development of the modern cinema with an excellent opportunity to compare the film making techniques of two very different periods.

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more (19 total)

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