The Wicked Lady **** (1945, Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Patricia Roc, Griffith Jones, Michael Rennie) – Classic Movie Review 1335

The 1945 British costume melodrama film The Wicked Lady stars Margaret Lockwood as a nobleman’s wife who becomes a highwayman for the excitement. It enjoyed incredible popularity when 18,400,000 patrons paid to see it.

Writer-director Leslie Arliss’s 1945 popular triumph The Wicked Lady finds Margaret Lockwood on top wicked form as 17th-century beauty Barbara Worth, a scheming, tomboyish English woman who becomes a nobleman’s wife by stealing her best friend Caroline (Patricia Roc)’s bridegroom.

But later, she walks out on her boring husband, the wealthy landowner and local magistrate Sir Ralph Skelton (Griffith Jones), and secretly becomes a highwayman just for kicks when she teams up with the alluringly dark and handsome robber (James Mason) she fatefully encounters. Finally she’s met her match – and her life or death partner.

One night, a chance remark about the notorious highwayman Captain Jerry Jackson gives Barbara an idea. After losing her treasured brooch at cards to her detested sister-in-law, Lady Henrietta Kingsclere (Enid Stamp-Taylor), Barbara masquerades as Jackson, dons a mask and holds up Henrietta’s coach, taking her own brooch back along with the rest of Henrietta’s jewellery.

Intoxicated and addicted by the hold-up, she becomes a crime junkie, compulsively keeping robbing coaches till of course eventually she and the real Captain Jackson (Mason) target the same coach. Jackson is amused and enchanted to find his competitor is a beautiful woman and they become partners in love and crime. But two desperados are pursued by the local magistrate – Barbara’s husband of course.

Arliss’s film was Gainsborough Pictures studios’ most successful costume caper, the highspot of its triumphant series of highly popular melodramas the studio made during the 1940s. The Wicked Lady was released on 15 November 1945 and enjoyed incredible popularity when 18,400,000 patrons paid to see it and it was the most successful movie at the British box office in 1946.

This ‘bodice-ripper’ is still enormous fun and it still triumphs thanks to the hugely spirited performances, feisty story and Arliss’s dynamic handling. Its confidence in itself and infectious, sexy zest easily see it through to success. Lockwood’s low-cut costumes spurred notoriety as well as popularity, and were thought scandalous enough to cause the film to have to be re-shot for American screenings.

Lockwood recalled: ‘We enjoyed making that film together. We did not enjoy remaking it, exactly one year later’ when they had to re-shoot scenes for the US censors. ‘We had to do nine days of retakes to satisfy the censor on that film and it all seemed very foolish.’ Mason said of the US version: ‘I don’t like it now’.

The story is taken from the 1944 novel The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Magdalen King-Hall, which was based on disputed events surrounding the life of Lady Katherine Ferrers, the wife of the major landowner in Markyate on the main London to Birmingham road.

It is subversive that you are on the Wicked Lady’s side all the way through, and you want to applaud when Lockwood screams: ‘I’ve got brains and looks and personality and I want to use them instead of rotting in this dull hole!’

Michael Rennie, Felix Aylmer, Martita Hunt, David Horne, Beatrice Varley, Francis Lister, Jean Kent, Emrys Jones and Amy Dalby are also in the cast.

It runs 104 minutes.

The film was remade in 1983 as The Wicked Lady by director Michael Winner with Faye Dunaway.

Margaret Lockwood and James Mason also appeared together in 1945 in A Place of One’s Own. They had also appeared together in Arliss’s 1943 Gainsborough Pictures melodrama The Man in Grey, the first of a series of period costume dramas known as the Gainsborough melodramas.

Lockwood recalled: ‘This was an enchantingly wicked part. At first, as usual, I did not like the thought of playing a villainous role again, but it was such a good one that I knew it would be madness to refuse it.’

Filming started in March 1945 at Gainsborough Studios in London with location shooting at Blickling Hall in Norfolk.

Gainsborough star Stewart Granger turned down the role of Captain Jerry Jackson that Mason plays. Lockwood had to practice horse riding for her role and added her trademark black beauty spot.

The character of Caroline (Patricia Roc) does not appear in the novel.

The cast are Margaret Lockwood as Barbara Worth, James Mason as Captain Jerry Jackson, Patricia Roc as Caroline, Griffith Jones as Sir Ralph Skelton, Michael Rennie as Kit Locksby, Felix Aylmer as Hogarth, Enid Stamp Taylor as Lady Kingsclere, Francis Lister as Lord Kingsclere, Beatrice Varley as Aunt Moll, Amy Dalby as Aunt Doll, Martita Hunt as Cousin Agatha, David Horne as Martin Worth, Emrys Jones as Ned Cotterill, Helen Goss as Mistress Betsy, Muriel Aked as Mrs Munce, and Jean Kent as Captain Jerry Jackson’s doxy.

Jean Kent (born Joan Mildred Field; 29 June 1921 − 30 November 2013).

Jean Kent (who plays Captain Jerry Jackson’s doxy in The Wicked Lady) died on November 30 2013, aged 92. She made her name in the 1940s and 1950s starring in films from Gainsborough Pictures, including Fanny by Gaslight, Bees in Paradise, Madonna of the Seven Moons and The Wicked Lady. On another Gainsborough film, 1946′s Caravan, she met Austrian actor and her future husband Josef Ramart. Their co-star Stewart Granger was the best man at their wedding.

They were also both in the film Trottie True.

She made her last public appearance in June 2011 as a guest at a screening of Caravan at the BFI Southbank on her 90th birthday.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1335

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/