The Wicked Lady
| The Wicked Lady | |
|---|---|
Promotional poster | |
| Directed by | Leslie Arliss |
| Written by | Leslie Arliss additional dialogue Gordon Glennon Aimee Stuart |
| Based on | novel Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Magdalen King-Hall |
| Produced by | R. J. Minney executive Maurice Ostrer |
| Starring | James Mason Margaret Lockwood Patricia Roc Griffith Jones Jean Kent Michael Rennie Felix Aylmer Enid Stamp Taylor |
| Cinematography | Jack E. Cox |
| Edited by | Terence Fisher |
| Music by | Hans May |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Eagle-Lion Distributors Limited (U.K.) Universal (U.S.) |
Release date |
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Running time | 104 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £900,000 or $672,000 |
| Box office | over $1 million (US rentals) £375,000 (UK rentals) or $2,250,000 (UK gross) |
The Wicked Lady is a 1945 British costume drama film directed by Leslie Arliss and starring James Mason and Margaret Lockwood. Lockwood plays a nobleman's wife who becomes a highwaywoman for the excitement. It had one of the largest audiences for a film of its period, with an estimated British attendance of 18.4 million seeing it in cinemas, according to a 2004 ranking of the most popular sound films in Britain. In the list, compiled by the British Film Institute for Channel 4, it was placed ninth overall, and was the second-most successful British film, behind only Spring in Park Lane (1948).
It was one of the Gainsborough melodramas, a sequence of very popular films made during the 1940s.
The story was based on the 1945 novel Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Magdalen King-Hall which, in turn, was based upon the (disputed) events surrounding the life of Lady Katherine Ferrers, the wife of the major landowner in Markyate on the main London–Birmingham road.
A remake, also named The Wicked Lady, was made by Michael Winner in 1983.