Fond Memories of The Wicked Lady

Fig. 1: Portrait of Katherine Ferrers (c. 1848)
Fig. 2: Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady (1945)

Fig. 3: Faye Dunaway in The Wicked Lady (1983)

 

 

I. 

 

According to popular legend, Lady Katherine Ferrers was a bored young gentlewoman and heiress by day, but a notorious highwaywoman by night; one who committed crimes for the sake of the danger, not the money. 

 

Known as the wicked lady, she terrorised the good people of Hertfordshire as they went about their business; apart from robbing travellers at gunpoint, an entire catalogue of wrongdoing was attributed to her, including arson, slaughtering livestock, and even the murder of a local constable.  

 

Sadly, Katherine was to succumb to a gunshot wound sustained on Nomansland Common during an attempted hold-up in 1660, aged 26. 

 

Her body - still disguised in male clothing - was  discovered by her loyal servants, who carried their mistress home to be buried. It is said, however, that Katherine's ghost continues to haunt the Common - just as she continues to feature in the cultural imagination ...

 

 

II. 

 

In 1944, Magdalen King-Hall published a novel - The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton - whose story was looslely based on the (contentious) events surrounding Katherine's life. 

 

The following year, a big-screen adaptation entitled The Wicked Lady - directed by Leslie Arliss and starring Margaret Lockwood in the lead role (here named Barbara Worth) and James Mason as her lover and partner in crime (Capt. Jackson) - smashed British box office records, pulling in an audience of over 18 million.

 

The British, it seems, have always loved a costume drama - even in wartime. 

 

Unfortunately, the American censors were none too pleased with the movie and several scenes had to be re-shot before it was given a US release; it seems the low-cut bodices worn by some of the more buxom actresses were a bit too much for our puritan cousins across the Atlantic.  

Ideas for a sequel were discussed, but came to nothing and the viewing public had to wait nearly forty years for a remake ...

 

III.

 

This infamous 1983 remake of The Wicked Lady, starring Faye Dunaway (as Lady Barbara Skelton) and Alan Bates (as Capt. Jackson), has all that one might hope for from a film written, produced and directed by Michael Winner - including, controversially, a whip fight between Dunaway's character and a topless Marina Sirtis as Jackson's (unnamed) girlfriend (or doxy) [1].     

 

Winner described his vision of the film as a period romp that combined elements from the story of Bonnie and Clyde with those of Tom Jones (I'm assuming he refers here to the 1963 film, rather than Fielding's classic novel of 1749).

 

Writing in a retrospective review, David Hayles pretty much nails the appeal of the movie:

 

"Winner updated the film the only way he knew how - with sex and violence: by the time the opening credits have rolled, the film has already earned its 18 rating. We see a crow pecking the brains out of a corpse in a gibbet, a man with a rope around his neck dragged across a field by a horse, and a naked couple copulating in a barn."

 

He continues:

      

"The tone is somewhere between the rustic horror of Witchfinder General and the softcore romp Young Lady Chatterley 2, with lavish costumes and beautiful shots of horses thundering across the countryside. The likes of John Gielgud and Denholm Elliot play it very straight, yet veer into overwrought camp melodrama filled with appalling stunt work and, as was Winner’s penchant, nude women at every opportunity. Somehow, it all comes together to make for a delightful feature." [2]

 

The movie premiered at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square, on the 21st of April, 1983. Although we were not invited to either the screening or the party afterwards, my friend Kirk Field and I were hanging about Soho that day and happened to pass through the Square as some of the guests were arriving and someone - I don't know who - took this snap ... 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The British censor insisted this scene - which is in the original film, although not the novel - be cut before The Wicked Lady could be given an X-certificate. An outraged Michael Winner encouraged friends and colleagues to write letters of protest to the censor; these figures included Lindsay Anderson, Kingsley Amis, Derek Malcolm, and Fay Weldon.

      Although at the time Marina Sirtis said that filming the scene didn't bother her in the slightest - and despite the fact that she appeared nude two years later in Winner's Death Wish 3 (1985) during a brutal rape scene - she later complained about her treatment by the director, accusing him of sexual exploitation and expressing the hope he would rot in hell for all eternity. 

      In contrast, Faye Dunaway would insist that The Wicked Lady was the only movie she ever truly enjoyed making.           

 

[2] David Hayles, 'The scandalous folly of Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady', published on the Little White Lies website (1 July 2016): click here.

 

 

To watch the trailer for The Wicked Lady (1945): click here. 

 

To watch the trailer for The Wicked Lady (1983): click here.