Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: She's A Lady! - Part XXXIII

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies

She's A Lady!

Part XXXIII

Yes, sometimes? It takes a lady.

Or so these films would have us believe.

They promise lots of drama, the occasional comedy or musical, and a little bit of dirt!

Let's take a walk down Hollywood Blvd. and shine a light on these magnificent classic films.

This way, if you please. But remember...

Ladies first!

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The Chorus Lady

(1924)

Patricia O'Brien, a chorus girl, plans to marry Dan Mallory, but a fire in Dan's stables blinds his prize filly, Lady Belle, and forces him to postpone the wedding. Pat returns to New York with her sister, Nora, and the girls find work in the Follies. In spite of Lady Belle's blindness, Dan enters her in a race, and she wins $20,000. When he arrives in New York to give Patricia the good news, he discovers that she has gone to the apartment of Dick Crawford, a notorious gambler and philanderer. Dan goes to find Patricia and, through a misunderstanding, believes that she is having an affair with Crawford. Dan and Patricia are reconciled, however, when he discovers that she went to Crawford's apartment only to look for Nora, who had become involved with the gambler. Dan and Patricia are soon married.

Based on the play of the same name by James Forbes, this American silent drama film directed by Ralph Ince and starring Margaret Livingston, Alan Roscoe, and Virginia Lee Corbin. 

This is a remake of The Chorus Lady (1915) which was directed by Frank Reicher and stars Cleo Ridgely, Marjorie Daw, Wallace Reid, Richard Grey and Mrs. Lewis McCord. 

This film is based on a book and play of the same name, written in 1906 by James Forbes, written in 1906 for actress Rose Stahl.

 The Chorus Lady is considered to be a lost film.

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The Phantom Lady

(1945)

AKA: La Dama Duende

Doña Ángelica, a young widow recently 18 years-old, falls in love and wants to marry an army officer named Don Manuel, but to do so she must evade the vigilance of her sister-in-law who wishes to send her to the convent for the rest of her life. To accomplish this, Doña Ángelica elaborates an ingenious deception that allows her to communicate with Don Manuel in a seemingly mysterious and inexplicable way, appearing like a goblin or ghost.

This Argentine supernatural drama was directed by Luis Saslavsky and stars Delia Garcés and Enrique Diosdado.

The film is an adaptation of the theatrical play The Phantom Lady (1629) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681). The play is an example of the "cloak and sword" genre. However, the film alters the play considerably; the plot is heavily rewritten, and the style of dialogue is completely changed. Calderon's comedy is written in verse, while the screenplay of the film is in prose and contains scenes not found in the play. The final scene includes a fierce storm from which the hero rescues the heroine and declares his love for her, a scene added to the film.

At the 1946 Argentine Film Critics Association Awards the film won Silver Condor Awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Music. It was selected as the eighth greatest Argentine film of all time in a poll conducted by the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken in 1977.

You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube.

Delia Garcés

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The Wicked Lady

(1945)

Seventeenth-century beauty Barbara Worth starts her career of crime by stealing her best friend's bridegroom. Her next exploit is to recover gambling losses by donning mask and cloak and taking to the roads as a highwayman. The thrill of these ventures proves addictive, especially when she meets a male highwayman who becomes her lover. Together, the two desperados lead a secret life, pursued by the local magistrate Sir Ralph Skelton, Barbara's husband!

This British costume drama was directed by Leslie Arliss and stars Margaret Lockwood. James Mason, Patricia Roc, Griffith Jones and Michael Rennie.

The novel upon which this film is based, The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Magdalen King-Hall, recounted the frequently-disputed events surrounding the life of Lady Katherine Ferrers, the wife of the major landowner in Markyate on the main London-Birmingham road.

Stewart Granger turned down the role that  James Mason eventually played. Mason disliked director Leslie Arliss, and hit him during filming.

Both Margaret Lockwood and Patricia Roc were brought back to Gainsborough to re-shoot some of their scenes with less revealing décolleté versions of their era-appropriate wardrobe. Despite this, The Wicked Lady (1945) was the very first British film to be cut by Hollywood censors due to Lockwood's still remaining revealing cleavage.

Lockwood wrote "we enjoyed making that film together. We did not enjoy remaking it, exactly one year later", when they had to re shoot scenes for American censors. "We had to do nine days of re-takes to satisfy the censor on that film and it all seemed very foolish." Mason said "I don't like it now," referring to the film after the changes.

Margaret Lockwood later wrote in her memoirs, "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." Lockwood practiced riding for the role and added a black beauty spot.

Valerie White was originally cast in the role of highwayman Capt. Jerry Jackson's doxy. The actress developed appendicitis and Jean Kent took over the part. The first scene in which the character appears, Lockwood breaks into the room and Mason is in bed with her; it is White's back one sees.

Maurice Ostrer reportedly wanted to make a sequel but this was vetoed by J. Arthur Rank who had taken over ownership of Gainsborough studios. In 1950, it was announced Arliss had written a sequel, The Wicked Lady's Daughter, but it was never made.

This film came in ninth in the UK's Ultimate Film, in which films were placed in order of how many seats they sold at cinemas. 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.

You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube.

Margaret Lockwood

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The Gay Lady

(1949)

AKA: Trottie True

A Gay-'90s British music-hall performer has her sights set on moving from rags to riches. She loses her heart to a an honest, kind-hearted balloonist, but continues her upward drive to improve her social status. She settles for Lord Landon Digby who has lots of assets and a very stiff upper lip. She gets a lot of the latter and very little of the former, and decides that her first love. the balloonist, might have been the better choice.

Based on a novel by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon, this British musical comedy was directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and stars Jean Kent, James Donald and Hugh Sinclair.

Jean Kent called this her "favorite film. And Harry Waxman was a marvelous cameraman. They weren't good with the music, though. I had a battle about that. We were scheduled to start and I hadn't heard a word about the music, so I rang up whoever was the head of Two Cities. I finally managed to get half the music done and then I had another argument about the first number. It dissolves from the brown-eyed young Trottie to the hazel-eyed big Trotttie, which was hysterical. They wanted me to sing something in schottische. I said, 'It's a very nice number but I come from the music halls and I tell you you cannot use a schottische at this point.' So he changed it to 6/8 time."

Kent said she had to prevent the filmmakers from cutting away from her singing, "which they used to be very fond of, in British films. The whole point of somebody singing the song is for the audience in the cinema, not the people in the movie. So I had to devise ways to keep moving all the time so they couldn't get the scissors in, particularly during the Marie Lloyd number in the ballroom scene after I'd become the duchess."

 

Jean Kent

In 1931,Kent started her theatrical career at the age of ten as a dancer. She was eventually signed to Gainsborough Pictures during the Second World War, where she appeared in the lead roles other actresses wouldn't play. "There was a pecking order at Gainsborough. First Margaret (Lockwood), then Pat (Roc) , then Phyllis (Calvert), then me. I was the odds-and-sods girl. I used to mop up the parts that other people didn't want." She made her mark with the movie going public by playing sexually aggressive young woman. At one point, she was the 8th most popular movie actress in the UK.

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The Wicked Lady

(1983)

Caroline is to be wed to Sir Ralph and invites her sister Barbara to be her bridesmaid. Barbara seduces Ralph, however, and she becomes the new Lady, but despite her new wealthy situation, she gets bored and turns to highway robbery for thrills. While on the road she meets a famous highwayman, and they continue as a team, but some people begin suspecting her identity, and she risks death if she continues her nefarious activities.

A re-make of the 1945 film of the same name, this British-American period drama was directed by Michael Winner and stars Faye Dunaway, Alan Bates, John Gielgud, Denholm Elliott, and Hugh Millais.

Michael Winner bought the rights from the Rank Organisation and took the film to Faye Dunaway, who agreed to star in the leading role. Winner then raised finance from the Cannon Group in February 1982.

Menahem Golan of Cannon said that "stars who would never have worked with us before are now happy to sign. We pay them peanuts - but we give them big percentages. Faye, Alan and John were happy to sign for The Wicked Lady because they have 50% of the film. And we have small overheads, so they'll get their money."  

Dunaway said, "I really feel it will be a fun picture. A period romp, it's a mixture between Bonnie and Clyde and Tom Jones." On set, she said, "This is the only film I've ever enjoyed making. Everything I've done in the past has been so full of anguish, though that's partly my fault, I'm sure." She said the film "came at the right time for me. I needed something light after making Mommie Dearest, which was decidedly harrowing."

Faye Dunaway turned down a role of Regan in a British television production of King Lear (1983) starring Sir Laurence Olivier to be in this movie.

Gregory Peck was asked to play Captain Jerry Jackson, but shunned the project because he thought the script was "dire".

Faye Dunaway had fifty hand-made silk dresses imported from France and Italy in her character's wardrobe. Some of the silk on the seventeenth century silk dresses was so delicate and fragile that it had to be mounted on other fabrics so as to protect and preserve it. Dunaway requested Michael Winner to re-shoot some of her scenes because she was dissatisfied with the hats that she had worn in them.

Michael Winner recounted his experience of working with Faye Dunaway, in contrast with stories of her being "difficult": "On the first day of the movie we were shooting on the bridge at Ecton in Derbyshire. It rained. I have a photo of Faye sitting on her horse. She wouldn't even get off her horse to go to her chair, let alone to her caravan. She had an enormous plastic bag over her head to keep her dry. I thought, 'This really is one of the great professionals of all time!' She was never late. She was always quick getting changed from one costume to another. I consider her the most impeccable worker. She did seem to have her own personal worries. I recall Faye sitting in an arbour of the most beautiful rose garden dressed as a late eighteenth-century lady of the manor, with a deep, worried frown on her face. I said, 'Faysie dear, is something wrong?' She said, 'Yes, I have a serious drama in my life.' I said to her, 'Could we relegate it to a minor problem?' Faye said, 'No, darling, it's a serious drama.' I walked away. But she was always enchanting. She was always pleasant. She was always good for a laugh. I called her 'Faysie'. As far as I was concerned it was just another case of all the stories about her being nonsense."

This movie is notable for a whip-fight between two women, which was not in the original novel, but was already in The Wicked Lady (1945). The scene caused a controversy, as the British Board of Film Classification wanted to impose a cut, and director Michael Winner refused to cut the notorious sequence. The scene stayed, but the movie's release was delayed.

Marina Sirtis said when her agent asked if she wanted to be in a movie with Faye Dunaway, Alan Bates, Sir John Gielgud, Oliver Tobias, and Glynis Barber. she replied, "Uh, yeah. I want to be in that movie." When they told her Dunaway rips your clothes off, Sirtis said, "Okay, that's fine, because it's Faye Dunaway." According to Marina Sirtis, right before filming her whipping scene, director Michael Winner cut her costume off with a pair of scissors and told her to get on with it.

Several of the cast had no idea that this film was going to be so adult in nature. One of them was Sir John Gielgud, who at first was a bit upset at the sex and gore in the film. Several years later though he changed his mind and became quite amused by being in a film he described as "...having naughty bits, but unfortunately none of them involving me".

John Gielgud wrote, regarding this film: "Great nonsense, directed by a mad nut called Michael Winner, a foul-mouthed director with a certain charm- at least very respectful to me, though MOST unpleasant to underlings - a restless maniac mixture of George Cukor, Harpo Marx and Lionel Bart. I had two effective scenes with Miss D. who is a very Hollywood type egotistical madam with a surrounding band of satellites - husband, make-up man, wardrobe lady and so on - taking hours to change her costume and titivate between every take, so I didn't enjoy all that much".

The movie score was composed by Tony Banks, who is best known as the keyboardist of the rock band Genesis.

Faye Dunaway

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And that's all for now, folks.

Tune in next time...

Same place, same channel.

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The Wicked Lady - Movie Trailer

(1983)