The Wicked Lady is a 1945 British costume drama film directed by Leslie Arliss and starring Margaret Lockwood in the title role as a nobleman's wife who becomes a highwayman for the excitement. The film had one of the top audiences for a film of its period, 18.4 million. It was one of the Gainsborough melodramas, a sequence of very popular films made during the 1940s. In 2020, Filmink magazine said "if you only see one Gainsborough melodrama, this is the one to check out." 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. The film was loosely remade by Michael Winner as The Wicked Lady in 1983. Plot Caroline (Patricia Roc) invites her beautiful, green-eyed friend Barbara (Margaret Lockwood) to her wedding to wealthy landowner and local magistrate Sir Ralph Skelton (Griffith Jones). The scheming Barbara soon has Sir Ralph entranced. Caroline, wishing his happiness, stands aside, and even allows Barbara to persuade her to be her maid of honour so as to lessen the scandal of the abrupt change of brides. At the wedding reception, Barbara meets a handsome stranger, Kit Locksby (Michael Rennie). It is love at first sight for both, but too late. Married life in the country does not provide the new Lady Skelton with the excitement she craves. A visit from her detested sister-in-law Henrietta, Lady Kingsclere (Enid Stamp-Taylor), and her husband (Francis Lister) does not lessen her boredom. In a game of Ombre, Henrietta wins Barbara's jewels, including her most-prized possession, her late mother's ruby brooch. A chance remark about the notorious highwayman Captain Jerry Jackson gives Barbara an idea. Masquerading as Jackson, Barbara stops Henrietta's coach and retrieves her brooch (as well as the rest of Henrietta's jewellery). Intoxicated by the experience, she continues to waylay coaches until one night, she and the real Captain Jackson (James Mason) target the same one. After they relieve the passengers of their valuables and escape, Jackson is amused to find his competitor is a beautiful woman. They become lovers and partners in crime. She warns him never to be unfaithful to her with another woman. Barbara learns of a planned gold shipment from a former tenant