Kitty

Kitty is a 1945 film, a costume drama set in London during the 1780s, directed by Mitchell Leisen, based on the novel of the same name by Rosamond Marshall (published in 1943), with a screenplay by Karl Tunberg. It stars Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, Constance Collier, Patric Knowles, Reginald Owen, and Cecil Kellaway as the English painter Thomas Gainsborough. In a broad interpretation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, the film tells the rags-to-riches story of a beautiful young cockney guttersnipe who is given a complete makeover by an impoverished aristocrat (Milland) and his aunt (Collier) in hopes of arranging her marriage to a peer, thereby repairing their fortunes and their social status. Plot In 1783 London, a poor thief, Kitty, is caught picking the pocket of painter Thomas Gainsborough. Amused, he pays her to sit for a portrait. While posing, she attracts the attention of Sir Hugh Marcy, who offers her a job as a scullery maid and (later) his aunt's ward. Kitty later learns he is impoverished, having lost his post in the Foreign Office. All the while, Gainsborough's portrait of Kitty, The Anonymous Lady, creates a stir, as people try to guess the subject's identity. The Duke of Malmunster, who buys the painting, asks Gainsborough about the model. Sir Hugh interjects that she is his aunt's ward. So in exchange for an introduction to Kitty, the Duke offers to have Hugh reinstated in the Foreign Office. But the relationship goes no further than the promised introduction. Meanwhile, Kitty develops an attraction for Hugh—so much so, that when he is sent to debtors' prison, Kitty charms wealthy industrialist Jonathan Selby into marriage, using her dowry to free Hugh. But he and his aunt once again go broke. So when Kitty breaks into her husband's strongbox to bail them out of trouble, Selby beats her but then dies at the hands of Kitty's loyal maid. As a result, Kitty inherits a large fortune. She desires happiness with Hugh, but he is determined instead that she marry the Duke of Malmunster and reclaim his career. Kitty gives in, and after the honeymoon, the duke makes it known that Kitty is pregnant (though the father is actually the late Selby). After the birth of the boy, the old duke dies, leaving Kitty extremely wealthy. After a respectable mourning period, Hugh attempts to arrange a third marriage for Kitty, this time to the Prince of Wales. Kitty, however, confesses to Hugh she married twice out of love for him.