Director Mitchell Leisen, a stickler for authenticity, had Ida Lupino's cockney mother Connie Emerald move in with Goddard so that the actress could have someone to converse with in cockney literally all day long, every day. She worked intensely with a dialogue coach, Phyllis Loughton, but that wasn't all. To transform in the film from street urchin to refined duchess required Goddard, a native Long Islander, to master two distinct British accents. Kitty showcases Paulette Goddard at the peak of her beauty and ability.
She marries a man (Dennis Hoey) for his money, then after his death marries a duke (Reginald Owen), before finally winding up with the lord she's loved all along (Ray Milland). Kitty (Paulette Goddard) is a cockney girl who is discovered and painted by artist Thomas Gainsborough (Cecil Kellaway). An adaptation of the novel Kitty, by Rosamond Marshall, seemed like a good substitute.Įven though Forever Amber takes place in the seventeenth century and Kitty is set in the eighteenth, the two characters, Crowther aptly noted, "are sisters under their coiffures," with both using sex and cunning to make their way up from nothing to the top tiers of London society. Kitty, released by Paramount, was a similar story with a similar tone, and not by accident Paramount had originally owned the rights to Forever Amber but lost them to Fox.
Portrait painter 1.37 movie#
On April 1, 1946, The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "A certain young lady named Amber - or, at least, her cinematic sponsors in Hollywood - must be awfully burned at Paramount's Kitty for beating her to the screen."Ĭrowther was referring to the heroine of Forever Amber, a scandalous and extremely popular novel that was still in the works as a movie from Twentieth Century Fox. Touched by Hugh's genuine love, Kitty runs after him, and they kiss. Brett is determined to marry Kitty despite her lowly birth, however, causing Hugh to exit graciously.
At Brett and Kitty's engagement party, Hugh brings Old Meg to meet Brett and divulge Kitty's past, believing that Brett will call off the marriage. While viewing Gainsborough's latest portrait of Kitty as the Duchess of Malmunster, Hugh finally realizes he is in love with her, but Kitty meets his ardent confession with bitterness and throws him out. While out with Gainsborough, Kitty again meets Brett, who has just returned from India, and he falls in love with her. When Hugh again suggests that Kitty marry, she angrily confesses that she is in love with him, but he cannot see past her sordid upbringing. She gives birth to a boy, but after his first glimpse of the baby, the duke, who has a weak heart, falls down the stairs and dies, leaving a considerable fortune to his duchess. The duke, an old man who is desperate for an heir, is delighted to learn, at the return of their honeymoon, that his bride is pregnant. Kitty soon learns she is pregnant and agrees to marry the duke for Hugh's sake. When Selby catches Kitty stealing from him and starts to beat her, her devoted maid kills Selby, then herself.
When Hugh is taken to debtor's prison, Kitty, now in love with him, marries her neighbor, an ironmonger named Jonathan Selby, in order to pay for Hugh's release. Hugh and his drunken aunt, Lady Susan Dewitt, give Kitty etiquette and elocution lessons. When the Duke of Malmunster demands to know who she is, Hugh fabricates Kitty's origins so that the duke will want to marry her, and the duke agrees to restore him to the Foreign Office in exchange for an introduction to Kitty. Gainsborough's work is rivalled only by that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and at the unveiling of Kitty's portrait, all of London's high society is awed by the anonymous beauty. Hugh, who was expelled from the Foreign Office in favor of the Duke of Malmunster's nephew, and presently is close to debtor's prison, takes Kitty home to be his scullery maid. After Kitty is caught stealing a pair of shoes belonging to noted painter Thomas Gainsborough, Gainsborough paints her portrait, titling it "Portrait of an Unknown Lady." Ne'er-do-well Sir Hugh Marcy visits Gainsborough with Brett Harwood, the Earl of Carstairs, and meets Kitty. In Houndsditch, London, in the mid-eighteenth century, Kitty, a hungry gamin, is beaten by her keeper, Old Meg, when she fails to bring home expensive buckles.