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The Lady in Question

1940 film by Charles Vidor

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ1548895
Source-derived summary

The Lady in Question is a 1940 American comedy-drama romance film directed by Charles Vidor and starring Brian Aherne, Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. It is a remake of the 1937 French film Gribouille.

This was the first of five films in which Ford and Hayworth appeared together, most famously in their second film, Gilda (1946). They also teamed together in The Loves of Carmen (1948), Affair in Trinidad (1952) and The Money Trap (1965). Their on-screen liaisons were soon transformed into an enduring, lifelong friendship.

Plot

While serving on a Paris jury André Morestan (Brian Aherne) persuades his deadlocked peers to vote for the acquittal of Natalie Roguin (Rita Hayworth), a young woman on trial for the shooting death of a young man she had been seeing. Securing her acquittal, Morestan invites her to live and work at his bicycle and music shop when no one else will give her a job. However, he decides to keep her true identity a secret, which soon begins to raise doubts within his family. His son Pierre (Glenn Ford) soon falls in love with her, even though he knows who she is.

Eventually, Pierre steals some money from the store's till, and André is persuaded by a fellow former juror that Natalie was in fact guilty.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Lady in Question” is 1940 film by Charles Vidor. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lady, Question and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1940, 1937, 1946, 1948—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1940-01-01. For this dossier, Lady, Question and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1940 film by Charles Vidor” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1548895. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1937, 1946 and 1948.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Lady in Question”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Lady in Question primary sources, The Lady in Question archive and Lady research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Lady in Question”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from The Lady in Question” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.