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).

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 1783 London, a poor thief, Kitty, is caught picking the pocket of painter Thomas Gainsborough.

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.

All the while, Gainsborough's portrait of Kitty, The Anonymous Lady, creates a stir, as people try to guess the subject's identity.

After she has a respectable mourning period, Hugh attempts to arrange a third marriage for Kitty, this time to the Prince of Wales.

[3] In October 1943, Paramount announced they would make the film with Paulette Goddard and Ray Milland, with Karl Turnberg and Darrell Ware to write and produce.

The Breen Office, who handled censorship at the time, ruled if this was to be kept in the film version, Kitty would have to die at the end for punishment.

[9] Director Leisen worked very hard with the set and costume designers to create a historically correct picture of 18th-century England.

[2] The film was nominated for one Oscar for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White (Hans Dreier, Walter H. Tyler, Samuel M. Comer, Ray Moyer).