Dishonored Lady now streaming on Classic Movie Vault

Dishonored Lady (also known as Sins of Madeleine) is a 1947 American film noir crime film directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Hedy Lamarr, Dennis O'Keefe and John Loder. It is based on the 1930 play Dishonored Lady by Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes. Lamarr and Loder were married when they made the film, but they divorced later in 1947.

In this film, beautiful art editor Madeleine Damian (Hedy Lamarr) carries on numerous loveless affairs. After a failed relationship with advertiser Felix Courtland (John Loder), the increasingly depressed Madeleine attempts suicide. When Jack Garet (William Lundigan), her secretary and former lover, tries to blackmail her, Madeleine resigns and seeks a reclusive life. Neighbor David Cousins (Dennis O'Keefe) befriends Madeleine, but soon Courtland and Garet discover her whereabouts and disrupt her new life.

Production was scheduled to begin no later than January 1945. However, problems with the Motion Picture Production Code caused a delay. The Hays Office insisted that two love affairs in the script, one in Mexico and the other in New York, might be "overloading" the picture, and also objected to the "night of sordid passion." A memo dated April 25, 1946, stated that, despite revisions, the script was unacceptable because of its gratuitous sex and references to Madeleine's unsavory family secrets. In the final film, references to Madeleine's parents were omitted completely. A character named Moreno and an affair in Mexico City were excised, and the "night of sordid passion" was not shown. All suggestions that Madeleine was a murderer, or had even contemplated murder, were also removed from the film. In the final script submitted to the Hays Office, Madeleine takes a trip hoping that the time will come when she can be with David; the reunion at the film's closing was added later.