SUNDAY, MARCH 22 @ 11:45 AM (ET)
I Married a Witch (1942) is a romantic comedy/fantasy starring Frederic March as gubernatorial candidate Wallace Wooley and Veronica Lake as Jennifer, the witch he marries in 1942. But in fact their relationship begins three centuries earlier. We see March as Wallace’s ancestor Jonathan Wooley and Lake as the witch he burns in old Salem. The whimsical nature of the film becomes apparent when the solemn proceedings are interrupted by a “short intermission” before her sorcerer dad (Cecil Kellaway) is similarly incinerated, and a hawker circulates selling snacks with an “anti-witch charm in every bag.” But Jennifer has the last laugh; she curses him and all his descendants to be unhappy in love. We witness the amorous misfortunes of Nathaniel in 1770, Samuel in 1861, and an unnamed Wooley in 1904. Which brings us to the present (1942), where Wallace is engaged to Estelle (Susan Hayward) the humorless, ill-tempered daughter of a newspaper magnate.
As fate would have it, lightening strikes the tree in which Jennifer and her father’s spirits have been trapped, and they’re released as two clouds of smoke. She materializes herself in the far more appealing form of Veronica Lake, places herself in a burning hotel which Wallace happens to be passing by, and cries out for help in a voice that only he can hear. He rushes to her rescue and so the bedevilment begins. She plans to make him fall in love with her, with evil intent. But, alas, the best laid plans of mice, men and witches…. She puts him in inexplicable embarassing situations, turns his wedding into a shambles, and generally creates mayhem in his life. But as the title indicates, she ends up falling in love with him.
This is one of a handful of films made in the U. S. by Rene Clair, the French master of fantasy, after he fled Nazi-occupied France. It secured an Oscar nomination for Roy Webb for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.
