I Married a Witch **** (1942, Fredric March, Veronica Lake, Cecil Kellaway) – Classic Movie Review 7189

Director René Clair sprinkles magic dust on this enchanting 1942 whimsical comedy about a 260-year-old witch (Veronica Lake) and her much, much older wizard dad (Cecil Kellaway) who materialise in the present to scare the descendants of the rabid Puritan judge (Fredric March) who ordered them torched alive in Salem, Massachusetts, generations ago (1672). So the film opens with Puritans burning witches, even though in real life people were hanged not burned for witchcraft in America.

The judge is now reincarnated as prospective governor and the witch and wizard interfere with his election, while the witch falls for him, of course.

The bewitching performances delightfully interpret Robert Pirosh and Marc Connelly’s sparkling screenplay, taken from the novel The Passionate Witch by Thorne Smith, who also wrote Topper.

An exuberant Lake gives her best performance outside her noir trilogy with Alan Ladd (The Glass Key, This Gun for Hire, The Blue Dahlia), March is ideal as the various versions of the Wooley famiily, and Kellaway gives a splendidly ripe, scene-stealing turn as the old man who ends up in the bottle he is so fond of.

Ted Tetzlaff’s black and white cinematography, Roy Webb’s music score and Clair’s direction all add to the general excellence, though, alas, the primitive trick work amounts to a few puffs of smoke and a car flying through a studio sky. The wartime cost-conscious production seems a bit set bound and it has to be said that some of the dialogue has not worn all that well. I Married a Witch is still very charming and diverting though.

Also in the cast are Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward, Elizabeth Patterson, Robert Warwick, Emory Parnell, Eily Maylon, Nora Cecil, Addison Bowker, Emma Dunn, Harry Tyler and Ralph Peters.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7189

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Veronica Lake is among the Movie Queens by Graeme Jukes.