I Married a Witch
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| I Married a Witch | |
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| Directed by | René Clair |
| Produced by | René Clair |
| Written by | Thorne Smith (story), Norman Matson (story completion), Robert Pirosh, Marc Connelly |
| Starring | Veronica Lake, Fredric March |
| Running time | 77 min. |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
I Married a Witch is a 1942 romantic comedy film, directed by René Clair. It starred Veronica Lake as a witch whose plan for revenge goes comically awry.
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[edit] Plot
Two witches in colonial Salem, Jennifer (Veronica Lake) and her father Daniel (Cecil Kellaway), are burned at the stake by Puritan Jonathan Wooley (Fredric March) and their ashes buried beneath a tree to imprison their evil spirits. In revenge, Jennifer curses Wooley and all his male descendants - they are doomed to always marry the wrong person.
Centuries later, lightning splits the tree, freeing the spirits of Jennifer and Daniel. They discover Wallace Wooley (March again) running for governor and about to marry the ambitious Estelle Masterson (Susan Hayward). Jennifer persuades her father to create a body for her and sets fire to a building in order to get Wallace to rescue her. She decides to torment him by getting him to drink a love potion and fall under her spell. The tables are turned however when she accidentally drinks the potion herself. Meanwhile, Wallace falls for her anyway.
Jennifer's father hates all Wooleys and tries to prevent Jennifer from marrying Wallace. Wallace on the other hand no longer wants to marry Estelle, but her father is his main political backer. In the end, everything works out, although, years later, Wallace and Jennifer's youngest daughter shows disturbing tendencies...
[edit] Cast
- Fredric March — Jonathan Wooley/Nathaniel Wooley/Samuel Wooley/Wallace Wooley
- Veronica Lake — Jennifer
- Robert Benchley — Dr. Dudley White
- Susan Hayward — Estelle Masterson
- Cecil Kellaway — Daniel
- Elizabeth Patterson — Margaret
- Robert Warwick — J.B. Masterson
[edit] Trivia
- It is commonly believed that the popular 1960s television series Bewitched was inspired by this film. Sol Saks (the creator of Bewitched) neither confirmed nor denied this in his book, The Craft of Comedy Writing. He said that "the idea of a witch living as a mortal…has been used in Greek mythology, in fairy tales, in novels, on the stage, and in motion pictures. The only real originality, I’m quite willing to confess, was that Bewitched was the first to adapt the concept successfully to the television screen."[1] (Coincidentally, Cecil Kellaway appeared in one episode of Bewitched as Santa Claus in 1964.) [2]
- In a situation unusual for Hollywood at the time, Clair produced the film at Paramount Pictures but it was released through United Artists.
- No witch was ever burned in Massachussetts; they were generally hanged, though one was pressed to death by rocks.
[edit] Remake
Tom Cruise and Famke Janssen are set to star in a remake to be released in 2007. Danny Devito is directing.
