If you like the TV series "Bewitched," you'll like this whimsical Thorne Smith comedy because the TV series is a direct rip off.
Veronica Lake and Cecil Callaway are witches in colonial New England consigned to live inside a tree by the Wooley family of Puritans. They do what they can from their prison to make life miserable for the family over the centuries.
Released from the wood by a bolt of lightning, they assume human form and torment the latest member of the Wooley family, Frederic March, who is running for governor and is about to marry a society girl, Susan Hayward.
Complications ensue. Lake falls in love with March. Callaway is imprisoned in a bottle of brandy and stashed away forever, happily, in a locked cabinet. The witches have disrupted the marriage in a dozen ways and March finally falls for Lake. The two elope. It's a scandal and March will not be elected governor, except that Lake bewitches everyone in the state and he receives every vote. His opponent doesn't even vote for himself.
But in the end, Lake is forced to give up her supernatural powers and she and Governor March settle down to a happy bourgeois life with a couple of children, one of whom shows witchy tendencies.
In the 1920s and 30s Thorne Smith wrote a series of novels, including the Topper series, about ghosts, witches, and playful spirits. They were all cast from similar molds but were sometimes hilarious, in the understated and slightly patrician ways that other writers of the period -- S. J. Perelman, Robert Benchley, James Thurber, and E. B. White -- could be. But Smith pounded a lot of booze and died at 42. "I Married a Witch" is based on his last book, published posthumously.
I enjoyed his stories enormously when I was a kid. They were both funny and racy. But I read "Topper" again recently and found it a little repetitious and not quite so outrageous. Everything is more outrageous now than when I was a kid. Nobody rolls hoops or smokes corn silk behind the old barn anymore. Where did it all go? (Sob.) This movie, too, isn't as impressive now as it must have been when it was released. The special effects are of the period. The gags that might have been shocking then -- a girl in pajamas spends the night in a stranger's chaste bed -- are not only not shocking. They're not in the least amusing. I'm afraid culture has out-distanced both Smith and the films made from his work.
Not to suggest this is a complete loss. It has its moments. The performers are engaging, Lake is cuddly, and Benchley is funny.
Veronica Lake and Cecil Callaway are witches in colonial New England consigned to live inside a tree by the Wooley family of Puritans. They do what they can from their prison to make life miserable for the family over the centuries.
Released from the wood by a bolt of lightning, they assume human form and torment the latest member of the Wooley family, Frederic March, who is running for governor and is about to marry a society girl, Susan Hayward.
Complications ensue. Lake falls in love with March. Callaway is imprisoned in a bottle of brandy and stashed away forever, happily, in a locked cabinet. The witches have disrupted the marriage in a dozen ways and March finally falls for Lake. The two elope. It's a scandal and March will not be elected governor, except that Lake bewitches everyone in the state and he receives every vote. His opponent doesn't even vote for himself.
But in the end, Lake is forced to give up her supernatural powers and she and Governor March settle down to a happy bourgeois life with a couple of children, one of whom shows witchy tendencies.
In the 1920s and 30s Thorne Smith wrote a series of novels, including the Topper series, about ghosts, witches, and playful spirits. They were all cast from similar molds but were sometimes hilarious, in the understated and slightly patrician ways that other writers of the period -- S. J. Perelman, Robert Benchley, James Thurber, and E. B. White -- could be. But Smith pounded a lot of booze and died at 42. "I Married a Witch" is based on his last book, published posthumously.
I enjoyed his stories enormously when I was a kid. They were both funny and racy. But I read "Topper" again recently and found it a little repetitious and not quite so outrageous. Everything is more outrageous now than when I was a kid. Nobody rolls hoops or smokes corn silk behind the old barn anymore. Where did it all go? (Sob.) This movie, too, isn't as impressive now as it must have been when it was released. The special effects are of the period. The gags that might have been shocking then -- a girl in pajamas spends the night in a stranger's chaste bed -- are not only not shocking. They're not in the least amusing. I'm afraid culture has out-distanced both Smith and the films made from his work.
Not to suggest this is a complete loss. It has its moments. The performers are engaging, Lake is cuddly, and Benchley is funny.