Cecil Kellaway

(On Cable TV, November 2020) There are a few wonderful surprises buried in Hollywood film history, and I Married a Witch certainly feels like it. A fun blend of comedy and witchcraft, it features a father-and-daughter pair of sorcerers burnt at the stake in early New England and imprisoned in a tree until the 1940s, when they are freed by a lightning strike and eager to wreak vengeance on the descendants of the man responsible for their immolation. That doesn’t quite sound so much fun (and some of the dialogue from the historical antagonist is downright psychopathic), but I Married a Witch is very much presented as a comedy, and everything is in the execution. The daughter is played by Veronica Lake, and while Lake is extraordinarily beautiful to begin with, she also gets to play her characters with impish humour that adds much to her sex-appeal. Meanwhile, Fredrick March is the straight man of the story, bewildered at all the right moments and indignant at the others—he’s meant to be outshined by Cecil Kellaway as the warlock who’s not held back by anything like romantic love. The modern witchcraft angle is rare in classic Hollywood (feel free to pair it with Bell, Book and Candle fifteen years later), and the special effects are still decently effective. Still, it’s the great mixture of humour, romance and political satire that works much better than anything you may imagine from reading I Married a Witch’s plot summary. Don’t miss it!