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"I Married a Witch" | © United Artists
Silky blonde tresses fall over one eye, a face masked by spun gold accented with spidery lashes and a slash of scarlet lipstick. When struggling to promote Veronica Lake's first movies as a full-on movie star, that's the image distributors found, depurating her commercial value into a flat facsimile of her beauty. Whether it was Paramount's poster for Sullivan's Travels or the main art for United Artist's I Married a Witch, it seemed as if Lake was a head of hair first, an actress second. Legend says that once, during the filming of 1941's I Wanted Wings, the young woman kept struggling with a lock of hair falling over her right eye. For the wannabee starlet, it was an irritation. For the studio execs lusting over the teenager, it was the look of a silver screen goddess, instant movie magic. The rest, as they say, is history…
Though her popularity was cemented with that one aviation-themed film, neither Paramount nor Lake herself were sure a career as an actress was viable or, at least, a good long-term investment. The starlet once known as Constance Keane still wanted to be a surgeon, though those dreams would never come to pass. Her cinematic legacy, however, lives on, and it's easy to see why. The camera loved Veronica Lake, who always made for a striking picture, her petite figure almost as appealing as those golden locks. But, sadly, like many actresses whose beauty becomes their calling card, Lake wasn't respected as a performer.
The aforementioned Sullivan's Travels marked the moment when filmmakers and audiences started seeing her as akin to a real actress. Part of that impression comes from how director Preston Sturges styled her nameless character, adapting a hobo costume to hide the actress' pregnancy. Clothed in baggy, masculine attire, her hair hidden by a hat to make her look like a vagrant boy, Veronica Lake was seemingly denuded of her most essential facets as a Hollywood commodity. Yet, even in such conditions, she proved her worth with sharp comedic skills, an innate ability to negotiate opposing ideas of naivete and street smarts, youth and wisdom.
The following projects at Paramount would stray away from such funny flicks, positioning Lake as a noir heroine who looked like a femme fatale while hiding a heart of gold. Still, her old director remembered how much she dazzled him as a comedienne, the new noirish image and unprofessional reputation notwithstanding. So, when it came time to cast the female lead in the Sturges-produced I Married a Witch, Veronica Lake soon emerged as the perfect fit for the witchy part. Indeed, at the start of pre-production, the fantasy screwball was envisioned as a reunion between the actress and Joel McCrea, her costar in Sullivan's Travels.
However, that thespian was less enamored with Lake than Sturges was. He's quoted as saying that "life's too short for two films with Veronica Lake" as his reason for withdrawing from the project. If possible, though, the actor chosen to substitute McCrea hated his leading lady even more. In retrospect, Fredric March would refer to the comedy as I Married a Bitch, despising the colleague he saw as talentless, overcome with childish antics and a propensity for practical jokes. The dislike was mutual. For her part, she called him a pompous poser and would later state, in a ghost-written memoir, that March's animosity stemmed from her rejecting his sexual advances.
So, it's fair to say that shooting I Married a Witch was hell for everyone involved, going beyond the feuding stars. Sturges dropped out of the project because of creative disputes with French director René Clair while screenwriter Dalton Trumbo quit because he couldn't see eye-to-eye with Sturges in the first place. There's also a matter of colliding aesthetics and schools of thought about cinema, acting, art in general. European flair dances a dangerous waltz with Hollywood glitz, movie star instincts at odds with classical technique. One can feel the strain of Gallic romanticism bending slapstick out of shape, fantasy elements forcing complicated effects into an absurdist love story.
Reading about I Married a Witch's behind-the-scenes drama brings about images of unbridled pandemonium and dysfunction made celluloid, dripping with the tortured sweat of its miserable makers. I'm happy to report that the finished product is nothing of the sort. Indeed, I count this 1942 classic among my favorite romantic comedies, a central part of its appeal being the chemistry of Lake and March. Whatever was happening off-screen is kept far away from the camera's gaze, though the sting of antagonism still strikes. Only it's transformed, adapted by circumstance into the dynamic of a naughty witch and the mortal man she's trying hard to conquest.
Staged with slinky elegance by Clair, the movie tells a convoluted lark, clocking at 77 swift minutes. It's insane how much plot gets crammed in there, starting with a century-spanning prologue that details how, in 17th-century Salem, the Puritans sentenced two witches to burn at the stake. The unlucky pair is made up of Jennifer and her doting father, Daniel, their magical affairs discovered after Jonathan Wooley denounces them. His actions would spark a grudge destined to live beyond the boundaries of death. He is cursed by those who his testimony condemned, the Wooley's bloodline doomed to despair in unhappy marriages forevermore.
All this is observed by the witches' spirits, trapped inside the tree under whose roots their ashes were buried. After centuries of only expressing themselves through fluttery branches and incorporeal giggles, their immortal souls are finally unleashed when, in 1942, lightning strikes, splitting the arboreal prison. Two clouds of talking smoke come pouring out of the broken branches, attracted by the modern lights of a nearby celebration. And so they go, floating through the partygoers, hiding in wine bottles and the like. One thing's certain - Jennifer and Daniel are eager to make mischief. Oh, but who's that they spot?
It's Wallace Wooley, of course. He's Jonathan's youngest descendant and the man who's currently engaged to the beautiful Estelle Masterson while also running for governor. His wedding and elections incoming, he proves the perfect target for Jennifer's wicked ways. The witch plans on tormenting him through love, to make the bastard fall for her. Magicking a body out of fire, the smoke becomes a beautiful woman, and Wallace's fate is thrown in disarray. Not that Jennifer's schemes succeed, mind you. Through a silly accident, she ends up drinking the love potion meant for the Wooley scion, becoming desperately enamored with a man her father wants to see fry on the electric chair. Chaos ensues.
Believe it or not, that only covers I Married a Witch's first half, for there's still a wedding to sabotage and an election to steal, murder and resurrection galore. It's incredible, a laugh riot from start to finish, endlessly frothy as both a heightened farce and performance showcase. March has never been funnier, articulating Wallace's mounting confusion through deadpan, playing frazzled nerves bleeding into dazed passion. Cecil Kellaway kills it as Daniel, whether he's trying to get himself killed or raving like a lunatic behind bars. Susan Hayward is also lovely, a remarkable comedic asset in an early supporting turn as Wallace's unlucky fiancée.
But of course, we're here to celebrate Veronica Lake, who Hollywood kept trying to force into dramatic roles when silliness was her forte. In I Married a Witch, she's a revelation, balancing the otherworldly and the mundane, thus breathing life into an immortal impossibility with god-like powers and the disposition of a trickster imp. Lake embodies the movie's playful nature, counterbalancing March's purposeful stiffness with effortless grace. Delivering one-liners like a pro, she squeezes every ounce of charm out of a text that could easily fall into misogyny, making the movie the unlikely triumph we find before us today. Without her good humor, the story crumbles, sweetness sours into cruelty, froth turns to lead. In other words, in this tale of witchcraft and wizardry, mad love and lovable madness, star power is the greatest magic of all.
I Married a Witch is streaming on HBO Max and The Criterion Channel. Indeed, the latter has a whole collection of Veronica Lake movies to celebrate her centennial.