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 Wallace Wooley has just married Jennifer, a real witch. She has a reason to be
"burning mad" at him since Wooley's ancestors burned her at the stake 300 years
ago. This is based on an unfinished novel by the author of Topper (Thorne Smith). They say that this movie is a "polished gem of screwball
romance and whimsy, guided by ebullience and dexterity by Rene Clair." 1942, 77 minutes, VHS
As I was watching this one, I felt compelled to pull out the biography of
Veronica Lake I keep on my "Screen Sirens of the Forties" bookshelf. Peekaboo: The Story of Veronica Lake by Jeff Lenburg isn't really that great, but I figured I could maybe get a
little background on this here picture to kind of put things in perspective.
What I learned is that Veronica Lake was actually quite an accomplished
actress. It seems that she pretty much detested co-star Fredric March. You
may recall Mr. March for his Oscar in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde way back in 1932 and his Oscar in 1946 for The Best Years Of Our Lives. That reminds me, March actually had the Oscar in his hand back in 1932, but
the
dopes at the Academy were still counting the ballots and discovered that he had
edged out Wallace Beery for his role in The Champ by a single vote. Since there weren't any Bush cronies at the Academy, there
was no questionable election certification. Instead, it was declared a draw
(three votes or less margin was a tie) and they rustled up a statue for Beery,
too. Anyway, Veronica probably wished that Freddy would polish up his Oscar
real good, keep polishing it, then once he could see his reflection in it he
could turn that sumbitch sideways and shove it straight up his candyass,
because she was all too aware of his status as "Oscar-winning Player." Yep, it
seems that Fred had a little more Hyde in him than Jekyll and Veronica didn't
want
no part of that tomcat (heck, he hadn't even won his second Oscar yet!). She
took any chance she could to make his life a little difficult. She had a forty
pound weight sewn into her gown for a scene where March had to carry her
around. He was amazed that such a dainty little blonde could be so heavy and
according to Lenburg's book, she responded, "big bones." Sweet! She also kept
kicking him in the nuts during a scene where she was on a rocking chair and
the scene was shot from the waist up. March showed no reaction and finished
the scene before chasing her off the set. I bring this up, because she doesn't
evidence her distaste for this guy at all on the screen and they seem to be a
good match. And to think it was March who won the Oscars.  The movie opens up with a witch burning! I admire a movie that gets right down
to business and starts burning the witches. The Puritans led by this
tattletale ancestor of Wallace Wooley (March) has squealed on this witch and
her daddy. So the entire tri-state area turns out for the festivities and lest
you think that any of this is going to be taken seriously, the guy in charge
declares that there will be an intermission before the burnings begin. At that
point a dude starts roaming the crowd selling "pop-maize" in little bags just
like the peanut and popcorn guy at the ballpark. I kept waiting for the
ancestor of Harry Caray to stand up, praise the benefits of an ice cold Bud
and rally the crowd with a rousing rendition of "Take Me Out To the
Witchburning." Before the witch and her pops are toast, she decides to lay a
nasty curse on the Wooley family that will follow them down through the ages.
Then we go through a rapid succession of Wooley men through the subsequent
generations. Each generation is portrayed as marrying the meanest SOB that you
can imagine. Shoot, the Wooley in 1861, who I initially took for Honest Abe,
himself, went off and joined the Civil War just to get away from his harridan.
Flash forward to the present and we meet Wallace Wooley. He is running for
governor and it's two days from the election and one day from his wedding.
He's going to win, because he has the backing of the powerful newspaperman
Charles Foster Kane or somebody. He's also set to marry the dude's daughter.
Guess what? Complete shrew! Meanwhile the old oak tree out back is being assaulted by some lightning. This
is important because the Puritans buried the ashes of the crispy-fried witches
in the ground and then planted the oak to keep their ethereal forms locked up.
Of course, the lightning hits a branch and part of the tree gives way, and this
mysterious smoke pours forth. Two distinct smoke clouds form and one has the
voice of Veronica Lake. She's Jennifer. The other smokey column belongs to
her father and he is played by Cecil Kellaway, familiar to us as the magician
in The Mummy's Hand. They float over to the party that Wallace is having, it being thrown as some
kind publicity stunt by his soon to be father-in-law. The film uses the party
to establish his fiancee as a mouthy, out of control, be-otch. Jennifer lets
all of us in on the curse she cooked up to irritate the Wooley men. They are
cursed to marry the wrong woman! Hell, as Jenny's dad says, any man who's
married is married to the wrong woman. Sage advise, Pops. Go get yourself a
Keystone from the fridge, the game's about to start. Well, for some reason,
Jenny gets it into her blonde little head that an even better stunt to pull on
this poor bastard would be to make him fall in love with a woman he could never
have - her! As Holmes would, the game is afoot!  First she tricks her perpetually and amusingly inebriated father into giving her
physical form again. Gosh, drunks are funny! Falling all over the place,
hiccuping, and forgetting how spells go. I ain't going to lie to any of you out
there, I hoisted a couple while this charming piece of fluff unspooled and I
must say that by the fifth or sixth Stone, I was shouting my agreement to
everything Jenny's dad was saying. Somehow her plan involves setting a hotel
on fire and getting Wally to run in and save her. He does and thus she begins
to insinuate herself into his life. He keeps thinking that he has rid himself
of her, but somehow she materializes in his bedroom. There he starts to tell
her about how love takes time and is something you have to work at, then we see
the clock spin around and it's morning and he's comparing the both of them to
Romeo and Juliet. Of course it is now his wedding day, so he's got to get
going, but she's still hanging around in his pajamas and sliding down (and up)
bannisters! It seems that she has made a little headway, but there's still a
ways to go, since his sense of duty and what's expected of him continue to
dictate his actions. So Jenny enlists her dad and they cook up Love Potion #9
(you know that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth?). Ahh, but who can predict
the ways of love? Not I and apparently not Jenny, because somehow she ends up
drinking it instead of Wally! That's what we in the magic potion business call
a "whoopser." Now her plan is royally screwed and she has to get him to love
her because
she loves him! It's off to the wedding! The sequence involving the wedding enters full blown screwball comedy territory
as Wally tries to walk down the aisle about five times only to have it
interrupted each time, usually involving him running back up to the room where
Jenny and her dad are at causing all kinds of a hocus-pocus ruckus. The
biggest laughs come from this fat broad that continues to start singing the
same awful song about love each and every time Wally reappears to try and get
hitched, culminating with the prospective father-in-law telling her to shut up,
earning him the audience's everlasting gratitude. Eventually, the bride-to-be
and everyone else catch Jenny and Wally in a clinch so they hightail it out of
there. Soon they are driving through mist and a bed and breakfast magically
appear along with a justice of the peace. They get hitched and stay the night.
Jennifer worries about trying to be a normal wife and frets about Wally
knowing she's a witch. Needless to say all of this has pretty much shot
Wally's chances to be governor. I mean, he's a good guy, but he's no Clinton.
No problemo says Mrs. Wally, I'll just use my witchcraft to win the election
for you. Wally laughs her off, but then starts to wonder if maybe there isn't
a little something to what she said when he wins the governorship unanimously.  Then for some reason, her father starts causing trouble. He decides that since
she loves a mortal, she can't be trusted. Trusted for what? She's going to
narc on her father? Yeah, it was 1940 and all, but I don't recall too many
witchburnings back then. Anyway, since she can't be trusted, he hijacks a cab
the two are riding in and crashes it into the oak tree. Somehow this kills her
and makes her revert back into smoke-form. Both of the witches are now smoke
and they decide that they should go over to the house and watch Wally suffer
over the body of his now dead wife. The whole time Jennifer is playing it up
like she is enjoying this extra suffering that Wally is enduring, but we all
know that you can't trust a witch. She gets her smoke back into the her body
and returns to life, then runs over to the bottle of booze that her daddy's
smoke has literally crawled into. She stops it up with a cork and we flash
forward several years and find that they have children and one of the daughters
has Jennifer's peekaboo hairdo and is riding around on a broom! Uh-oh! In spite of their on-the-set problems, Lake and March and their byplay are the
picture's strong point. They are a winning couple and you root for them to
hook it up in the end. It helps that the woman March has to leave is as mean
as a junkyard dog, but this kind of movie isn't interested in presenting any
moral dilemmas about leaving someone who is nice to be with someone that ignites
something inside of you. It only aspires to be a pleasant little diversion
that showcases the bewitching (oh man, I didn't do that did I?) Veronica Lake
and the put-upon Freddy March. The problems with this film involve the
pacing or lack thereof. It's awful. The movie takes entirely too long to get
going. The flashbacks are idiotic, not funny and it takes much too long for
Lake to assume physical form. Once she finally does, there's too much jacking
around with Fred running around trying to get rid of Lake and dealing with the
shrew and her dad. More time needed to be spent with the Lake and March
getting to know each other. That brings up another nagging flaw. March
magically is won over by Lake in like two seconds at the wedding after pretty
much not showing a heck of a lot of interest. Everyone sees them kiss and then
it's like "let's go get married" and that's that. Then there's the entire
last part of
the movie where the father tries to undo everything. It just didn't make any
sense and I wonder if this was the part of the story that someone other than
Thorne
Smith finished, because it didn't follow dramatically from the rest of the
movie. The drama should be involving the screwed up wedding and him realizing
he loves Jennifer so that he leaves that harpy at the altar. That's the
natural climax. The rest is just filler. In spite of these story problems,
watching Lake win over March with her beguiling charm is fun and getting to see
her play a comedic role is a nice change of pace.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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