Happy Halloween to those who are reading this when it first drops or in a future Halloween season. My son and I recently finished reading the book The Passionate Witch (1941), taking turns reading a chapter aloud each. This book is in the public domain. Other media interests took us back to this source.
My favorite show has long been Bewitched, which is still showing in syndication. [Thoughts on Bewitched after the main article.] I Dream of Jeannie is kind of my second favorite, although I also like the 1990s Home Improvement, which will not come up again in this post. I also like the 1990s Sabrina the Teenage Witch TV show, which is more related. My son had some interest in those shows, also. He also likes the 1960s and 70s Sabrina comics and the original made-for-TV Sabrina movie, from which the live action show launched. He has also watched the animated Sabrina series. He likes the updates to Salem in the various versions from the 1990s onward.
I learned some time ago that the 1942 I Married a Witch and the 1958 The Bell, Book and Candle movies were sources for Bewitched. I Married a Witch was also an inspiration for I Dream of Jeannie, and The Bell, Book and Candle was an inspiration for the Sabrina comics. My young adult children have watched both those movies with me at various times. I think my son got a kick out of Jack Lemmon's kick as the kooky brother in BB&C (which started as a 1950 play). The Sabrina comics predate Bewitched slightly, which predates I Dream of Jeannie by about a year.
My son felt that IMaW was "weak" and wanted to read the source book behind it, The Passionate Witch. So we did. And, oh, boy...
I have not read any other works by Thorne Smith, so I have no others to compare it to. He died before finishing this book, having completed five chapters and leaving an outline. He was only 42, vacationing with his wife in Florida, when he collapsed. He drank heavily, as did many of his characters, and his heart was already weakened by repeated bouts of childhood pneumonia.
The book was finished by Norman Matson. Matson did write other things but now is most known (where he is known) for the completion of this book. It was not and is not reviewed as well as other works by Smith, nor seemingly as well as others of Matson's. Matson apparently introduced a darker tone.
Apparently, Smith wrote about magic and about getting drunk in many of his works. That shows up in this. However, other works are said to have a more charming, lighter touch than this does. TPW has a strong dose of misogyny. Women at their best are cardboard cut-out stereotypes. Taking this approach actually ends up stereotyping men, in which this book is no exception. All this was written with World War II as a backdrop, though it was late in the year 1941 that the US got involved, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th.
IMaW used very little of the source book material. I wonder if they figured out Smith's contributions and left the rest.
We're moving into spoiler alert territory after this, so if you don't want to know, tread (or read) lightly. The name Jennifer for the witch/wife was retained. Though that may seem like an ordinary name now, Jennifer was not nearly as common a name until the 1970s and beyond. It's actually a variant of Guinevere, of King Arthur fame. The other information retained is T. Wallace Wooly saving a naked Jennifer from a hotel fire. The book's illustrations show more booty than the movie does. Of course, a movie of that era would not show this, but it surprised me how much the black & white illustrations did show. (There is a colorized sample below.)
Wooly is a widower in the book with a preteen daughter named Sara. Sara spends most of her time at boarding school. Wooly also has a pretty blonde secretary he is finally getting up the nerve to date... until Jennifer bewitches him, and he marries her.
I thought that Jennifer must surely be a black cat "familiar" who found a way to transform into a human-looking creature. She has black hair and yellow, slanted eyes. She climbs out the window every night, down a trumpet vine, to meet cats. But this is never a part of the story.
Wooly figures it out when he catches Jennifer slaughtering a rooster from a fancy breed in the bathtub. She mixes the blood with a powder and drinks it. This was the picture my son wanted to share, and I colorized it with Paint 3D.
Wooly tells Jennifer she needs to go. She extorts him a bit but finally agrees. She also senses he likes the secretary and sets fire to the secretary's house. She also puts a curse on Wooly so that he constantly hears everyone's thoughts. This appears to be an idea introduced by Matson. Wooly can only block the mind-reading by drinking excessively.
Before she leaves him, she sets fire to the church and stands outside of it. The stone cross falls on her and kills her. Of course, no one believes Wooly that she's a witch, so they won't stake her heart and bury her under a crossroads, as he requests. The pastor buries her in the church cemetery. Her spirit escapes into some unknown being near Wooly, and the curse of knowing thoughts returns. When he has a chance to know his secretary, Betty's, thoughts, he does not wat to do this, considering it ungentlemanly. (Interestingly, Darren's secretaries, though often played by different actresses, are usually named "Betty" on Bewitched.)
Needless to say, Wooly's life spins out of control. Several frankly ridiculous things happen during this phase, which neither of us found particularly funny nor amusing. We found them cringeworthy.
After this, Sara comes home on break and helps her father figure out where Jennifer is and how to solve the problem. Jennifer, in trying to find a new human to inhabit, has missed the mark and ended up in Rummy the horse, one of the things left behind by the first Mrs. Wooly. Sara makes Jennifer/Rummy feel better by putting bright red lipstick on the big horse lips, which is garish enough. Then Sara finds an old straw horse hat and adds flowers. She shows Jennifer/Rummy her reflection in the mirror, which makes the witch/horse feel better. Now Jennifer wants to be seen in public. So they arrange for her to pull the old firetruck wagon in the Fourth of July parade. Mr. Wooly always gets to drive it in the parade because he is a prominent citizen and is on the volunteer fire department.
Jennifer starts out frisky, as is. She jets ahead of the baton-twirling group, which she is supposed to follow, putting her at the head of the parade. When she sees Betty blowing kisses at Wooly, she takes off at breakneck speed, trying to catch the car Betty is in. The car takes a different turn, seeing that they need to get away from a mad horse. The firetruck wagon breaks apart, throwing off Mr. Wooly & his Swedish chauffeur, who was playing Uncle Sam for the day.
Jennifer/Rummy impales herself in a construction site. It was conveniently at a crossroads. She looks peaceful. Everyone agrees to let that be her final resting place. There is some attempt by the writer to evoke sympathy for the horse/witch. My son objects to trying to evoke sympathy for Jennifer at this point and thinks she should remain a villainess. I kind of agree, based on occultic tendencies in this book, which I am not fond of. Additionally, we have no backstory for Jennifer, a literary failing if we are to suddenly have sympathy for this creature.
Matson wrote a sequel, Bats in the Belfry (1943), set seven years later. Jennifer's spirit gets free, haunts the town, and pressures Wooly to dig up her body. She creates a great deal of chaos around fictional Warburton, NY, until she is forced back into the grave. Some reviews consider it fast-paced, like Smith's typical works. We found The Passionate Witch to move in fits and starts rather than being uniformly fast-paced.
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Regarding Bewitched, it did not have occultic tendencies. Agnes Moorehead (Endora), a Presbyterian pastor's daughter saw to this. Interestingly, her favorite Darren was Dick York, also mine by a longshot. Unfortunately, she was a little unkind to Dick Sergent.
Though some characterize York's Darren as "angry", I see so much more. I see better chemistry as a husband and more real engagement as a father from York than from Sargent. Also, Dick York was a class act. Even though he had to leave the show, due to back pain and resulting opioid addiction, when he got clean, he tried to give back to the world. He was married only once, long-term, and he and his wife established low rent apartments for low income tenants. Unfortunately, this created financial problems that they were never able to fully cycle out of.
Bewitched was originally more of an adult show than many realized. There was a great deal of drinking and smoking. There were many references to adultery and attempts to lure people away from marital faithfulness. True to its time, though, there was no cursing, and there were no sex scenes. This is why it is often treated as family fare for the whole family now.
Regarding my son and the Sabrina iterations: he likes the old comics the best. He likes the inclusion of Cousin Ambrose. He finds Aunt Hilda's constant irritation with Harvey and threats to pull magic tricks on him funny. He does not like the darker turn of the later Riverdale and Sabrina iterations on Netflix. Dark is not his thing.
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