I Married a Witch

I Married a Witch (movie)

A 1942 film directed by René Clair, starring Fredric March, Veronica Lake and Susan Hayward. As a seventeenth-century witch (Lake) is being burned at the stake, she puts a curse on her accuser (March), saying that all his descendants will be unhappy in marriage. The curse is a success and works for centuries. The film then cuts to present day, when a gubernatorial candidate and descendant of the accuser, Wallace Wooley (March), is about to marry socialite Estelle Masterson (Hayward).

A lightning strike frees the spirit of the long-dead witch and she materializes (as Jennifer), only to fall in love with Wooley even as she attempts to make his life miserable. She uses her magic to try to help him win the election, which leads to fraud charges. Eventually Wooley falls in love with Jennifer, which frees her from the spirit world and caused her to become mortal once again.

The story is loosely based on the Thorne Smith novel The Passionate Witch and was the inspiration for the television series Bewitched.