#thorne smith

A book you very likely don’t have on your shelf #220

A COVEN OF WITCHES

In honor of Halloween, I’ll be posting profiles of 62 Witches over 31 Days.

A favorite fantasy film of mine is “I Married a Witch” (1942) starring Veronica Lake and Fredric March. It could almost be the basis for the 1960s “Bewitched” TV Show, except for that business of two witches burning at the stake in the opening scenes.

Lake plays Jennifer, a 17th Century witch, who along with her father Daniel (Cecil Kellaway) are sentenced to die for practicing witchcraft. The Puritan overseeing the execution is Jonathan Wooley played by Fredric March. Before being extinguished, Veronica curses Wooley and all his male descendants “dooming them always to marry the wrong woman”. This seems like a rather odd curse, but the movie was a fantasy romantic comedy, not a horror movie.

Father and daughter’s ashes are buried in the roots of a tree, trapping the pair until the 20th Century. A lighting bolt strikes the tree and the spirits of the duo are freed. After conjuring up new bodies, father Daniel sets about to plague the modern day Wooley (Wallace) a also played by Fredric March. But Jennifer takes a liking to him and wants to steal him away from his fiancé, a spoilt selfish heiress played by Susan Hayward.

Thorne Smith's The Passionate Witch is an odd book and considering it was the basis for the film I Married A Witch, there is some odd similarities which one wonders what exactly did they base the film on the book.

 The story is a whimsical story about Mr T Wallace Wooley and how he rescues a naked woman from a burning hotel who happens to be a witch of the black arts.  They marry and due to her jealous streak and the fact that he loves a pure mortal who is good of heart, we are lead down a whirlwind about relationships and people’s perceptions of marriage and society norms.

 The characters are very light and through their failings we do get a deeper cut into their virtual in-depth flaws outside of their perfect outward personalities.  When you scratch below the surface, one realises that things are not what they appear.  Wooley is an interesting character that is not all together very likable and as for Jennifer, I actually loved this character.  Betty was a bit bland for my liking but to find Jennifer’s spells causing such outlandish actions for me, helps drive the story along.  

 The plot is a different sort of animal altogether and runs and works at its own pace and wording. This seems more out of the style of writing of The Circus of Dr Lao than the typical straightforward storytelling that modern readers have become accustomed to and I personally like the change of pace.  Through its use of episodic storytelling, it feels more like an impressionistic novel that up close it feels a bit jumbled but with some distance, the story becomes more vivid and clear.  There is a whimsical thread that follows the story along with its cartoonish actions and characters and it seems that this is a trait that help Smith precede becoming a bestselling author with his Topper books.  I haven’t read these but they are on my list which I cannot wait.

The Passionate Witch by Thorne Smith With Illustrations by Herbert Roese ILLUSTRATED WITH DUST JACKET James Thorne Smith, Jr. (March 27, 1892 – June 21, 1934) was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. He is best known today for the two Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking and ghosts. With racy illustrations, these sold millions of copies in the 1930s and were equally popular in paperbacks of the 1950s. Publisher: Sun Dial Press, Garden City Copyright: 1942

A book you very likely don’t have on your shelf #196