The Bishop’s Wife: Cary Does Christmas

Along with the half the Eastern Seaboard, I’ve been incredibly sick the last week or so. What better to do than watch a bunch of movies? Grade papers, of course. But when done with papers? Well, fall asleep. When not sleeping? Uh, walk the dogs in the snow. But—after that: watch 1947’s The Bishop’s Wife.

I don’t know if anyone considers this a Christmas classic, because I’d barely heard of it, let alone seen it, before this brief winter battle with viral load. But it probably should be. It has all the Holiday panache of Miracle on 34^th Street (1947) and much of the haunting humanism of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Something was afoot—something Christmasy—in the post-war years.

What makes this Cary Grant-Loretta Young vehicle so appealing is its strangely dark premise: Grant plays an angel sent to help Episcopal Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven) build his new cathedral, currently held up by the ostentatious demands of a wealthy dowager-donor. Or so he thinks. In reality, Grant shows up to help him reconnect to the charity and generosity of the Christmas season. As a former slum priest, his new job hobnobbing with New York’s elites, has taken him off the right track, endangering his relationships with his family, especially his wife, Julia (Loretta Young).

Aside from the bishop’s incredulousness, the movie plays in a typically 40s Christmas fashion—spirited, warm, dripping with kindness. Well, except for one other small thing: Grant seems bent on stealing the bishop’s wife and family. At first, this is mere subtext. But, by the end, the film explicitly comes out and says it. Grant seems to fall in love with Young, and only Hollywood movie magic saves this message of Christmas rediscovery from spiritual paralysis (or at least shadowy confusion).

Maybe it’s the prescriptions talking, but wonders never do cease with Hollywood, especially Old Hollywood. Anyway, check it out. Back to coughing for me.