10 Films to Watch if You Like: The Bishop's Wife

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the release of Henry Koster's charming comedy, The Bishop's Wife (1947). To mark the event, it has been re-issued in UK theatres in time for Christmas. But Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy it without leaving the comfort of their own home - along with its remake and 10 related films we can recommend if you were wondering what to watch next.

There was something in the air in those Hollywood Christmases after the Second World War. Despite victory, the world remained a harsh place and, with audiences in need of solace as they mourned loved ones and reassurance as the Cold War started to bite, the studios turned their eyes heavenwards for some divine intervention.

Angels had been hovering over Hollywood for a number of years, with Alexander Hall calling on the services of celestial messengers in both Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941) and Down to Earth (1947). Famed writer Anita Loos followed suit in scripting W.S. Van Dyke's I Married an Angel (1942) for Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy from a 1938 hit musical by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The British duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger also had recourse to ethereal envoys in A Matter of Life and Death (1945), while Frank Capra assigned George Bailey (James Stewart) an unlikely guardian in the form of Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers) in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Clearly, producer Samuel Goldwyn was inspired by this angelic host, even though Capra's picture had been a box-office disappointment. He scouted round for a suitable property to adapt and found what he was looking for in a 1928 tome by a novelist who had been lured to Tinseltown in the mid-1940s by Goldwyn's fellow Russian migrant and business rival, Louis B. Mayer.

Turning a New Leaf

Robert Nathan was born in New York in 1894. His classmate at Harvard was e.e. cummings, whose poem provided the title for the 1967 George Lucas short, Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town (1967), while 'somewhere have I never travelled, gladly beyond' and 'I carry your heart with me' respectively featured in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Curtis Hanson's In Her Shoes (2005).

In addition to his studies, Nathan also fenced, boxed, and edited the Harvard Monthly, which carried his earliest poems and stories. His first novel was published in 1919, while The Bishop's Wife appeared in 1928. His work caught the attention of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Jazz Age icon whose adapted works include Richard Brooks's The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), The Great Gatsby (Jack Clayton, 1974 & Baz Luhrmann, 2013 ), and Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon (1976). It was also noticed in Hollywood, where One More Spring, was filmed by Henry King in 1935, with Janet Gaynor and Warner Baxter.

Impressed by a poem he had written about Dunkirk, MGM asked Nathan to write some additional lines to the Alice Duer Miller's verses quoted in Clarence Brown's The White Cliffs of Dover (1944). Mayer also tagged him for the screenplay for Vincente Minnelli's The Clock (1945), which teamed Judy Garland and Robert Walker. But Nathan didn't settle in Hollywood and was frustrated when his script for John Ford's 3 Godfathers (1948) was rejected. He had more luck with his contribution to Robert Alton's Pagan Love Song (1950), which saw Howard Keel inherit a coconut plantation on Esther Williams's Tahitian island. Soon after, however, Nathan decided to focus exclusively on his fiction.

The studios still remained interested in his novels, however, with The Enchanted Voyage being reworked as Wake Up and Dream (1946) for director Lloyd Bacon. More significantly, William Dieterle cast Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten in Portrait of Jennie (1948), a poignant study of an artist and his enigmatic muse. In 1990, Steve Stafford told a similar story in his take on Nathan's The Color of Evening. But nothing would ever rival the popularity of The Bishop's Wife.

In the original novel, an angel named Michael becomes an archdeacon to Bishop Henry Brougham, in order to bolster his faith. Michael becomes distracted, however, by his charge's neglected wife, Julia, and decides to restore some joy to her existence. In the process, he comes to feel something like human love and is prepared to sacrifice his celestial status and break the sacred bonds of matrimony until he is reminded by ageing scholar Professor Wutheridge that such mortal passion is nothing compared to divine love. Julia also realises that Henry will always put his flock first. But she persuades him to have another child so that she can channel her feelings into maternal devotion.

Recognising that the Production Code Office would never sanction a picture that flirted with adultery - and with the wife of a clergyman at that - Goldwyn sought a screenwriter who could do justice to a book that had earned a glowing review from Grace Frank in the Saturday Review of Literature. 'Mr Nathan's method of approach,' she had claimed, 'is the way of the goldfinch with the thistledown, or of the unconcerned robin guilelessly cocking his head before the peck. Moreover, the words that he uses are as cobwebs that catch the dew of his thought delicately patterned filaments exactly adequate to the burden glistening upon them. In short, to say that The Bishop's Wife has beauty, charm, wit, and wisdom is not to over praise the book.'

From Russia With Glove

Both Robert Nathan and Sam Goldwyn lived into their nineties. Born Szmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw (when it was part of the Russian Empire), the latter was the son of a Hasidic peddler, while the former was the scion of an affluent Sephardic family. Having made his way to Hamburg after his father's death, Samuel Goldfish became a glover and briefly worked in Birmingham before sailing to the United States from Liverpool in 1899. Discovering a talent for business, he made his way up the ladder at a prestigious glove company and was persuaded to invest some of his savings in a new motion picture company by his brother-in-law, Jesse L. Lasky, and an aspiring young director with a Liverpudlian mother, Cecil B. DeMille.

It was decided that their first production, The Squaw Man (1913), would be filmed in the Californian backwater of Hollywood, which was primarily known for its orange groves. Such was its success that the company made Los Angeles its base, from which it would conduct the mergers that would culminate in the formation of Paramount Pictures. Now using the surname Goldwyn, Sam decided to go alone in 1916 and, Goldwyn Pictures adopted a roaring lion for its logo. He didn't remain in charge for long, however, as Marcus Loew bought him out and merged the studio with Metro and Louis B. Mayer Pictures to form MGM in 1924.

Forming Samuel Goldwyn Productions to retain his independence, Goldwyn enjoyed a string of successes over the next 35 years, which were variously distributed via United Artists or RKO. He insisted on literate scripts and artistic direction and formed a profitable partnership with William Wyler (see Cinema Paradiso's Instant Expert Guide ). Among their collaborations available for rental are Dead End (1937), Jezebel (1938), and Wuthering Heights (1939). But the pair enjoyed their biggest success with The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which brought Goldwyn the Academy Award for Best Picture on the same night that he was honoured with the Irving G. Thalberg Award by his peers.

Convinced that Wyler could do no wrong, Goldwyn offered him The Bishop's Wife. However, he was unimpressed with the screenplay written by Robert E. Sherwood with contributions from Leonardo Bercovici. Having been part of the Liberty Films company that had released It's a Wonderful Life, Wyler also felt that the moment had passed for miracle movies, even though Albert S. Rogell was about to make Heaven Only Knows (1947), an unconventional Western in which angel Robert Cummings is sent to rectify the mistake that saw Brian Donlevy become a saloon gambler because he had been born without a soul.

Goldwyn had more faith, however, and pointed to the success of Leo McCarey's Going My Way (1944), which had also won the Oscar for Best Picture and the Best Actor award for Bing Crosby. He had reprised the role of Fr Chuck O'Malley in the equally popular sequel, The Bells of St Mary's (1945), which brought nominations for Ingrid Bergman and Crosby, who became the first performer to be cited twice for playing the same character. The feat has since been matched by Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson ( The Hustler, 1961 & The Color of Money, 1986), Peter O'Toole as Henry II ( Becket, 1964 & The Lion in Winter, 1968), Al Pacini as Michael Corleone ( The Godfather, 1972 & The Godfather Part II, 1974), Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa ( Rocky, 1976 & Creed, 2015), and Cate Blanchett in the title role of Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).

Sherwood had won an Oscar for adapting MacKinlay Kantor's novella, Glory For Me, as The Best Years of Our Lives. But, while the storylines shared a theme of reconnection and triumphing over adversity, Wyler felt the approach needed to be lighter. He also felt that Code constraints would make the chaste relationship between Dudley (as Michael had been renamed) and Julia too twee. The name would be recycled for Nora Ephron's Michael (1996) - which starred John Travolta as an angel in crisis - while Cinema Paradiso users of a certain vintage will retain fond memories of another classic scenario concerning a bishop and his archdeacon, the BBC sitcom All Gas and Gaiters (1966-71), which brought out the best in William Mervyn and Robertson Hare, as well as Derek Nimmo and John Barron, as the chaplain and dean of St Ogg's Cathedral.

Feeling let down, Goldwyn never worked with Wyler again. However, he did follow his advice about adopting a lighter touch by offering The Bishop's Wife to William A. Seiter. Regarded by many as something of a journeyman, the New Yorker actually produced several fine films, as Cinema Paradiso members can discover.

Having started out as a bit player at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, Seiter honed his directorial skills with such Reginald Denny vehicles as What Happened to Jones and Skinner's Dress Suit (both 1926), which can be found on the two-volume Early Universal Vol.1 and Vol.2 collection. He moved into talkies in the company of the comic double act, Wheeler and Woolsey, but stumbled into cine-immortality by directing Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Sons of the Desert (1933), which became the name of the duo's fan club.

Seiter also ushered Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers through Roberta (1935), in which they rather played second fiddle to the romance between Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott. But he found a niche guiding Shirley Temple through such kidpic gems as Dimples, Stowaway (1936), The Little Princess, and Susannah of the Mounties (both 1939). Just for good measure, he also made a solid job of directing the Marx Brothers in Room Service (1938), John Wayne in The First Rebel (aka Allegheny Uprising, 1939), Rosalind Russell in Hired Wife (1940), Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier (1942), Jean Arthur in A Lady Takes a Chance (1943), and Joan Fontaine in The Affairs of Susan (1945). Intriguingly, Nice Girl? (1941), I'll Be Yours (1947), and Up in Central Park (1948) meant that Seiter also had a connection with one of the other great child stars of the 1930s, Deanna Durbin. Ironically, however, Goldwyn would replace him with the man who had not only made Durbin a star, but had saved Universal Studios from Depression bankruptcy in the process.

Once Upon a Midnight Clear

While wandering the streets of an unnamed town before Christmas, Dudley (Cary Grant) notices Julia (Loretta Young) looking wistfully at a hat in a shop window. He senses she's unhappy and learns from Professor Wutheridgs (Monty Woolley) that she is the wife of Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven). He is also burdened, as the fate of the cathedral he is trying to build depends on a donation from Mrs Agnes Hamilton (Gladys Cooper), who insists on a prominent chapel and a stained glass window being dedicated to the memory of her late husband.

Having heard Henry asks for divine guidance, Dudley appears in his study and reveals that he is an angel who has come to answer his prayer. He passes himself off as Henry's assistant and is warmly welcomed by Julia, her daughter, Debby (Karolyn Grimes), secretary Mildred Cassaway (Sara Haden), and Matilda the housekeeper (Elsa Lanchester). Even Queenie the St Bernard dotes on him.

Henry takes a little more persuading, especially when Dudley escorts Julia to her favourite brasserie and spends an afternoon discussing the professor's long-gestating history of Rome. Henry is equally exasperated when he becomes stuck to a chair at Mrs Hamilton's townhouse while Dudley and Julia get to enjoy the singing of the boys' choir at St Timothy's and go ice skating in the park with a kindly cabby named Sylvester (James Gleason).

So, Henry fires Dudley for alienating his wife's affections. But the angel's work is not complete. He pays a visit to Mrs Hamilton and plays the harp so beautifully that she breaks down remembering a lost love. Moreover, she decides to give her money to feed and shelter the poor rather than build a cathedral. With a little help from the professor, Dudley also makes Henry see that people matter more than temples. But he recognises that angels shouldn't get entangled with human emotions. Before taking his leave and erasing any memory of his visit, Dudley decorates the Broughams' tree and composes a sermon for Henry about the true meaning of Christmas.

Making Miracles Happen

With shooting due to commence in February 1947, Goldwyn had to move quickly in order to hire his first-choice leads. As he already had him under contract, David Niven was given the role of Dudley, while Dana Andrews was cast as Henry and Teresa Wright as Julia. When she became pregnant, however, Goldwyn opened negotiations with RKO to borrow Loretta Young. In order to swing the deal, he had to loan Andrews to the studio and Cary Grant was brought in to replace him.

Grant had problems with the screenplay from the outset and the production closed down in early March while Sherwood took another pass. The delay meant that a number of performers who were committed to other projects were forced to withdraw, including Dame May Whitty, who had presumably been cast as Mrs Hamilton. Five year-old Marcia Anne Northrop was replaced by Karolyn Grimes, who had received good notices for her work as Zuzu in It's a Wonderful Life. She was joined from Capra's film by Bobby Anderson, who had played the young George Bailey in the flashback sequences. He was cast as the captain of the team defending the fort during the snowball fight that Dudley helps Debby join. At 82, Grimes is the sole survivor of these irresistible seasonal standbys.

According to the trade papers, Selma Ross, Jerry de Castro, Mary Field, and Edwin Maxwell all had to quit their parts during an extended delay that reportedly cost Goldwyn around $800,000. But Elsa Lanchester, who had been replaced by Edit Angold, was able to resume the role of Matilda, as she had managed to complete her other assignment in time to take over from the now indisposed Angold.

A pioneer of deep-focus cinematography, Gregg Toland was renowned for shooting ceilings (just watch Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece, Citizen Kane, if you don't believe us) and Goldwyn was singularly unimpressed with the ones he saw in the early rushes. Consequently, he ordered art directors Perry Ferguson and George Jenkins to rebuild several of the sets. He also decided that Henry's study looked insufficiently episcopal and instructed set decorator Julia Heron to change the furnishings and the props. Most drastically, after just a couple of days of filming, Goldwyn decided that William Seiter was the wrong man for the job and replaced him with that other director who had played a key role in the career of Deanna Durbin.

Born Herman Kosterlitz in Berlin in 1905, Henry Koster had grown up watching films, as his mother had played the piano at his uncle's movie theatre. He was forced leave Germany after having only directed two features, however, as he had been subjected to anti-Semitism and had knocked out a Nazi officer in an argument at a bank. While in exile in Hungary, Koster met Universal executive Joe Pasternak, who invited him to Hollywood and entrusted him with the studio's teenage singing sensation, even though Koster didn't speak a word of English.

Co-starring Barbara Read and Nan Grey, Three Smart Girls (1936) was such a smash hit that the impoverished studio was able to stay afloat. Teaming Durbin with composer Leopold Stokowski, One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) proved just as profitable and Durbin's reprised her patented Little Miss Fix-It role in Three Smart Girls Grow Up. She also got her first kiss from Robert Stack in First Love (both 1939).

Koster and Durbin reunited on Spring Parade (1940), It Started With Eve (1941), and Music For Millions (1944). The middle title also starred Charles Laughton, who became a close friend and played chess with Koster after he was placed under house arrest for being an enemy alien. Laughton's wife, of course, was the wonderful Elsa Lanchester and Koster would also marry an actress, Peggy Moran, who took the female lead in A. Edward Sutherland's One Night in the Tropics (1940), which was the first film to star Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, whom Koster had discovered in a New York nightclub. They would become Universal's biggest comedy stars and their best films are available with a single click from Cinema Paradiso.

In due course, Koster would direct James Stewart to an Oscar nomination in Harvey (1950), see Richard Burton through his Hollywood debut in My Cousin Rachel (1952), and launch 20th Century-Fox's widescreen process, CinemaScope, in The Robe (1953). But, in March 1947, he had to solve the problems besetting The Bishop's Wife.

Sources differ as to why Cary Grant and David Niven swapped roles. It's commonly believed that Grant only realised once filming had commenced that Dudley was the showier part, even though Henry had the happier ending. According to an interview with Koster, however, he had insisted on the switch and that Grant had consequently sulked for the rest of the shoot. In fact, Grant was in low spirits throughout, as his friend, Howard Hughes, had been critically injured in a plane crash and was in intensive care. As Martin Scorsese reveals in The Aviator (2004), Hughes would recover. But Niven had to endure the tragic loss of his wife, Primmie, who had died from a head injury shortly after falling down some cellar steps during a game of sardines at a party thrown by actor Tyrone Power in May 1946.

As English ex-pats, Niven and Grant knew each other well. They had also co-starred in George Stevens's Gunga Din (1939). Grant and Young had also been paired before, on Lowell Sherman's Born to Be Bad (1934). But any lingering fondness seemed to dissipate, as Young found herself being irritated by Grant's perfectionism. She was peeved, for example when a scene was held up because Grant had noticed that the windows would be frosted if it was snowing outside and warm inside the Brougham household. Then, they fell out over the blocking of a two-shot, as each insisted that they looked better in left profile. Koster tried to work round the problem, but Goldwyn was furious when he saw what was supposed to be an intimate exchange. Summoning the actors, the producer informed them, 'From now on, both of you guys get only half your salary if I can only use half your faces.'

Grant was also annoyed when a stunt double was assigned for the skating sequence. As he had mastered the ice as a small boy named Archie Leach back in Bristol, he was put out that a smaller man wearing a mask stood in for long shots and the demanding pirouette. However, he enjoyed filming the snowball fight on location in Minneapolis, Minnesota and kept Grimes occupied between takes by pulling her around on a sledge. He was also happy to let harpist Gail Laughton's hands appear in the close-ups of Dudley playing in Mrs Hamilton's drawing-room.

Some of the other visual effects were more complicated to achieve and Harry Redmond, Jr. was tasked with finding ways to depict the professor's refilling sherry bottle, the Christmas tree that decorates itself, and the typewriter that automatically takes dictation. Sticking a chair to the bishop's derrière proved less taxing. But coaxing punters to fill cinema seats turned out to be a lot trickier.

The feedback from preview screenings prompted Goldwyn to hire Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett to do some hasty rewrites. They had been working together since 1936 and had penned such classics as Ernst Lubitsch's Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) and Ninotchka (1939); Mitchell Leisen's Midnight (1939), Hold Back the Dawn (1941), and To Each His Own (1946); and Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire (1941), as well as the Wilder-directed trio of The Major and the Minor (1942), Five Graves to Cairo (1943), and The Lost Weekend (1945), which had won the Oscar for Best Picture.

It was agreed that three key scenes needed doctoring and, at a private Friday screening, Goldwyn offered the pair $25,000 to redraft them over the weekend. They delivered the rewrites just before the Monday deadline and Cinema Paradiso aficionados can have fun trying to work out which sections they polished. They declined their fee, however, as the money would have tipped their annual tax balance and Goldwyn repaid their magnanimity by withholding an on-screen credit.

The press enthused about the film, but it faced stiff box-office opposition in the form of George Seaton's Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which would earn Edmund Gwenn the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Goldwyn commissioned a market research report, which revealed that people were being put off by the title, as they thought it denoted a sombre religious drama. In response, Goldwyn changed the title in certain parts of the country to Cary and the Bishop's Wife, while new posters were printed to highlight Grant's starring role. Much to Goldwyn's relief, the takings increased by 25%.

Wings Can Only Get Better

As awards season got into full swing, Goldwyn predicted that Loretta Young would win the Oscar for Best Actress. He was proved right, but for the wrong film, as Young was rewarded for her display in H.C. Potter's The Farmer's Daughter (1947). In consolation, Goldwyn landed a nomination for Best Picture, while Koster was recognised for his direction. Editor Monica Collingwood and composer Hugo Friedhofer were also nominated. But the film's sole Academy Award came for Gordon E. Sawyer's sound recording.

Young later claimed to have learnt a lot from the role, as it had been such a challenge. 'I thought of the wife as a frustrated little thing,' she told one interviewer, 'lonely and rather thwarted...This was the hardest part I'd ever played.' Nevertheless, she reprised the role with Grant and Niven in a 30-minute précis broadcast under the Screen Guild Theater banner on 1 March 1948. Rival show Lux Radio Theater produced an hour-long version on 19 December 1949, with Niven as Henry and Tyrone Power and Jane Greer as Dudley and Julia.

Grant twice returned to play Dudley opposite Phyllis Thaxter's Julia on 11 May 1953 and 1 March 1955. On television, however, The Bishop's Wife became a firm festive favourite and became as much part of the seasonal schedules as those other box-office misfires Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life.

Over the years, a number of features have turned on benevolent angels becoming involved with the humans they have been sent to watch over. A handful are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso, including Philip Borsos's One Magic Christmas (1985), Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire (1987) and its Hollywood remake, Brad Silberling's City of Angels (1998), Danny Boyle's A Life Less Ordinary (1997), Kevin Smith's Dogma (1999), and Luc Besson's Angel-A (2005).

In 1996, producer Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. asked Penny Marshall to rework his father's gem for a new audience, as The Preacher's Wife. Nat Mauldin and Allan Scott revised the screenplay to show how Baptist pastor Henry Biggs (Courtney B. Vance) was struggling to deal with the demands of his parishioners in a rundown part of New York. Wife Julia (Whitney Houston) and son Jeremiah (Justin Pierre Edmund) feel neglected, as Henry devotes his time to raising funds so that he can prevent property developer Joe Hamilton (Gregory Hines) from demolishing his church and building luxury apartments.

Mired in the deepest despair, Henry prays for guidance and is sceptical when Dudley (Denzel Washington) arrives out of nowhere and declares himself to be an angel whose identity has to be kept secret. Henry's secretary, Beverly (Loretta Devine), and Julia's mother, Margueritte (Jenifer Lewis), also view Dudley with suspicion. But Julia is bowled over and delighted when Dudley takes her ice skating and accompanies her to the jazz club where she had regularly performed before deciding to dedicate her talent to the church choir. Her friend, Britsloe (a debuting Lionel Richie), plays piano as she sings the old Four Tops hit, 'I Believe in You and Me'.

This makes Dudley realise that he is falling for Julia and he turns his attention to keeping Hamilton off Henry's back. With Christmas approaching, he also leaves the family a special gift before wiping away all memory of his sojourn. But six year-old Jeremiah (who serves as the film's narrator) has a childlike faith that enables him to recognise Dudley and bid him the fondest of farewells.

As Denzel Washington's Mundy Lane company was involved in the project, he considered casting Julia Roberts before going down the musical route with Whitney Houston. She was reluctant to accept the role, but recognised parallels with her own life. A $10 million cheque that made her the best paid African American actress in screen history also probably helped sweeten the deal.

Houston would only sing in the afternoons, which led to scheduling difficulties. But the shoot was plagued with problems, as a member of the crew was killed by a car and an elderly extra from the Trinity United Methodist Church in Newark, New Jersey passed away after breaking her hip. Snowstorms held up the location work. Yet, when Marshall came to shoot the skating scene, the ice had melted and snow machines had to be used. They were also required for the finale, which required an entire Tarrytown street to be covered in fake snow.

Nevertheless, the reviews were mostly positive, with the gospel singing being particularly praised. Indeed, Hans Zimmer's score provided the picture with its only Oscar nomination. It lost out to Rachel Portman's work for Douglas McGrath's adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma (1996), but it's bound to get the toes tapping if you plump for a Cinema Paradiso double bill with The Bishop's Wife.