It quickly becomes apparent that The Bishop’s Wife (1947) is a Christmas movie.  I did not intentionally go looking for one.  I found this film on Good Friday, a heavy day for us Catholics and Christians alike.  As such, I wanted something lighter before going to church for the service (note: it is the one day of the year we Catholics do not call it Mass).  As I am coming to enjoy older productions more than modern ones, I turned to Cary Grant for the kind of material I desired. Today’s pick did not immediately elicit Yuletide fare when reading its brief description.  Had it done so, I might have gone in a different direction.  As it began, with its scenes of children looking at displays of toys in shop windows, and the snow, I shrugged and continued.  Today, I am at opposite ends of Jesus’ life, and that is okay.  Luckily, the movie is better than okay.

The person who we see strolling through the aforementioned scenes at the beginning of The Bishop’s Wife is Dudley (Cary Grant), though that is a name he later gives himself.  Also, “person” does not properly describe who he is because he is an angel.  He does good wherever he goes, helping a blind man cross a busy street and stopping a mother’s baby carriage from rolling into traffic.  He also has an interaction with Professor Wutheridge (Monty Woolley), who Dudley claims to know from the University of Vienna.  Next, Dudley sees the careworn Julia Brougham (Loretta Young) staring at a hat in a shop window.  He follows her for a little bit, observing her going into a shop to buy a Christmas tree and chatting with her friend, Professor Wutheridge.  Dudley had been kind to her, but Professor Wutheridge is suspicious of the stranger’s supposed background.  What becomes apparent about Julia is that she is worried about her husband, Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven).  He has been over working too hard, in his wife’s opinion, in his effort to build a new cathedral.  When she returns to their fine home, he is engrossed with a number of potential backers of this project, all of them wealthy old ladies.  The main one is Mrs. Agnes Hamilton (Gladys Cooper).  She has the most funds to donate, but she is insistent that she be given certain concessions, like naming a chapel after her late husband, before she releases the money.  Bishop Brougham is resistant to this idea, wanting the edifice to be solely about God and not giving glory to one man.  Mrs. Hamilton leaves in a huff, and he retires to his study to ponder.  Looking up at the edifice he hopes to erect, he prays to God for guidance.  When he turns around, there is Dudley.  Bishop Brougham is surprised, and incredulous when Dudley reveals his Divine origin.  Bishop Brougham asks for miracles as proof of Dudley’s claims, but the angel is more subtle.  Dudley offers to become Bishop Brougham’s assistant, and the Anglican prelate at length grudgingly agrees.  He then goes into dinner with Julia, and they make plans for spending the following day together.  After the meal, though, the duties of his office catch up with him and he realizes he must cancel his day with Julia.  In the morning, Dudley is ready to help, and he witnesses the disappointment from Julia as her husband must attend to business.  Instead of laboring at the office as he is told, Dudley catches up with Julia and her daughter, Debby Brougham (Karolyn Grimes), in the park.  He endears himself to the little girl by helping her to get into a snowball fight with the other children before one of the maids comes along to take charge of her.  This leaves Julia free to have lunch with Dudley.  At the restaurant, there are a number of the ladies from the previous day.  Dudley invites them to his table and charms them all.  Dudley and Julia then stop at Professor Wutheridge’s flat, where Dudley is able to give the aging scholar the inspiration to finally start his long-planned Roman history.  Dudley and Julia come home to a put-out Bishop Brougham, who had canceled one of his appointments to be with his wife, only to find her out with Dudley.  This only serves to make Bishop Brougham more suspicious of his supposed assistant.  On the immediately proceeding evening, Bishop Brougham is called to Mrs. Hamilton’s home.  Once more, the cleric has double-booked himself, as he is also supposed to be at a practice of the boys’ choir at St. Timothy’s, his old church.  While he gives in to Mrs. Hamilton’s demands, Dudley and Julia go on without him.  With the rehearsal concluded, they decide to go ice skating in the park.  Julia is elated by the time she is having, but Bishop Brougham has had enough of Dudley.  Bishop Brougham wants Dudley gone, but the angel replies by saying there is more work to do.  This means Dudley going to see Mrs. Hamilton.  As only a cherubim can, he gets the wealthy heiress to open up about her reasons for wanting to name the chapel after her late husband.  She talks about the guilt she has for never loving the man, which is why she wants his name on a church.  The talk convinces her of the folly of this desire, and when Bishop Brougham and Julia get there, she announces that she is giving her money to charity.  A shocked Bishop Brougham leaves, and ends up at Professor Wutheridge.  All the academic wants to do is talk about how Dudley has helped him, and Bishop Brougham wants to hear none of it.  Yet, Professor Wutheridge remains steadfast.  They talk openly about Dudley being an angel, and Professor Wutheridge says there is no way Julia can be stolen away by such a creature, despite the bishop’s fears.  These are not unfounded as Dudley is waiting at their house where he admits to Julia that for the first time he is conflicted about his feelings for a mortal.  This upsets Julia, and Bishop Brougham is ready to fight the angel.  This is what Dudley has been waiting for, and gracefully bows out, saying they will never see him again.  Upon disappearing, everyone forgets about him, though we end with Bishop Brougham reciting the Christmas sermon Dudley wrote.

There is some bad theology in The Bishop’s Wife, and it has to do with Dudley.  I have no idea as to whether this reflects Anglican thought on angels, though I doubt it.  Catholicism incorporates the work of these Heavenly beings into God’s plan, but it does not get too specific about it.  The Bible does have these agents of God’s word and work intervening in our lives.  For example, Mary is visited by the archangel Gabriel, who announces that she would give birth to Our Savior. Luckily, she readily says yes, unlike Bishop Brougham.  Another is the intercession of Gabriel’s counterpart, Raphael, in the life of Tobit, a person from the Old Testament.  One can draw parallels to these activities and what Dudley does, and the film should be lauded for him underscoring the fact that whatever “power” (for a lack of a better term) he has comes from God.  Yet, I am not sure where it says in the Bible that after an angel does its deed that the people who benefited will forget all about what had been done for them.  That strikes me as undoing the good will these graces are meant to build up with Bishop Brougham and Julia.  At the same time, the closest equivalent the Church has to what we see in the movie are guardian angels.  This is more tradition than an article of Faith, but it can be made to somewhat fit with Dudley.  When good things happen to many Catholics, especially when we are saved from physical harm, we credit our guardian angel for making it so.  At the same time, how often do we remember that this has occurred?  I confess to being bad at attributing these small miracles to my guardian angel, and I think it would be okay with me doing so.  After all, it is about God, not the angel.  It is in this light, though, that the film is redeemed.  I hold up Professor Wutheridge as evidence of this fact.  Dudley does a number of things that the scholar finds astounding, like magically refilling his bottle of sherry, which is not an ideal Christian image given its origin.  Yet, Dudley’s best work is getting the atheist Professor Wutheridge to return to church.  It is part of getting us back into relationship with God, and that is what angels are here to do.

In sum, there are problems with The Bishop’s Wife with which we need to be familiar, but it is an eminently watchable movie.  Grant certainly helps.  I was also pleased to see that Young was a devout Catholic.  It may not have fit precisely with the day on which I watched it, but I am glad I did.