LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
‘The Bishop’s Wife’ features classic skating scene BY TROY SCHWINDT
During the holiday season, it’s traditional
to grab a cup of hot chocolate, curl up with your favorite blanket and watch such classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol and Miracle on 34th Street. Another one of those timeless holiday
movies that often shows up on TV this time of year is The Bishop’s Wife (1947), which includes a skating scene with Cary Grant and Loretta Young. Grant’s double in the scene is the late Eugene Turner, who won U.S. men’s titles in 1940–41, a U.S. pairs title in 1941 with Donna Atwood and a U.S. silver medal in ice dance in 1941 with Elizabeth Kennedy. He was induct- ed into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1983. Turner used to write a column for SKATING magazine in the 1980s called Turner’s Turn. He penned a column in December 1983 that de- scribed what took place during the fi lming of that memorable skating scene. First a little background on the movie,
which was remade in 1996 with Denzel Wash- ington, Whitney Houston and Courtney Vance and titled The Preacher’s Wife. In the original, a stuff y bishop, played by
David Niven, needs help building a cathe- dral. Grant portrays an angel who is sent to help steer Niven and his parishioners through divine intervention. Niven’s wife, played by Young, admires the handsome Grant’s caring and giving ways, which creates a bit of jealou- sy in her marriage. The skating sequence features Grant and
5 MORE POPULAR SKATING MOVIES/SCENES Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates — 1958 Snow White and The Three Stooges (with Olympic champion Carol Heiss) — 1961 Ice Castles —1978/2010 The Cutting Edge— 1992 Ice Princess — 2005 Blades of Glory — 2007
Young, accompanied by their taxi driver, Jim- my Gleason, stopping by a frozen pond to try their luck. According to Turner, Gleason’s skating double is played by Walter Ridge, who used to roller skate
in vaudeville and did occasional comedy in various ice shows. Ridge looks just like Gleason. Young’s double also looks like her, although her real identity is unknown, as Turner didn’t identify her. “I looked like Cary Grant having an attack of delirium tremens, so I got the full treatment: a head
mask, complete with eye holes; nostrils and an opening where I could mutter, ‘I can’t breathe,’” wrote Turner in his self-deprecating style. “I couldn’t see either, directly down anyhow.” The moviemakers left the trio of doubles by themselves at the studio-built rink for three-and-a-
half weeks so they could pull together a few tricks for when the regular cast showed back up. “Show us what you’ve got,” they told the group when they reconvened for shooting. “We scrambled around somehow, huddled together, linked up whispering and giggling, and out
of that melee came what you see on the screen. After three and a half weeks, there’s a minute and a half of great choreographic eff ort,” Turner recalled. During the skating scene, there’s a long-distance shot of Turner performing a cross-foot spin in
front of Young’s character. That shot is immediately followed up with a close-up of Grant (waist up) fi nishing the spin. How was it done? “Grant was strapped, from the waist down, inside a metal device constructed on a spindle, then
spun by hand,” Turner explained. “The crew wound up the spindle with rope, just like a top, grabbed the rope and ran.” They had to shoot that scene more than a dozen times. “It was funny to see them try and stop the spindle so Grant would be facing Loretta,” Turner
wrote. “In the rushes [unedited footage] the next day, we’d howl as they would show him stopped with his back to her. “Anyhow, three weeks of play, three days of work. Not bad. But another day of that mask, I’d have been a candidate for a wax works.” The movie earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture and remains one of today’s classic holiday movies. If you don’t catch it on TV, it’s available on the Turner Movie Classic website as part of the MGM
Holiday Classics Collection DVD, as well as through Netfl ix and Amazon. Happy holidays!
4 DECEMBER 2012
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