A modern-day witch likes her neighbor but despises his fiancee, so she enchants him to love her instead… only to fall in love with him for real.
During the Christmas holiday season, Greenwich Village witch Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak), a free spirit with a penchant for going barefoot, has been unlucky in love and restless in life. She admires from afar her neighbor, publisher Shep Henderson (James Stewart), who one day walks into her gallery of African art to use the telephone (after Gillian’s aunt Elsa Lanchester put a spell on his phone). When she learns he is about to marry an old college enemy of hers, Merle Kittridge, Gillian takes revenge by casting a love spell on Shep, and she eventually falls for him herself. She must make a choice, as witches who fall in love lose their supernatural powers.
Starring Hermione Gingold, Elsa Lanchester, Kim Novak, James Stewart, Janice Rule.
Note: This is not a traditional Christmas film, though the movie whited opened on Christmas 1958 does feature wintery street scenes of New York and “Jingle Bells” is used to set the Christmas tone of the initial action.