Cary Grant is an angel in "The Bishop's Wife." The angel's name is Dudley. Just Dudley. No other name. That makes it easy to identify him as an angel, for the audience at least, if not for the worldly characters in the picture, most of whom never suspect that Dudley's mononomenclature suggests a nether background. Here is one example of this strange mental dullness in otherwise apparently intelligent characters. The bishop, it has been established, knows what Dudley is, although he finds the concept a difficult one to accept, despite overwhelming evidence of its truth. He introduces the angel to his wife. "This is Dudley," says the bishop. "Dudley who?" says the bishop's wife. "Just Dudley," says Cary Grant, in a tone of casual mysterioso. This explanation seems to satisfy the bishop's wife for the rest of the picture. It also satifies everybody else. Even when Dudley performs minor miracles, such as rendering a bottle of wine perennially full, he is considered to be nothing more extraordinary than a nice man.

But audiences know better and, this reviewer feels obliged to note, do not seem to be disturbed by the gullibility of the characters. Certainly the audience in attendance new year's night in New York, if the opinion of a youthful, zestful, red-headed, and ordinarily discriminating young lady can be accepted as representative, found the picture entirely pleasant and amusing.

"Whimsical" is a better word. "The Bishop's Wife" is minor whimsy. It shows how Dudley enables the bishop to get enough money to build a cathedral. It then shows how Dudley persuades both the bishop and an unpleasant donor that the money could be more wisely used if it were spent to help the poor and the suffering. It then shows how Dudley saves the bishop's marriage from a sorry fate. And all the time, it maintains a nice comical relationship between Dudley, the bishop, and the bishop's wife.

The dominant tone is one of moderation. David Niven is moderately crotchety as the bishop; Grant is moderately supernatural as Dudley; Loretta Young registers a variety of moderate emotions as the wife; and Monty Wooley is only moderately Monty Wooley as an old professor. And the total effect, despite the unhesitant acceptance of "just Dudley" and his miracles, is moderately good. As the redhead decided, summoning all her critical forces into play, "I liked it."