They needed help. What they got was a miracle…
Whitney returnes to her gospel roots in in this remake of the 1947 movie “The Bishop’s Wife”. Starring opposite Whitney in this romatic comedy is non other than Academy Award winner Denzel Washington.
Julia (Whitney Houston) is wife of Henry, a priest, who preaches in a small town. They maintain a helthy relationship, but as the Dudley (Denzel Washington) turns up – an angel in the shape of very attractive man – problems will certainly arise…
Whitneys mother, Cissy Houston, can be seen as Mrs. Havergal a choir director and she has also a song on the soundtrack.
This romantic-family-dramedy-christmas film directed by Penny Marshall was was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score.
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In Penny Marshall’s heartwarming comedy “The Preacher’s Wife”, Whitney Houston stars as the gospel singing wife of reverend Henry Biggs (Courtney B. Vance), a good man who is doubting his ability to make a difference in his troubled commumunity and home. Help is on the way in the form of an angel named Dudley (Denzel Washington) who soon becomes both the source of and the soulution to their problems.
From the earliest days if the film’s gestation, Academy Award winner Denzel Washington wanted to star in “The Preacher’s Wife”, because for one thing, the role of the angel who comes to earth to help a preacher and his family, was a departure forn the types of characters he’s used to playing. “I’m usually acting in serious, heavy roles.” Washington says. “This one is lighter, humorous and charming. And it was a nice change to be able to interact with the crew. Ordinarily I’m off in a cornder brooding and preparing for a scene. The scenes here required an equal amount of concerntarion and preperation, but they were fun.”
But it was more than just a role that attracted Washington to this project. “The story appealed to me becuase it’s about the fundamental things we seem to have gotten away from in society – hope and faith in our fellow man, and God, and the sense that family and church are the foundations of a community,” he says. “I liked that about the story, as well as the idea of apperaring in a film that would be saying positive, uplifting things.”
Washington persuaded the project, and when the question was raised about who should play the title role of the preacher’s beautiful and talented wife, the first name on everybody’s lips was WHITNEY HOUSTON. A superstar in the world of popular music, Houston has also become a fil star with her box office hits “The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale”. Ultimately, she needed little prompting to accept the role of Julia.
“I especially loved the idea that music would be part of the story,” Houston says of her interest in the film. “Music enhances a story. People understand music somtimes when they don’t understand words.”
According to Denzel, “When Whitney agreed to come on board everything began to fall into place naturally. And the fact that she would be able to sing Christmas songs in the movie – since music and churchgoing are so much part of the holiday – was a bonus.”
For Whitney Houston, performing the role of Julia was a return to her musical roots. As a child she was a meber of the New Hope Baptist Junior Choir in Newark, New Jersey where her mother, Cissy Houston, was and still is Minister of Music. “This was the moct exciting thing for me,” Houston says. “It gave me the opportunity to sing gospel, the music I love most. Also, like Denzel, I believe in the theme of the film, that church is the glue that holds the community together.”
