 "Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid" (1948), another film from a Nunnally Johnson script in which a married man, played by William Powell, accidentally catches a mermaid on his fishing line.Made about the same time was "The Miracle of the Bells" (also 1948), a big budget film which failed at the box office about an impoverished coal town with Frank Sinatra miscast as a priest."St.