"Favorite Christmas Movies"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Favorite Christmas Movies”

December 19, 2022

 

“Oh, Christmas isn’t just a day; it’s a frame of mind.”

                                                                                                                Edmund Gwenn (1877-1959), as Kris Kringle

                                                                                                                Miracle on 34^th Street, 1947

 

Among the many delights of the season are watching Christmas movies. Of the hundreds produced, we all have favorites. You have yours; I have mine. One could spend the entire fourth quarter of the year watching a different movie every night, and still not see the entire collection. 

 

Unsurprisingly, my favorites are older ones, when times were simpler, humor was subtler, sentimentality was ubiquitous, and when we believed in the miracle of Christmas. My favorite is the 1946 It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart as George Baily, Donna Reed as Mary Hatch Bailey, Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Potter, and with Henry Travers as the angel Clarence. World War II was over, and some American families were reunited for the first time in five years. The message: every individual affects the lives of thousands of people – family, friends, neighbors, business associates, community members, even strangers. George Bailey has the rare good fortune to have Clarence (AS 2 – angel, second class) let him view his family, friends, and town, as if he had never been born. It is a Christmas message that transcends race, religion, and gender; as we all, for good or for bad, affect everyone we encounter – so be good, for goodness sake!  

 

Among other favorites: Miracle on 34^th Street from 1947, starring Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle, eight-year-old Natalie Wood as Susan Walker, and Maureen O’Hara as her mother, Doris. Edmund Gwenn is the most believable Santa Claus I have seen. Here is Kris peaking to skeptics: “If you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.” Another favorite is It Happened on Fifth Avenue, also from1947, starring Victor Moore as the homeless Aloysius T. McKeever; Don DeFore as a fellow homeless man; Charles Ruggles as Mike O’Connor, and his daughter Trudy played by Gale Storm. At dinner one night, in the Fifth Avenue mansion belonging to Mike O’Connor, McKeever addresses the assemblage (with both O’Connor’s present, but using false names): “And I would like to feel that you’re all my friends. For to be without friends is a serious form of poverty.” Christmas in Connecticut from 1945 is a romantic comedy with Barbara Stanwyck, as Elizabeth Lane, a single, New York food writer. She writes of dinners prepared, as though living in a Connecticut farmhouse with her husband and child; Sydney Greenstreet is Lane’s publisher, unaware of the charade she has played; and Dennis Morgan is returning war hero, Jefferson Jones. The cast includes a favorite actor of mine from that era, S.Z. Sakall who plays Lane’s “honorary” uncle, Felix Bassenak. One of his best lines: “Nobody needs a mink coat but the mink.” Like all good comedies, the plot is complicated, reminding the viewer of Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” Untangling this one is hilarious.

 

The Bishop’s Wife, also from 1947, is another favorite. It stars Loretta Young as Julia Brougham, David Niven as Bishop Henry Brougham, and Cary Grant as the angel Dudley; he has been sent to assist the Bishop. In discussing Julia’s concern with getting older, Dudley says: “The only people who grow old were born old to begin with” – a comforting message, as years pass me by. My favorite of the several versions of A Christmas Carol is the 1951 one, starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge. The story tells of the moral awakening of Scrooge. Following his ghost-assisted trips to past, present, and Christmases-yet-to-come, a redeemed Scrooge tells his nephew Fred’s wife, played by Olga Edwardes, “Can you forgive a pig-headed old fool with no eyes to see and no ears to hear all these years?” The Shop Around the Corner was produced in 1940, with Jimmy Stewart as Alfred Kralik and Margaret Sullavan as Klara Novak. The story reminds us not be too quick to judge people. Stewart’s character tells Sullavan’s: “There might be a lot we don’t know about each other. You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface to find the inner truth.” The movie was based on a 1937 Hungarian play, and it spawned the delightful 1949 musical, In the Good Old Summertime, with Judy Garland and Van Johnson. There are many other great Christmas movies, like Remember the Night, with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred Mac Murray: and Holiday Affair, with Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum.

 

I love Christmas musicals. My favorite is Holiday Inn (1942), with Bing Crosby as Jim Hardy, Fred Astaire as Ted Hanover, Marjorie Reynolds as Linda Mason, and Virginia Dale as Lila Dixon. Irving Berlin wrote a dozen songs for the production, including “White Christmas,” which received the 1943 Academy Award for best original song. Two lines capture the on-again, off-again competition between Hardy and Hanover. Ted Hanover: “We like it here with you and Linda.” Jim Hardy: “We love having you. When are you leaving?”  White Christmas, taking its title from Berlin’s song, was released in 1954. It is a comedy with Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace, Danny Kaye as Phil Davis, Rosemary Clooney as Betty Haynes, and Vera-Ellen as her sister Judy. Bing Crosby sings the title song. Danny Kaye does what he does best, utter complicated sentences, making audiences chuckle: “When what’s left of you gets around to what’s left to be gotten, what’s left to be gotten won’t be worth getting, whatever it is you’ve got left.”  Betty and Judy Haynes’ sisters’ act is hilariously copied by Wallace and Davis. In the 1944 musical Meet Me in St. Louis, Judy Garland, as Esther Smith, sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Seven-year-old Margaret O’Brian, as Esther’s youngest sister “Tootie,” received the Juvenile Academy Award in 1945.

 

I have not mentioned newer Christmas movies, some of which I like, especially slapstick comedies: Trading Places from 1983, the 1989 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and Home Alone from 1990. I enjoy Polar Express, narrated by Tom Hanks, which came out in 2004, perfect timing for our ten grandchildren.

 

Whether it is the Smith’s decision to stay in St. Louis or Aloysius being invited to come through the front door next winter, Christmas movies have happy endings. No matter how old we get, Christmas is always magical. I hope it always remains that way. Like Jesus’ birth, which we celebrate on the 25^th, there will always be unexplainable events. With Kris Kringle on trial, the actor John Payne, in the role of defense attorney Fred Gailey, speaks to the jury: “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to. Don’t you see? It’s not just Kris that is on trial, it’s everything he stands for.”

 

“And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One.”[1] Amen, and may your holidays be merry and blessed, and may the New Year be full of positive surprises.