Twelve Days of Christmas: Day Four

Bogie and Bacall

What is it about vintage Christmas trees and tinsel?  It seems like all Christmas trees of a certain era were considered outcasts if their boughs aren't dripping with long luscious tinsel tendrils.  Let's commemorate some of the glorious firs of yesteryear...

The Bishop's Wife (1947)

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)

Xmas in Film: Christmas in Connecticut

All right... this is the last time I talk about Barbara Stanwyck for a while.  Promise!  As I previous mentioned, Stanwyck made multiple films that occur around the Christmas holiday.  Today, I'll be speaking about the most obvious of these films 1945's Christmas in Connecticut, directed by Peter Godfrey.  There's Christmas in the title and a Christmas movie is what you get, which is actually not as common as you would think with many of these classic films.  Don't believe me?  Just look at TCM's annual Christmas offerings - many with a single scene devoted to something Christmasy to tie it in with the theme (speaking of TCM, I'm rather disappointed that they have elected to leave Christmas in Connecticut off their schedule this year).

Christmas in Connecticut features Stanwyck as Elizabeth Lane, a Martha Stewart type columnist for a popular House and Home magazine.  To her publisher and loyal audience she owns a farm in Connecticut, has a husband and baby, and is an expert cook and homemaker.  In reality though she is a bachelor girl who lives in a small New York apartment who doesn't even know how to boil water.  With the help of her dear friend Felix (played by the ever-endearing S.Z. 'Cuddles' Skall) and would be man (he wants to marry her, but she doesn't love him) John Sloan's own farm as inspiration she has managed to keep her ruse under wraps (up until this this point).  Everything changes when her publisher Alexander Yardley (played by another great character actor Sydney Greenstreet) demands that she invites a war hero to her Connecticut farm for a traditional Christmas.  Things get worse when Yardley decides that he would also like to come to Elizabeth's farm.  To keep the truth from coming out, Elizabeth agrees to marry John Sloan and with the help of Felix, create the illusion that she is the woman that inhabits the world of her column.  The scheme is perfect until she falls in love with the war hero (played by Dennis Morgan).  Hijinks ensue as Elizabeth and Felix jump through hoops to save her job and avoid marrying John Sloan.

This film is a novelty in Stanwyck's filmography, being one of the few roles where she doesn't have it all together.  In fact, she's kind of a passive character who allows much of the action to happen around her, especially when being pushed around by her publisher.  Part of the reason Stanwyck agreed to play the role of Elizabeth Lane was because the film she completed right before this movie was Double Indemnity, where she plays a cold-blooded seductress and murderer.  Due to the dark nature of the role, Stanwyck really needed a nice light role, which she found in Christmas in Connecticut.  You know what, she makes it work, and in the end we get to see a little bit of the strong independent Stanwyck that we know and love.

Ultimately, this film is completely charming.  It really deserves to be put on the same pedestal as It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol as a perennial Christmas classic.  Here's the trailer to whet
your appetite.