Merry Christmas FROM HOLLYWOOD - holiday movie classics

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 1999 by Wes Gehring

As the holidays approach it's time to talk Christmas movies. hanks to television programming n the 1970s and 1980s, when director Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) seemed to play continuously in December (public domain status meant no rental costs for stations), there is little question about America's favorite yuletide picture. The trials and tribulations faced by Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey have forever caught the country's holiday spirit. Before examining this watershed work, it bears noting that Hollywood's Christmas movie legacy has a strong 1940s connection.

The greatest competition for Capra's work are "Miracle on 34th Street" and "The Bishop's Wife" (both 1947). The former chronicles the life and sometimes hard times of a modern-day Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn, in an Academy Award-winning turn) working at Macy's department store. "The Bishop's Wife" tracks the assistance of a suave angel (Cary Grant) to a fund-raising campaign for a new church. (If the children from the latter film seem familiar--Karolyn Grimes and Bobby Anderson--it is because they appeared together in "It's a Wonderful Life.")

Two additional December favorites from the 1940s are "Holiday Inn" (1942) and "Going My Way" (1944). "Holiday Inn" stars Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire singing a host of Irving Berlin holiday favorites, including the Oscar-winning "White Christmas." Though a thin plot, about the establishment of a country inn open only on holidays, it is strongly recommended over the partial remake, "White Christmas"(1954).

"Going My Way" finds Crosby playing crooning crackerbarrel priest Father O'Malley. Second only to "Gone With the Wind" in box office receipts at the time of its initial release, the film went on to dominate at the Academy Awards, winning Oscars for best picture, director (Leo McCarey), story (McCarey), actor (Crosby), supporting actor (Barry Fitzgerald), and best song ("Swinging on a Star").

Capra was a friend and major McCarey fan, and he honored "Going My Way" by featuring the sequel title, "The Bells of St. Mary's" (1945), in "It's a Wonderful Life." Near the latter's close, the reborn George Bailey retraces his "Christmas Carol"-like steps through a Bedford Falls which would not have existed without him. On the marquee of the town's theater, "The Bells of St. Mary's" is playing. Capra underlines this by having Bailey shout, "Merry Christmas, movie house!" Thus, this McCarey film, with the enchantingly improvised children's Christmas program, fittingly serves to finalize the saving of Bailey's life. Once he returns to his home, Bailey's friends have taken up a collection and saved his financial life as well.

These are the bona fide 1940s holiday classics, but the decade is rich in additional Christmas movies. For instance, Barbara Stanwyck stars in two such entertaining outings--"Remember the Night" (1940) and "Christmas in Connecticut" (1945). The former story is especially moving, as Fred MacMurray plays a prosecutor failing in love with Stanwyck's shoplifter during Christmas court recess. The sentimental story works because of Preston Sturges' wonderful script, his last picture before becoming one of Hollywood's first writer/directors. (Sturges must have had the holidays on his mind in 1940, because later in the year he wrote and directed "Christmas in July," a winsome comedy about an impoverished character, played by Dick Powell, who mistakenly believes he has won a slogan contest and plays summertime Santa for the neighborhood.) The second Stanwyck picture finds her playing a recipe writer who hosts a sailor for Christmas dinner in order to impress her boss (Sydney Greenstreet). The picture hasn't much in the way of plot, but the seasonal developments are still effective.

The 1940s were also good for several peripheral holiday favorites in which Christmas is important, yet not necessarily central to the movie. Besides the aforementioned "The Bells of St. Mary's," a strong candidate for this category would be director Ernst Lubitsch's "The Shop Around the Corner" (1940), with Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart as two holiday co-workers who don't realize that they are lonely hearts pen pals. (Writer/director Nora Ephron loosely remade this as "You've Got Mail" in 1998.) A not-to-be-avoided companion piece to "Shop" would be "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944). with a Christmas segment featuring Judy Garland singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." In fact, "St. Louis" director Vincente Minnelli wanted to end the picture with the Christmas portion, but the M-G-M powers that be had him tack on the World's Fair conclusion.

Peripheral favorites include yet another 1940s film starring Barbara Stanwyck. The Capra-directed "Meet John Doe" (1941). Stanwyck plays a reporter helping to create a puppet demigod (Gary Cooper)who eventually opts to do the right thing. The Christmas Eve conclusion finds Cooper's title character in desperate suicidal straits (anticipating Capra's George Bailey), before the people come to the rescue by convincing Doe that his life has made a difference to others. Indeed, the Christmas/Christ overtones are so strong for Bailey and Doe that some viewers might not want to classify "Meet John Doe" as at quasi-holiday film.