Category: 1940s

As with many classic novels, I’ve never read Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine is Jane, who after her own harrowing childhood is hired to look after mysterious Orson Welles’s young ward. At a brisk hour and a half, I’m certain there are character-defining scenes that must be missing from this portrayal. Fontaine’s portrayal is fairly acceptable, but Welles’s over-acting, directed to no one else in the world but himself, does nothing to further the romantic angle of the story. The young actors in the film (Peggy Ann Garner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Margaret O’Brien) all give sweet performances and it’s a shame they weren’t more of the focus of the story if they were going to butcher the novel anyway.

There’s nothing about this film that says Christmas except the title, yet I only watch it at Christmas time. Dick Powell is an office worker who enters contests with dreams of making it big and marrying his girl. When some of his co-workers play a prank and make him think he’s won a coffee slogan contest, he quickly goes on a shopping spree, sharing his newfound wealth with his entire neighborhood. It’s a breezy little romp with plenty of good-feeling humor that still makes me feel like Christmas even when it’s not set anywhere near the winter holidays.

Living in a Reno boardinghouse while awaiting her quickie divorce, Claire Trevor discovers the body of one of her roommates along with that of the roommate’s suitor. Instead of calling the police, she hightails it to her sister’s home in San Francisco, followed by the killer, a private investigator, and the boardinghouse’s suspicious matron. The assumption might be that Trevor is simply a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it’s soon apparent that she’s not going to be playing the victim. It’s an incredibly dark noir where there doesn’t seem to be a single character of quality and loyalties are discarded and picked up again at the drop of a hat. 

Fred MacMurray is is a New York assistant District Attorney who takes small-time crook Barbara Stanwyck to their joint home state of Indiana instead of letting her sit in jail over the holidays. In all of their films, I love the chemistry between Stanwyck and MacMurray. They are particularly strong here where she is the tough-as-nails ‘bad’ girl who has rarely been shown kindness and he’s the honest-to-a-fault good guy. MacMurray’s family farm setting, where family isn’t just a nuclear unit but includes his widowed mother, a matronly aunt, and a simple-minded cousin, makes me nostalgic for my own family Christmases where everyone who needed a place to go was welcome for the holiday.    

After losing his job as a salesclerk when he refuses to turn in comparison shopper Janet Leigh, Robert Mitchum weasels his way into her life, much to the chagrin of suitor Wendell Corey but to the joy of her young son Gordon Gebert. Gebert’s precociousness can be annoying at times as can Mitchum’s pushiness, especially in his insistence that he knows what is best for Leigh more than she herself does. But Mitchum’s laidback attitude as well as the enjoyable ways the love triangle plays out make the film entertaining. Especially memorable is the short scene with the little girl with the balloon tied to her hat who received roller skates for Christmas and is undeterred by the weather.   

Convict Ginger Rogers, on a good behavior furlough from prison, meets PTSD-suffering soldier Joseph Cotten on the train to visit her relatives for the holidays. They are both social outcasts of a type and make for an odd pairing in a Christmas film. Despite not knowing each other’s ails , they manage to find strength and comfort from the other character. Adding to the cast is Tom Tully and Spring Byington as Rogers’s kind and supportive aunt and uncle while Shirley Temple is their suspicious teenaged daughter. Their welcoming home provides just the right atmosphere to make this unusual Christmas tale work for the holiday season.    

Despite publisher Sidney Greenstreet’s insistence on honesty above all, single New Yorker Barbara Stanwyck writes a regular column for one of his magazines describing her married life on a farm in Connecticut. To fulfill the wishes of returning war hero Dennis Morgan, she is forced to finagle a Christmas dinner at her imaginary farm with the soldier, her publisher, and her supposed family. Stanwyck is radiant amidst all the hijinks, pretending to know how to cook, milk cows, and care for an infant all while trying to balance the feelings of her editor and new fiancé Reginald Gardiner with her own feelings for the soldier. The soundstage version of a Connecticut farmhouse provides just enough warm hominess to make it a comforting holiday flick.