Holiday Affair (1949)

Holiday Affair is an extremely delightful example of a classic romantic comedy. With how romantic comedies have such a bad reputation today, it is easy to forget how many delightful romantic comedies were made during the 1930's and 40's with seemingly effortless charm. Setting this film around my favorite time of year, only adds to the charm of Holiday Affair.

Connie Ennis (Janet Leigh) is a war widow with a young son named Timmy (played by Gordon Gelbert), who makes her living as a comparative shopper. Connie goes to buy a toy train for her job. When she brings it home Timmy thinks it is a Christmas present for him, and is disappointed when she goes to return it. When she does return it, a clerk named Steve (played by Robert Mitchum) has figured out what Connie's job is. He is supposed to turn her in but when he finds out that she is a war widow with a kid he decides not to. This ends up getting him fired. To make it up to him Connie takes him out for dinner. This ends up making her boyfriend, Carl Davis (played by Wendell Correy) jealous. When Steve takes her home he meets Timmy. Learning that Timmy wants a toy train like her mother returned, he buys him one for Christmas. As by Christmas Connie is engaged to Carl, this makes the situation awkward for everybody involved.

This was one of only five films directed by Don Hartman. The other four were It Had to be You, Every Girl Should be Married, Mr. Imperium and It's a Big Country: An American Anthology. He was more prolific as a writer. Some of his writing credits include Road to Singapore, Road to Zanzibar, Road to Morocco, The Gay Deception and My Favorite Blonde.

Robert Mitchum was an odd choice for the lead in a lighthearted romantic comedy like this. He was mostly associated with tough guy roles. An advertisement in Box Office Barometer stated "Here's a new kind of warm romantic role for Mitchum and a new kind of thrill for you". To add to this he had been arrested the previous year for possessing marijuana. However Howard Hughes, who owned RKO refused to drop Mitchum's contract. Janet Leigh was surprised to learn that Mitchum despite his rough image, was an extremely dedicated actor. He did play some practical jokes while working but none of them where mean spirited and he was certainly giving his all to his work.

This film was a box office failure when first released, but fortunately has gained a dedicated following today that is well deserved.         

 No word describes this movie better than delightful. Every scene of the film is just so enjoyable to watch. The movie is full of great dialogue and the chemistry between the whole cast is absolutely perfect. The climax is a prefect example of classic screwball comedy. Most of all though this movie just moves at a fast breezy pace, and never loses an audience's interest.

An issue of Showman's trade review talked about an interesting promotion for the film. Here Charles E. Lewis wrote "Santa Claus stayed around Ashbury Park and Morristown, N.J., for an extra week to ballyhoo 'Holiday Affair' the New Year's Eve attraction at Reade's Asbury Mayfair and Morristown Community theaters. St. Nick walked around the streets bearing this sign: 'I'm staying around until New Year's Eve to see 'Holiday Affair'.' Active in persuading the jolly old gentleman to hang around were Ashbury City Manager Guy Hevina and Morristown City Manager Ralph Lanterman." 

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Usedhttp://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/78191/Holiday-Affair/articles.html
http://mediahistoryproject.org/

Star in the Night (1945)

In the 1930's and 40's Warner Brothers was known for making some of the most hard boiled and cynical films. Rarely did they delve themselves into the sentimentality MGM, so often did. Even the studio's cartoons were rarely sentimental. However their was another idea the studio was known for promoting as well. They were working man films made for the average Joe. This later plays a huge part in A Star in the Night, making the short film feel like a Warner Brothers picture while it unabashedly goes into sentimentality. Despite this the sentimentality is extremely effective and heartwarming, making this a must watch for the Christmas season.

Nick (J. Carroll Naish) runs an inn. Everyday he sees people act selfishly and has lost his faith in humanity and therefore Christmas. A hitchhiker (Donald Woods) tries to convince him that deep down people are good and Christmas is therefore an important time. One day a woman (Lynn Baggret) and her husband (Anthony Caruso) come to the inn. They have no place to stay and the woman is with child.

At the time this film was made Jack Warner and Don Siegel were arguing. Jack Warner as a sign for the two to declare peace gave Siegel the opportunity to direct to short subjects. Don Siegel suggested this film, excepting Warner to reject it. However Warner accepted the idea and Star in the Night was made.

Though his name may not be much remembered today, J. Carroll Naish (the star of this short movie) will probably be recognized by fans of movies of this era. He was in hundreds of  movies in very small parts. He appeared in such movies as What Price Glory, Elmer the Great, Front Page Woman, Captain Blood, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Sahara, House of Frankenstein and so many more. In Star in the Night he proves that he could easily hold his own as the lead in a movie. He is fantastic here and a pure delight to watch. He not the only great thing about this short. Saul Elkins' script is fantastic. It is touching and lovely without ever feeling forced. Everything just flows naturally. Life's problems are not just glanced over instead, they are treated as still being harsh. What this movie does show is a basic goodness lying under all our cynical exteriors, and that a bit of optimism and faith can help us make life seem a little bit better. For anyone who has a soft spot for Christmas sentimentality this film is a must watch. However even the greatest cynic may find their heart melting.


This short movie won an earned an Oscar for best live action short subject and I say it is well earned.

-Michael J. Ruhland  

Resources Used
http://jbkaufman.com/movie-of-the-month/star-night-1945

Toyland Premiere (1934)

With Disney gaining the rights to the character luckily many people today now know about Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character that was not that well know not that long ago. Many also know the basic history of his early years. He was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks and starred in various silent cartoon shorts. These shorts were very popular on their release. At this time producer Charles Mintz was hiring away Walt's crew behind his back. Mintz then told Walt that he would either make these shorts on a much smaller budget or he would not be able to work with the character anymore. This was because despite creating him, Walt never owned the rights to Oswald. Walt refused and he would co-create a brand new character again with Ub Iwerks called Mickey Mouse. This is were however the history most Disney fans hear seems to end, but Oswald's cartoon career continued for a while afterwards. At first Charles Mintz made a few cartoons with Oswald using the crew that Walt had been using. However soon Mintz would lose the rights to make Oswald when Universal (the studio distributing these shorts) would start its on cartoon studio and put Walter Lantz in charge of the character.

By 1934 when this Christmas cartoon was released, Lantz was making two different series of animated shorts. These were the Oswald shorts and the "Car-Tune" shorts. The difference between this two series was pretty much the same as the difference between Disney's Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series. The Oswald shorts would star Oswald and the Car-Tune shorts would feature miscellaneous characters. Toyland Premiere was a tiny bit of an exception. This cartoon would feature Oswald in it, however Oswald does play a smaller role here and the real star of the film is Santa Claus.

Santa is the star attraction of the Toyland parade. After the parade is over Oswald invites Santa to a party at his department store. Also attending the party are various Hollywood stars including Al Jolson (in blackface), Shirley Temple, Bing Crosby, Boris Karloff, Johnny Weissmuller and Laurel and Hardy. Oddly enough Laurel and Hardy are made the cartoon's villains, as they try to steal a chocolate cake made for the party. This ends up causing a food fight that Santa enjoys very much.


This is a very charming cartoon and a delight to watch. The animation while not up to Disney standards is quite good. This is animation above the usual standard of Lantz cartoons at this time. The early scenes at the North Pole may remind Disney fans of the 1932 Disney Silly Symphony, Santa's Workshop. I have no proof as to if they were inspired by that film, this is just an observation. The whole cartoon also moves a brisk pace and has a nice Christmasy feeling to it.

Cartoon buffs may be interested to know Santa Claus in this cartoon is voiced by Tex Avery. Before he became a director and revolutionized the Warner Brothers cartoons, Tex was an animator at Lantz studio, and with his boisterous laugh it was only naturally for him to voice Santa. This by the way was not the last time he would voice Santa, he would return to voicing the character for a brief gag in a 1943 cartoon he himself directed called Who Killed Who.

-Michael J. Ruhland. 

Bachelor Mother (1939)

Note: Posts on this Christmas movie blog not around Christmas time will be very rare. This however is an exception.

Since romantic comedies today have such an understandably bad reputation, it is easy to forget that in the 1930's and 40's extremely entertaining romantic comedies often flowed out of Hollywood on a seeming regular basis. These films were full of a seeming effortless type of charm that populated so many movies of that era. Bachelor Mother was one of those movies.

Earlier in the year this film came out Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers made a movie together called The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. After completion of that movie it was decided that the popular duo would go separate ways career wise and each would make movies without the other. This is Ginger Rodgers' first film after that. After reading the screenplay Rodgers worried that her character would not be considered likable. However producer, Pandro Berman told her this would not happen and she agreed to do the film. However she still remained worried about this. Her costar would be David Niven, who at this time was not the star he would later become, and in fact this was only his fourth film role. The director for the film would be Garson Kanin, who though the next year would direct My Favorite Wife is better remembered as a writer (he would later write The More the Merrier, A Double Life and Adam's Rib). Kanin's career was also get started around this time.

The story begins one Christmas season when Polly (Played by Ginger Rodgers) gets fired from her job in a department store. She finds a small baby boy (played by Elbert Coplen Jr.) in the street and brings it into the orphanage. The people working at the orphanage think that Polly is his mother. They convince her boss David (played by David Niven) to give her the job back so she can take care of the baby. David does that and gives Polly the baby as a Christmas gift. David goes often to help her with the baby and ends up falling in love with Polly.

This movie was based off a story by Felix Jackson. That story had been filmed once before in Germany as a 1935 movie called Kleine Mutti (which translates to Little Mother). The story would be made into another movie later in 1956 called Bundle of Joy.

This is a movie of irrespirable charm. The charisma between Ginger Rodgers and David Niven is fantastic and you believe ever second of film they spend together. The jokes are really funny, and consist of that classic fast paced clever dialogue that populated so many Hollywood movies of this era. More than anything though this movie just has great energy and is a lot of fun. For all classic movie fans this is a must watch. I am definitely not the only person to love this film. It was a huge box office hit and critics loved it as well.

A Donald Duck toy ends up playing a surprisingly big role in this movie. This is because at this time RKO (the studio which this film was made for) was currently distributing all of Walt Disney's film output including the Donald Duck shorts, making this a bit of self promotion. There is a great gag at the end of the end credits were Donald Duck is credited as playing himself.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1088/Bachelor-Mother/articles.html          

A Flintstone Family Christmas (1993)

The Flintstones is one of my favorite TV shows and Christmas is by far my favorite time of the year. Because of this it should be no surprise that have a fondness for Christmas specials starring my favorite stone age family. The Flintstones Family Christmas is no exception.

In this half hour made for TV short film, Fred and Wilma help take care of a caveless little boy named Stony. Because of his rough life Stony has started an early life of crime. Fred is at first apprehensive about taking care of a young criminal, but learns to care about the kid. The kid though learns the spirit of Christmas.

Ok this plot kind of sounds like a bad PSA. However it really isn't. There is plenty of classic Flintstones humor, and like the original show, much of that humor is more aimed at adults than kids (the all cave girl network, don't slow dance with someone named Bubba). Also this special has some real heart. As I stated before I think that sentiment after times is more effective in films when attached to Christmas and this is true here. Fred learning to like the kid never feels forced, and comes quite naturally. As does Stony's reformation. Fred's love of Christmas feels genuine as well. Of course the fact that we already love Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty helps make this work even better.

This short was directed by Ray Patterson. Ray had been working with William Hanna and Joseph Barbera since the 1943 Tom and Jerry short Baby Puss (he was an animator). Though his career started at Disney (he was an animator on Fantasia and Dumbo) he would spend most of his career with Bill and Joe, both as an animator and a director. Speaking of animation, the animators on this film included none of the classic Hanna-Barbera animators, as it was animated overseas by Fil Cartoons INC. (from the Philippines). Unfortunately because of this it is hard not only to find out who animated what, but even who all the animators were. However they did a pretty good job with this film.

Since Allan Reed, Mel Blanc and Gerry Johnson had passed by the time this film was made, Fred was voiced by Henry Cordon, Barney was voiced by Frank Welker (Hanna-Barbera fans probably know him best for voicing Fred in Scooby Doo, Where Are You?.) and Betty was voiced by B.J. Ward. Wilma was still voiced by her original voice Jean Vander Ply.

Overall a delightful little film.

So this is my last Michael's Christmas Movie Guide post for this year, but I will be back next year to write about more great Christmas films. I even saved some masterpieces of Christmas film history to talk about next year. So stick around. Christmas has always meant a lot to me and been very kind to me. Here's hoping it is just as kind to you. So spend time with those you love and make more great Christmas memories (I know I will). This is the best time of the year so god bless you all and have a very merry Christmas.

Love,
Michael J. Ruhland

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)

Christmas Vacation is a winner on every level. It is not only a very funny movie, but it is also surprisingly heartwarming and full of Christmas spirit.

The story centers around Clark Griswold (played by Chevy Chase), his wife (played Beverly D'Angelo), son (played by Johnny Galecki), and daughter (played by Juliette Lewis). Clark tries everything to make this the best Christmas ever for all of them. However as more family visits and everything that can go wrong goes wrong, this makes it a much harder task than he thought.

John Hughes had written a Christmas story for the magazine National Lampoon. Executive producer Matty Simmons, loved this story and wanted to make a movie based off it. After the success of National Lampoon's Vacation, he wanted this to be the next vacation movie. It took several years of pitching to get Warner Brothers sold on the idea and European Vacation  was made before this. When it was final sold, John Hughes (who also produced this movie) was working on Uncle Buck. Because understandably Warner Brothers wanted the film released by Christmas time, shooting began three days after Uncle Buck was completed.

Christmas Vacation was the first feature film directed by Jeremiah Chechik, who had worked on TV commercials before. He would later direct Benny and Joon. This was definitely a fantastic debut.

For the scene with the squirrel in the tree, a animal trainer and a trained squirrel were brought in. However the squirrel died before the shoot (Animal Trainer: Ya know, they don't live that long). Because of this an untrained squirrel was used. The director for some reason recalled this being a chaotic day of shooting. Diane Ladd, who played Clark's mother remembered the director telling her to get closer to the squirrel, and the animal trainer telling her to stay as far away from it as she could.

This film is fantastic. It is very funny. The humor is timed perfectly and will never date. What makes the comedy work is that it comes from simple understandable situations. It may go over the top, but it always has a foundation in our own Christmas memories. Because of this the film is pure Christmas. It is impossible for me to watching this film without remembering my own Christmas memories.

By the way for my fellow cartoon fans, Aunt Betheny is played by Mae Questel, who was the voice of Betty Boop and Olive Oyl for many years.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/untold-story-of-national-lampoons-christmas-vacation-20141222

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Okay, okay, this is not exactly a Christmas movie, but it is a Christmas tradition for me. Besides it brought us the amazing song Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, which has deservedly become a Christmas standard.

The story of the film is extremely simple. The Smith family lives in St. Louis and loves it there. Esther (played by Judy Garland) is in love with John Truett, the boy next door (played by Tom Drake). Rose (played by Lucille Bremer) is in love with Warren Sheffield (played by Robert Sully), but he has trouble proposing to her. Meanwhile Tootie (played by Margret O'Brien) gets in as much trouble as humanly possible. The father (played by Leon Ames) gets a chance to be promoted, but he must move to New York. The whole family is naturally very upset about this.

This film was directed by one of MGM's best directors of musical films, Vincente Minnelli, who also directed such classics as Cabin in the Sky, The Pirate and An American in Paris. He would also direct such great non-musical movies as The Long Long Trailer, Lust For Life and I Dood It. This film began his romance with the film's star Judy Garland. It was the first film they worked on together and they fell deeply in love. They married the next year and the year after that they gave birth to a daughter Liza Minnelli. Intrestingly Judy Garland almost didn't do the movie because, she didn't want to be typecast.

Despite how tight and simple this movie feels, things had to be cut out. In an early draft a subplot about Esther getting blackmailed existed. There was also a song called Boys and Girls Like You and Me that was actually shot for the film but later cut. This song came directly after The Trolley Song.

The songs for this movie were written by Ralph Blaine and Hugh Martin. The song Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas originally had darker lyrics. These included "Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last". Judy Garland felt it was horribly to sing this to such a small child as Tootie and that Esther should try to cheer her up with this song. The song writers listened and came up with the lyrics that remain in the film (and all the subsequent recordings). Speaking of the songs my fellow Tom and Jerry fans will recognize The Trolley Song, even if they had never seen this movie and that is because Scott Bradley, who did the scores for Tom and Jerry films, used the song as background music in those cartoons often (since they were also made for MGM).

This film is incredible good. The songs are fantastic, the performances are great, the story is very good and just everything works about this film. Along with the great music and romance, this film also stands up so well because of the characters and humor. The scenes with Tootie talking about her dead dolls, never fail to make me laugh. The characters here feel real and far from the movie stereotypes they could have easily been. When the films over I almost feel sad to leave these characters. Overall this film just has an amazing charm that to me is irresistible.

Meet Me in St. Louis became a huge hit both critically and at the box office. It remains as much of a classic today as it did in 1944.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/310/Meet-Me-in-St-Louis/articles.html