Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

At the moment I have been feeling like Nora Charles in The Thin Man in the scene where she is decorating the tree and someone walks in the room wishing a Merry Christmas to which she replies “The next person that says Merry Christmas to me I’ll kill them.” I am not being a grump I love Christmas I love the time of the year and the excitement but working as a hostess where I greet people and say so long to them I hear the greeting over and over again to the point where I want to give them a reply just like Nora’s!! But since I really need my crappy job at the moment I cannot be rude to the customers. Not being too much of a Christmas grump I saw that Barbara Stanwyck’s film Christmas in Connecticut was playing on TCM and I can never pass up a Barbara Stanwyck film I had to see it and to make the film even better the outrageously handsome Dennis Morgan plays her love interest.

            Jefferson Jones (Morgan) is a naval officer whose ship was blown up and he and his friend spent fifteen days adrift on a life raft. While in the hospital recovering all he wants is a steak and something hearty to eat but he cannot since his stomach needs to get used to food again and all he can eat is mashed food. His friend has been eating steaks and anything he wants. The friend tells Jeff to be really sweet with the nurse Mary Lee to the point where she will think he wants to marry her. That is exactly what Jeff does and Mary Lee is convinced that he wants to marry her but she feels he has been away too long and needs to remember what it was like to be in a nice house and have home cooked food. Mary Lee once helped magazine mogul Alexander Yardley’s (Sydney Greenstreet) daughter to health so she writes to him for a favor. The favor is he has to get his famous food columnist Elizabeth Lane (Stanwyck) to let Jeff go to her home for Christmas and cook for him.

            Yardley agrees because he sees this as good publicity for his magazine. In her column not only does Elizabeth write about her lovely recipes but also about her husband and infant son Robert. In reality Elizabeth does not know the first thing about cooking!! Neither does she have a husband or a son! Her whole column is a lie but hey she is America’s most successful and read food writer she cannot do any better. Now she and her agent have a huge problem on their hands. She meets with Yardley to give him some lie why she cannot have Jeff over but before she knows it she agrees and cannot bring herself to tell the truth.

            Elizabeth, her columnist, and her friend John Sloan (Reginald Gardner) come up with a plan. The plan is to have Jeff and now Yardley go to John’s farm house in Connecticut since it is was she has described in her column and for restaurant owner Felix (S.K Sakall) to come to the house to cook since he is the one she gets all her recipes from. Elizabeth and John decide while they are at the house they may as well get married for real since he keeps asking her to marry him and she sees it as a better time than not to finally do so.

            Everything has been arranged once they get to the farm house even right down to the baby who is a local woman’s baby that is being watched by the maid. Before the judge can marry them Jeff shows up to the house early. Jeff is pretty excited to be there and see Elizabeth in her home surrounded by her “family”. She finds him immediately charming and very handsome.

            Over the two days things become complicated: Yardley suspects that Elizabeth is cheating on her husband and John does not like the idea that his girl is in love with the soldier; the baby has been given back to his real mother; Yardley thinks that the replacement baby’s mother has kidnapped Elizabeth’s baby while she was in jail with Jeff (they got thrown in there over an accidentally stolen sled). Elizabeth’s whole deal is blown but she does not care anymore.

            I really liked this film it was so cute and so funny. The story was different and just got funnier as it progressed. The comedy and the story was not over done and neither was the acting everything about it was just right. One of my favorite things about the film was how something would always keep Elizabeth and John from marrying. One time it was a cow who needed to be put back in the barn which Elizabeth and Jeff attended to and when they put the cow away snow from the roof fell on them knocking them out a little bit.

            I love Barbara Stanwyck in her comedy roles more than her dramas. I loved her as Elizabeth, she was totally convincing as a career driven woman living in the city completely out of her element in the country. Stanwyck was very warm and sweet this is one of my favorite roles I have seen her in. I cracked up when Elizabeth was sitting in her apartment explaining her “country surroundings” which were inspired by clothes hanging on her line, the radiator, and other city things. She even had a little running gag for a while with a china figure at John’s house where every time she would get mad or frustrated she would pick up the figure like she was going to throw it. Finally near the end of the film she gets to smash it. The look on her face whenever she picks the figure up is so funny.

            Dennis Morgan was great as well. Whenever he is the male lead in a film you can completely believe that women would fall head over heels in love with him and be totally captivated by his charm and looks. I really like how his character was not mad at Elizabeth when the truth came out about her, he just liked her and was willing to look past that.

            The supporting cast was fabulous. Sydney Greenstreet as the bumbling but nice boss was great since I am so used to seeing him as corrupt, crooked characters. Reginald Gardiner was nothing short of a charming gentleman as always. S.K. Sakall was adorable he brought so much humor and lightness to the film. His character knew the whole time that Elizabeth and John were not meant to be so he did a few things to keep the marriage from happening.

            Edith Head designed Barbara Stanwyck’s costumes. Her costumes for the film are some of my favorites I have seen from her. The jackets and dresses were gorgeous and looked perfect on Stanwyck. The cuts of the jackets matched Stanwyck’s domineering frame and facial structure the way many of her previous film costumes did not.

            Christmas in Connecticut is an adorable, fun film. It is not overly Christmas-y which I liked it was just perfect for the mood I was in. Although it is in the title Christmas is not the central dominating theme. The entire film was very well made with the cast being one of the best I have ever seen they all worked so well with one another. Christmas in Connecticut has now become a film I will look forward to seeing around the holidays. 

That Wonderful Urge (1949)



“Good! Tell them I'm not your husband. Don't let me go through life with that blot on my record”

            That Wonderful Urge is a predictable comedy.  It really did not need to be as long as it was, just by looking at the poster you knew Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power were going to wind up together in the end (oh I’m sorry was this a spoiler? If this was, you obviously have not seen too many romantic comedy movies in your life or pretty much any movie for that matter).

            The plot is really silly and boring by the middle. Gene Tierney plays Sara Farley a wealthy socialite who has her life splashed across the pages of newspapers and gossip columns. Tyrone Power plays Tomas Jefferson Tyler a newspaper writer sent to write about Sara. Tom sees that Sara is a really nice girl and starts to kind of feel bad about writing about her. One day Tom and Sara are out skiing when Tom hits his head and gets a little knocked out. They find a small hut for stranded people and remain there until help comes. The two get to know each other and Tom sees another side to this much gossiped about socialite. After they are rescued he has nothing but nice things to write about her but unfortunately the papers do not print this story immediately and Sara only sees the slander Tom had previously written about her.  

            To get back at Tom Sara tells everyone that she and Tom are married. This whole situation throws Tom into a wreck and makes his life miserable. He gets fired by his paper and he has nowhere to stay since he is late on rent. He tries to marry a girl friend of his but everyone believes that he and Sara are really married and no one will marry him and his friend.

            After this it is pretty much all about Tom and Sara one upping each other in embarrassment which gets old very quickly and is not always funny.

            Gene Tierney is one of my favorite actresses and all I had ever seen her in up to this point has been dramas. I liked Tierney in this role it is something different from what I was used to seeing her in. Sara Farley as a character is annoying but Tierney was very good. One scene I really enjoyed with her was when Sara and Tom are put in jail for the night. She starts singing a song to get on Tom’s nerves. Tierney had a pretty good singing voice. Sara then asks Tom for his last cigarette and he teases her holding the cigarette out so she can’t reach it with her mouth then she takes his hand and bites it! He starts throwing his shoes and whatever he can at her and she is just sitting on her cot puffing her cigarette and smoking.

            This was the first time I have ever seen Tyrone Power in a film. I like him as an actor but like Tierney with Sara the character of Tom was annoying.

            That Wonderful Urge is a remake of an earlier Tyrone Power film called Love is News with Loretta Young. Apparently from what I have read the original is better. I would not doubt that. I believe I read somewhere that during the late 1940s Daryl Zanuck decided it would be a good idea to remake movies and this was probably one of them. The film does have some very good funny scenes especially in the middle when Tom and Sara start to see there really are feelings between them (the two actors had been in The Razor’s Edge where they had very good chemistry which carries over here). Watch That Wonderful Urge if you are not in the mood to really think about the movie you are watching or if you are a fan if either Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power.

            Youtube currently has this available to view. The film is a little difficult to find on DVD.

The Great Dictator



“I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another.”

            I have seen so many films that I barely see them as something that can move me. A funny thing happened when I watched Charlie Chaplin’s first talking film The Great Dictator; I was moved, I felt its meaning and its power. When the film was over all I could say was “wow that was truly amazing.” The film is funny, dramatic, serious, and silly.

            Charlie Chaplin plays the roles of a dictator named Hynkle of a fake country called Tomainia and a Jewish Barber who served in WWI and has lost his memory after a plane crash. Each character represents the evil and insanity and the goodness and innocence of the world.

            With Hynkle he is such a crazy character that you cannot hate him you kind of just have to pity him. The sad thing is that real people like Hynkle were crazy like him. There are many great scenes in this film that show just how eccentric Hynkle is. The first time we see the dictator he is giving a speech to the Tomanian people. His speech is “translated” to English from a pre-written paper. One of the best aspects of this character is when he speaks “German”, the “German” is some made up gibberish with some real German words thrown in here and there.  



Another fabulous Hynkle scene is when he jumps all over his office with a balloon globe. It feels like you know what he is thinking, he’s thinking how the world will be his and it will be perfect and free of undesirables. But in the end his balloon globe pops in a great foreshadow.

The Jewish Barber was played excellently. He is kind and cares for everyone and everything. There is no name for this character he is just The Jewish Barber. One day he gets away from the hospital he has been in since the War. He goes back to his barber shop in a small town. When he opens the door cats come running out. The word "Jew" has been written on his window and he does not understand why. When the storm troopers come walking through town he cannot comprehend why they are picking on him and writing on shop window. He goes to run away with the troopers chasing after him when Hannah, the local girl, hangs out the window and slams a frying pan on the troopers’ heads. The Barber and Hannah become friends. He gives her a makeover removing dirt from her face and giving her a nice hair style. On their first date Hynkle has decided to raid the ghetto.

            The Barber, Hannah, and people from living in the building surrounding a courtyard were protected from being bothered by the troopers from a man named Commander Schultz. The Barber had saved Schultz’s life in the War so when the storm troopers were harassing the Barber Schultz told the soldiers that they were not to harass anyone as long as they are in the courtyard. Schultz asks The Barber if he remembers him from the War and the man’s memory comes back to him.

            Schultz stands up to Hynkle about attacking the ghetto. This angers the dictator so he has the commander thrown into a concentration camp. The commander manages to get away from the camp and escapes to the courtyard. The storm troopers come around again looking for The Barber and Schultz. The two are eventually caught and put into a concentration camp.

            Hynkle wants to invade neighboring Osterlich so his men tell him to go on a hunting trip so he will not be held responsible. The Barber and Schultz manage to escape the camp wearing soldier uniforms. Two troopers are looking for The Barber when they hear Hynkle splashing in the water, they think he is The Barber and arrest him. Drawing nearer the border of Osterlich The Barber is mistaken for Hynkle and is taken to a rally.

            Charlie Chaplin breaks character to deliver what is possibly one of the greatest scenes in movie history:

There are many small things in this film that were cleverly done and said. When Schultz sees The Barber for the first time in years he says to him “I thought you were Aryan” and The Barber replies “No, vegetarian.” When Hynkle is at the train station waiting to meet Napoloni he lifts his arm up in his salute and scratches his armpit nonchalantly.

            One scene I really liked was when Hykle is driving down the road along the main boulevard there is a Venus of Today statue that looks like the Venus de Milo and The Thinker of Today that looks like The Thinker both with their hands raised. I liked these two references because during World War II Hitler looted art from many European museums and at the time it was not widely known that Hitler was doing this. As an Art History major I am very interested in reading about the looting of art during this time.

            Before this film I had never seen a Charlie Chaplin film. I am so happy The Great Dictator was my first Chaplin film, it is incredible. The first time I watched this I was amazed with everything from the acting, writing, direction, characters right down to the sets. If you have yet to see a Charlie Chaplin film you must see The Great Dictator it is a true film masterpiece.