Reel Classics: ‘Christmas in Connecticut’

As Christmas approach­es, Reel Classics will take a look at one of the sta­ples in many folks’ per­son­al library of Christmas-themed movies they turn to every year. Christmas in Connecticut stars Barbara Stanwyck as a very suc­cess­ful writer, Elizabeth Lane, for the pop­u­lar mag­a­zine Smart Housekeeping (a take on the still pop­u­lar mag­a­zine Good Housekeeping). In her arti­cles, she rep­re­sents her­self as a cook, moth­er, wife, and res­i­dent of a love­ly farm in Connecticut. She pro­vides recipes and house­keep­ing advice that have drawn many fans across the country.

In real­i­ty, she is a sin­gle woman liv­ing in an apart­ment in New York City who knows noth­ing about cook­ing, house­keep­ing, or car­ing for a fam­i­ly. Her edi­tor, Dudley Beecham (Robert Shayne), is aware of the truth, but the magazine’s pub­lish­er, Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet), only knows Elizabeth as the Connecticut home­mak­er. It has come to the atten­tion of the pub­lish­er that a recent­ly returned war hero, Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan), has been read­ing Elizabeth Lane’s arti­cles and is fas­ci­nat­ed with her won­der­ful recipes while recu­per­at­ing in a hos­pi­tal. His nurse and fiancée, Mary Lee (Joyce Compton), has writ­ten a let­ter to the pub­lish­er describ­ing the veteran’s fas­ci­na­tion with Lane’s mag­a­zine arti­cles. As a pub­lic­i­ty effort, Yardley wants to invite the war hero to Elizabeth’s farm for Christmas dinner.

When her edi­tor informs her of Yardley’s request, they both real­ize that if she doesn’t fol­low through, it will be the end of her career. She quick­ly devel­ops a plan to pull off the Christmas vis­it. She has been court­ed by a friend, John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner), who owns a farm­house in Connecticut. She agrees to mar­ry him. She also recruits her “hon­orary uncle” Felix Bassenak (S.Z. Sakall) to assist with the fan­cy cook­ing. He hap­pens to be a chef and has also been pro­vid­ing her with pop­u­lar recipes for the mag­a­zine arti­cles. The final need is the baby she sup­pos­ed­ly moth­ers. They arrange to “bor­row” a child from a neigh­bor who works at a local defense plant. John Sloan and Elizabeth plan to mar­ry on Christmas Eve, before the guests arrive.

Judge Crothers arrives at the farm­house to con­duct the mar­riage cer­e­mo­ny, but they are inter­rupt­ed by the ear­ly arrival of Jefferson Jones. Elizabeth and John Sloan quick­ly arrange for the judge to return on Christmas morn­ing to con­duct the mar­riage. However, things do not go as planned, and the mar­riage is again post­poned when a dif­fer­ent child is pre­sent­ed ( a sec­ond neigh­bor has brought her child), and Felix rais­es an alarm, claim­ing that the baby has swal­lowed his watch. The judge is sent on his way again, and Felix con­fides to Elizabeth that he made up the sto­ry to stop the wed­ding. He has seen the roman­tic inter­est that our war hero has stirred with­in Elizabeth and knows she doesn’t love John Sloan. 

As may be expect­ed, things become more com­pli­cat­ed. Later that evening, at a local dance, we find Elizabeth and Jefferson becom­ing clos­er, and on an impulse, they decide to “bor­row” a neighbor’s horse and sleigh to go for a ride in the snow. Meanwhile, back at the house, Yardley wit­ness­es the real moth­er of the child leav­ing with it and assumes the child is being kid­napped. He becomes upset with Elizabeth when she fails to return home that evening. What he doesn’t know is that Elizabeth and Jefferson were arrest­ed for steal­ing the horse and sleigh, and they spent the night in jail. 

Elizabeth was per­ceived as the “per­fect” home­mak­er, but is now seen as a horse thief and neglect­ful moth­er. What will come of all this? Will there be a hap­py end­ing? Will love find a way? Will she keep her job?  I won’t spoil it for you (and if you have seen the movie before, you don’t need me to tell you). 

Christmas in Connecticut was based on a sto­ry writ­ten by Aileen Hamilton. When it was first con­sid­ered for the big screen, Bette Davis was the choice for the role of Elizabeth. However, the deci­sion was made to replace her with Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck had just com­plet­ed the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed film noir clas­sic Double Indemnity, direct­ed by Billy Wilder, co-star­ring Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson. She often sought a lighter role to help her “unwind” after tak­ing on a seri­ous one (such as in Double Indemnity). 

The direc­tor of Christmas in Connecticut was Peter Godfrey. He and Stanwyck worked togeth­er in two more films and became good friends. Godfrey also got along well with Sydney Greenstreet, both of them hav­ing a his­to­ry of work­ing in London the­aters.  Reportedly, they kept folks laugh­ing with their com­e­dy and con­tributed to a very pos­i­tive chem­istry between the cast and crew. 

Sydney Greenstreet was a famil­iar face on the big screen in the 1940s. He often appeared with Peter Lorre and is per­haps best remem­bered for his role in the clas­sic Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca.  S.Z. Sakall, who played Uncle Felix, also appeared with Greenstreet in Casablanca. Sakall, orig­i­nal­ly from Hungary, served sev­er­al Hungarian dish­es at Christmas in Connecticut.

Interestingly, though the film is set dur­ing Christmas, it was released in August of 1945. This was just after the war in Europe end­ed and short­ly before Japan’s sur­ren­der.  The sto­ry of the wound­ed, return­ing war hero res­onat­ed with the real­i­ties of the coun­try at the time. The movie was a box-office hit—one of the year’s most successful. 

Reviews were pos­i­tive as well. The review for The Hollywood Reporter described the film as “an audi­ence win­ner from way back in the bal­cony.”  In describ­ing the effort of Barbara Stanwyck, it stat­ed that she “has her­self a time romp­ing through the part of the girl.  S.Z. Sakall has him­self a field day as the chef...Dennis Morgan is a relief and attrac­tive as the only straight man in the show.”  The review­er for the Los Angeles Times was very com­pli­men­ta­ry of the actors and direc­tor Peter Godfrey, stat­ing the per­for­mances and “the direc­tion by Peter Godfrey trans­form [the film] into a very live­ly enter­tain­ment, with large stress on sophistication.”

In 2000, the American Film Institute nom­i­nat­ed it for the list of Top 100 Funniest American Movies.  In 1952, it was adapt­ed into a 30-minute radio show, Stars in the Air, star­ring Gordon MacRae and Phyllis Thaxter.  It was also adapt­ed to a 60-minute tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion in 1956 on Lux Video Theatre.

A remake of the film was released in 1992, star­ring Dyan Cannon as Elizabeth, Kris Kristofferson as Jefferson Jones, and Tony Curtis as Yardley. It was a made-for-TV movie direct­ed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  More recent­ly, it was brought to the stage as a musi­cal in 2022. 

One inter­est­ing fact about this film is that it high­lights the role of women in our soci­ety dur­ing World War II. They took on many of the roles once held by men. This is demon­strat­ed with­in the film in mul­ti­ple ways. The postal work­er deliv­er­ing the pack­age to Elizabeth was a young woman. The two moth­ers of the chil­dren “bor­rowed” by Elizabeth were employ­ees in a war plant. And, at the dance attend­ed by Elizabeth and Jefferson, we see many women in uni­form. This sub­tly demon­strates the impor­tance of the role and con­tri­bu­tion of women in our soci­ety dur­ing that very dif­fi­cult time. Of course, that role and con­tri­bu­tion are even greater today.

The Internet Movie Database rates Christmas in Connecticut at 7.3 of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 89% and an Audience Score of 75%. Checking my Roku device ‚I found the film avail­able for free stream­ing on two sites:  FreebieTV and Cineplex. There is also a copy of the DVD at the Clark County Public Library. 

If you are in the mood for a warm, cozy lit­tle Christmas tale that will make you laugh and feel good, check out Christmas in Connecticut. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

If you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics,” where  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon. Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed. More infor­ma­tion about the next movie is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as the WinCity Voices Facebook page.