Movie Monday: Christmas in Connecticut

Movie Monday: Christmas in Connecticut

In late 1944 and into the early months of 1945 as it became apparent to Hollywood that World War II would soon be over, writers began to plot stories that featured returning servicemen. Some of the films were dramas, others such as Christmas in Connecticut, comedies. In fact, some critics have called the movie a “screwball comedy.”

Despite being a holiday film, producers released the movie in August 1945, benefitting from the “post-war euphoria that gripped America,” (IMDB), and it grossed between three and four million dollars on a budget of $864,000. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, and Sidney Greenstreet, the movie is the brainchild of Aileen Hamilton, a jack-of-all-trades who was a screenwriter, dancer, singer, actress, and costume designer. Bette Davis was originally cast as the female lead, and Reginald Gardiner as the male lead. Gardiner was eventually given the role of the owner of the farm and the lead given to Morgan.

The plotline described by Rotten Tomatoes:

“While recovering in a hospital, war hero Jefferson Jones grows familiar with the Diary of a Housewife

column written by Elizabeth Lane. Jeff’s nurse arranges with Elizabeth’s publisher for Jeff to spend the holiday at Elizabeth’s bucolic Connecticut farm with her husband and child. But the column is a shame, so the publisher hastens to arrange a publicity ploy by setting up single, non-domestic Elizabeth on a country farm.”

Foibles, misunderstandings, and confusion combine to create a rom-com worthy of Nora Ephron or Garry Marshall. Stanwyck and Morgan have great on-screen chemistry and by the time they filmed Christmas in Connecticut had dozens of movie roles under their belts. As a contract player Morgan was cast in both supporting and headliner roles. Stanwyck who would eventually appear in nearly one hundred movies, got her start in entertainment early in life when she became a chorus girl in speakeasies as a teenager. She eventually became a Ziegfield girl and was given her first stage role by Willard Mack, and at some point, moved to Hollywood where she picked up bit parts. Being cast as the lead in Frank Capra’s Ladies of Leisure was her breakout role. In the 1950s she added television roles to her busy film career.

Have you seen this feel-good holiday movie?

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A Lesson in Love (The Strength of His Heart Limited Edition Anthology)

He thinks he’s too old. She thinks she’s too young. Can these teachers learn that love defies all boundaries?

Born and raised in London, Isobel Turvine knows nothing about farming, but after most of the students in her school evacuate during Operation Pied Piper, she’s left with little to do. Then her friend Margery talks her into joining the Women’s Land Army, and she finds herself working the land at a manor home in Yorkshire that’s been converted to a boys’ school. A teacher at heart, she is drawn to the lads, but the handsome yet stiff-necked headmaster wants her to stick to farming.

Left with an arm that barely works from the last “war to end all wars,” Gavin Emerson agrees to take on the job of headmaster when his school moves from London to Yorkshire, but he’s saddled with the quirky manor owner, bickering among his teachers, and a gaggle of Land Army girls who have turned the grounds into a farm. When the group’s blue-eyed, raven-haired leader nearly runs him down in a car, he admonishes her to stay in the fields, but they are thrown together at every turn. Can he trust her not to break his heart?

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