{"id":10412,"date":"2024-12-19T11:39:55","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T16:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=10412"},"modified":"2024-12-19T11:39:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T16:39:55","slug":"christmas-in-connecticut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/19\/christmas-in-connecticut\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas in Connecticut"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Christmas in Connecticut<\/strong> (1945)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (nothing offensive)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Peter Godfrey\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lionel Houser and Adele Comandini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Frederick Hollander\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Carl E. Guthrie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 11, 1945 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, Reginald Gardiner, S.Z. Sakall, Robert Shayne, Una O\u2019Connor, Frank Jenks, Joyce Compton, Dick Elliott.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $3.2M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s always a treat seeing a classic old movie for the first time, especially when it\u2019s as good as Christmas in Connecticut<\/strong>, a screwball comedy set around the holidays. I decided to watch it confident in the knowledge that it wouldn\u2019t be one of those crass, mean-spirited comedies that don\u2019t bring joy to the world. You know the ones I mean.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Barbara Stanwyck, hot off the success of playing the femme fatale in the film noir Double Indemnity, plays Elizabeth Lane, a lifestyle writer for a magazine. She pens articles about her life as a homemaker on a farm in Connecticut. She talks about her family and the delicious recipes she cooks for them. She\u2019s like the 40s version of Martha Stewart.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s all a crock. Elizabeth is actually a single woman living in an apartment in New York. She doesn\u2019t know a single thing about cooking. Nobody but her editor Dudley (Shayne, Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman) and chef friend Felix (Sakall, That Night in Rio) knows the truth, not even the magazine\u2019s wealthy publisher Alexander Yardley (Greenstreet, The Maltese Falcon).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Elizabeth finds herself in hot water when Yardley informs her that he invited a war hero to spend the Christmas holiday at her farm. Naval officer Jeff Jones (Morgan, My Wild Irish Rose) has been in hospital recovering after spending eighteen days on a raft following the sinking of his ship. The only thing that brings him any joy is reading Lane\u2019s recipes. He longs for a good home-cooked meal instead of the lousy hospital food. The nurse tending to him, Mary Lee (Compton, Who Killed Aunt Maggie?), writes a letter to the magazine about it after he explains he\u2019s never had a real home to go to. She thinks he\u2019s in love her after he butters her up in order to get more preferential treatment as per the advice of shipmate\/fellow patient Sinky (Jenks, G.I. Honeymoon).<\/p>\n

\u00a0With no other recourse, Elizabeth accepts the proposal of persistent suitor John Sloan (Gardiner, The Great Dictator) to use his farm in Connecticut in exchange for her hand in marriage. She brings \u201cUncle Felix\u201d along to do the cooking. Luckily, the maid Norah (O\u2019Connor, The Invisible Man) watches the babies of the women who work at the local factory, so the baby part of her ruse is covered. The first order of business is a quickie wedding which always seems to get interrupted for one reason or another like the early arrival of Jeff and the unexpected arrival of Yardley who wants to see Elizabeth in action in the kitchen. I imagine it goes without saying that Elizabeth and Jeff fall in love with each other at first sight, an added complication to an already complicated situation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Brit filmmaker Peter Godfrey (Cry Wolf), Christmas in Connecticut<\/strong> is a legitimately funny movie. It follows formula closely with things going more and more out of control as Elizabeth tries to keep up her charade. On top of that, she\u2019s fallen in love with a guy who\u2019s (a) not her husband-to-be and (b) engaged to be married to a woman he doesn\u2019t really love. I don\u2019t want to give away too much, but it gets pretty crazy in that quaint farmhouse.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Christmas in Connecticut<\/strong> has a sense of innocence to it. To wit, it\u2019s blessedly free of cynicism and commercialism. It\u2019s extremely good-natured. Take the scene where Felix tries to teach Elizabeth how to flip flapjacks. It\u2019s funny without humiliating the lady. It doesn\u2019t try to mine laughs from embarrassing her in some way. Because it was made in 1945, you won\u2019t get any jokes about genitalia or bodily fluids either. It\u2019s what they call good clean fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At the same time, Christmas in Connecticut<\/strong> offers up a humorously subversive commentary of conventional gender roles in society. Elizabeth, a career woman with no culinary or maternal skills, does NOT fit the traditional mold of a 1940s woman. It\u2019s Jeff who has to show her how to bathe a baby. He does so with incredible confidence thus challenging the way males were seen at the time. In its own subtle way, it examines how WWII changed the cultural landscape in America with women toiling at jobs usually performed by men while their husbands are off fighting in the war. It\u2019s all fascinating and done with a light touch so it doesn\u2019t weigh down the film.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The whole cast does a great job. Stanwyck is delightfully quirky as Elizabeth. It\u2019s a joy watching her navigate the lifestyle she\u2019s only written about but never experienced. Morgan, a handsome fellow with lots of charm, makes a likable lead. His good looks, along with that amazing singing voice, must have had the ladies swooning in the cinema. Gardiner has some funny moments as the pompous suitor who never lets it bother him that Elizabeth really isn\u2019t all that into him. I never knew Greenstreet had a flair for comedy, but he shows it as the boss always looking to stay on top. When a columnist at a rival magazine announces her pregnancy, he tries to convince John to put another bun in Elizabeth\u2019s oven. Sakall has some great scenes as wise and crafty Uncle Felix.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I see Christmas in Connecticut<\/strong> as a welcome break from contemporary Christmas movies. It\u2019s not about spectacle or scope. It\u2019s about making audiences laugh. Yes, it\u2019s really that simple. It has a sweet love story at its center. The two leads have marvelous chemistry. It\u2019s just a good movie, a very good one at that.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA rating (nothing offensive)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Peter Godfrey\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lionel Houser and Adele Comandini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Frederick Hollander\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Carl E. Guthrie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 11, 1945 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, Reginald Gardiner, S.Z. Sakall, Robert Shayne, Una O\u2019Connor, Frank Jenks, Joyce Compton, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,18,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-these-are-some-classic-flicks","category-comedies","category-holiday-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Christmas-in-Connecticut-PI.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10427,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10412\/revisions\/10427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}