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Joyous dose of whimsy from writer-director Preston Sturges, a filmmaker who always managed to wring both sentiment and cynicism from a fairy tale premise. Dick Powell plays a working-class guy under the impression he's just won $25K in a coffee-slogan contest. Based on a play Sturges wrote in 1931 (titled "A Cup of Coffee"), the film is brief at 70mns but sharp as a tack, and a wonderful stroll through Hollywood's Golden Era. Powell is terrific, and Ellen Drew is equally good as his sweetheart. A gem from Paramount, one which received not a single nomination from any awards branch. ***1/2 from ****

A clerk making $22 per week dreams of winning the $25,000 grand prize in a coffee company's slogan contest. Sturges' second directorial effort is not only a sweet and simple comedy but also fast-paced and efficient, wrapping up in just over an hour. As the ambitious but earnest sloganeer, Powell basically plays the role of the straight man, surrounded by loony characters, including Walburn as the flustered owner of Maxford House, not to be confused with Maxwell House, and Sturges regular Demarest as one of the judges of the contest. Despite the short running time and the emphasis on comedy, Sturges manages to make the characters human.

Not as well known as "The Lady Eve" or "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," "Christmas in July" was an unusual film for the writer-director Preston Sturges: it's more wistful, less frenetic. Though it's filled with a myriad of those wonderful character actors that Sturges loved to use to fill the frame (including Franklin Pangborn and William Demarest), it's touching in its regard for the struggling young couple (played by Dick Powell and Ellen Drew) who get swept up in the idea of winning a slogan contest ("If you can't sleep, it's not the coffee, it's the bunk!"). The romantic mood seems to be set in the Depression era, reminiscent of the scripts that Sturges wrote for those Depression comedies "The Good Fairy" and "Easy Living": innocents get swept up in mistaken identities and come out winners anyway. Maybe it's not as manic as his classic romantic comedies, but it has its share of hilarious moments and it's full of charm.

Coffee company clerk Dick Powell (as Jimmy MacDonald) enters a sloganeering contest with the catchphrase: "If You Can't Sleep at Night, It Isn't the Coffee, It's the Bunk!" Mr. Powell thinks the slogan is as "clear as crystal," but pretty, pragmatic girlfriend Ellen Drew (as Betty Casey) is unmoved. Although his slogan is confusing, Powell is optimistic about winning the $25,000 prize. The next day, Powell is anxious to learn if he's won the contest; and, three of his practical-joking co-workers send him a phony telegram stating, "We take great pleasure in informing you that your slogan has won the twenty-five thousand dollar first prize…"

Powell excitedly picks up his prize, from cantankerous Raymond Walburn (as Maxford), who doesn't know his executives haven't yet picked the winner. Powell plans his wedding to Ms. Drew, and buys gifts for most of the people in his lower-class neighborhood. Drew says he's spending money like it's "Christmas in July." Then, the prank is discovered…

Writer/director Sturges' bright satire is still amusing, after all these years. Like "Maxwell House" coffee, it's "Good to the Last Drop" - perhaps, the story could be revised, for the "Starbucks" era (many of the Sturges lines don't need changing). The supporting players - Mr. Walburn (Maxford), Alexander Carr (Schindel), William Demarest (Bildocker), Ernest Truex (Baxter), and others - are excellent.

******** Christmas in July (10/18/40) Preston Sturges ~ Dick Powell, Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn

Short and sweet, bright and breezy, but not without pith, this early Preston Sturges feature helped further establish his "wonder-kid" reputation in the early 40's before his great classics "Sullivan's Travels", "The Lady Eve" and my favourite "Hail The Conquering Hero".

The simple premise of a hoax win in a national coffee-slogan competition for ordinary average nice-guy Powell is the springboard for a light morality tale along the lines of "he who does good has good things happen to them" - although not without the usual series of ups and downs, just as you'd expect.

Of course nobody here is really bad, even the duped killjoy Mr, no make that Dr Maxford of the sponsoring coffee company or Mr Shindler of the too-trusting department store from whom Powell buys gifts for the whole neighbourhood on the strength of the phony winning telegram placed on his desk by his prankster work colleagues. Even when he finds out that his win is bogus, Powell can't get angry at the tricksters, so it's no real surprise that his homeliness, honesty and humility wins everyone over, including his feisty girl-friend, played by Ellen Drew, with the predictable twist in the last reel that Powell's slogan wins anyway.

Powell is very likeable in the lead, although Drew is a little too high-pitched in delivery for my taste as the film develops. There's the usual troop of madcap eccentrics which peoples almost every Sturges comedy, with some nice little cameos, I particularly liked the actor playing the deadpan cop, not above making some contemporary allusions to Hitler & Mussolini to stress a point.

The dialogue of course is mile-a-minute vernacular and I got a kick out of Sturges' Dickensian word-play over triple-barrelled lawyer's names (along the lines of "Swindle Cookum and Robbem!"). Right from the start, we get the "screwball comedy" template of a poor Joe and his girl, dreaming of something bigger waiting for something extraordinary to happen, with Powell and Drew's extended night-time scene on their New York apartment roof-top, and succeeding entertaining scenes including Powell's reaction to "winning" the competition and best of all the frenetic crowd scene when Maxford tries to get his money back only to cop a batch of rotten fruit ("Don't throw the good stuff" admonishes one parent to a tomato-wielding youngster), it's all good clean fun and ends up happily ever after. And get a load of that "zoom" shot back into Maxford's office at the end - it certainly got me out of my chair, not the last time Sturges employed camera tricks of this type - remember the memorable stop-start sequence to "The Palm Beach Story".

The movie celebrates community, the little guy who dreams of making it big and how to meet disaster with alacrity, in short a feel-good movie with a big heart, well worth an hour and four minutes of anyone's time.