Joyeux Noël dans le Connecticut

Anyone who has watched the recent remake of 'Christmas in Connecticut' will fully appreciate just how wonderful the slim story was in the hands of Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan and Sydney Greenstreet. No masterpiece, but so much better than the weak remake. The whole film revolves around the mistaken belief by editor Greenstreet that Stanwyck (his favorite Martha Stewart-type of writer) is a homemaker with a house, husband and baby in the country. This, of course, means that the inventive woman has to enlist the aid of others to play out her scheme when Greenstreet invites himself and a ship-wrecked sailor (Dennis Morgan) for the holiday week-end.

The slight comedy develops a few complications along the way--and it all looks very holidayish with the lovely country home in Connecticut--which, thanks to Warner Bros. art decoration, looks like something from a magazine cover. Stanwyck's forte is really heavy drama but here she displays a light enough touch to make her scenes with Morgan and Greenstreet delightful to watch. She gets great support from Una O'Connor, S.Z. Sakall and Reginald Gardiner under Peter Godfrey's light-hearted direction.

It's as unpretentious a confection as a child's homemade Christmas card and just as charming--light and fluffy entertainment that makes no great demands on your viewing pleasure. Worth viewing, especially around the holidays.

This romantic comedy stars Barbara Stanwyck as Elizabeth Lane, a woman who writes a lifestyles column for a popular magazine. Her publisher commands that she host and prepare a dinner for Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan), a sailor who was lost at sea for eighteen days. Because Miss Lane's own lifestyle is a literary fabrication, she resorts to an elaborate ruse. Her deception has consequences that complicate matters, leading to both romance and comedy.

There is a strong supporting cast, including "Cuddles" Sakall and Sidney Greenstreet, who is fun to watch in a comedic role.

Stanwyck and Morgan display a convincing chemistry that is the focus of the film.

This is a screwball comedy disguised as a Christmas movie. I almost prefer Barbara Stanwyck in this than in the Lady Eve. She is a bit less restrained, a bit warmer. She moves with ease in an almost all male cast. The holiday theme is almost incidental, it definitely takes a sideline to the charade in the house of her being a domestic goddess. Barbara Stanwyck carries the movie right through to the end. Her extra slim figure is pleasing in very simply tailored clothes. Your heart almost sinks for her when she is going to be married to the very droll architect. The actual farm setting is fun and makes it more believable. Not very well known, but not to be missed.

This lightweight but pleasant holiday feature makes the most out of a pretty slim premise, thanks to a solid cast and some resourceful writing. Not meant to be taken very seriously, it provides easygoing entertainment with some simple but upbeat themes.

Barbara Stanwyck was an interesting choice as the lead, and she makes it work well enough. The premise of Stanwyck's writer character trying to fool everyone and maintain her image is more suited to screwball comedy than to a holiday feature, but the tone is kept light and funny while having just enough of the holiday atmosphere to be believable. The supporting cast helps out, with the likes of "Cuddles" Sakall and Sydney Greenstreet getting some good moments.

This kind of light but worthwhile feature is not as easy as it looks - as witness the string of crass, barely watchable holiday features of recent years. While hardly anything deep or brilliant, "Christmas in Connecticut" holds up well enough to be among the more enjoyable movies of its kind.

It finally hit me watching my VHS of Christmas in Connecticut what other film this one reminded me of. If it weren't for the fact that the other was done 20 years later, I'd say it was a remake.

Just as Rock Hudson was a phony fishing expert for Abercrombie&Fitch who had to get some on the job training at a fishing tournament, Barbara Stanwyck plays an forties version of Martha Stewart.

Stanwyck's a cooking columnist who's built up this whole image of living on a small Connecticut farm with husband and baby cooking all these marvelous delicacies. Trouble is she's unmarried, childless, writes her column from her apartment in New York and doesn't know how to boil water. But her writing is a hit with the public.

Trouble comes when she's hijacked into cooking a home Christmas dinner for a war hero sailor played by Dennis Morgan who gets to sing a couple of songs as well. Got to keep up the image at any cost. And her publisher Sidney Greenstreet likes the idea so well that he invites himself to the dinner.

So with borrowed farm, baby, and Reginald Gardiner who'd like to make it real with Stanwyck she tries to brazen it through.

Christmas in Connecticut's now a Yuletide classic and deservedly so. The leads are warm and human and they get great support from the assembled players. S.Z. Sakall as the Hungarian restaurant owner/friend of Stanwyck from whom she gets her cooking information and Una O'Connor as the housekeeper have a nice chemistry between them. Reginald Gardiner and Stanwyck have no chemistry at all, obvious to all but Reggie and he's funny in his stuffed shirt way.

Most people remember this film as one of Sidney Greenstreet's few ventures into comedy. If he's not an outright villain, a cynical observer of life or a tyrannical tycoon, Greenstreet is few other things on screen. Christmas in Connecticut gave him a rare opportunity to burlesque his own image and he made the most of it.

In a biography of Barbara Stanwyck, she mentions she enjoyed making Christmas in Connecticut as a welcome change from some villainous parts like Double Indemnity she'd been doing recently. One of the things that made doing the film so enjoyable was that between takes, director Peter Godfrey and Greenstreet would do some impromptu entertaining of cast and crew with English Music Hall numbers. Made for a relaxed and warm set and the cast responded accordingly.

Now if only someone had been filming those numbers.