Un mariage compliqué

After accidentally discovering this film on one or another classic film network's graveyard shift holiday schedule, I've often wondered why it is not more prominently featured. The film blends some time honored themes of Christmas (the suspense and longing children feel at Christmastime, for example) with more complex undertones involving Janet Leigh's character, Connie. You see, Connie needs to decide whether she asked Santa for the safe and familiar toy (Wendell Corey) or the complicated model shipped without directions that may be a whole lot more interesting (Robert Mitchum). Leigh's wistful performance as a war widow struggling with needing to begin life again while trying to preserve the memory of her husband rings true. This is a great little holiday film and is now shown every Christmas at my house, just in case it gets relegated again to the no-show lists on air. Mitchum's performance is effortless and he seems to be enjoying himself-you will, too.

'Holiday Affair' is a truly wonderful film centered around a woman who's husband died in WWII living alone with her son, played by Janet Leigh (the woman that is) and a dreaming drifter played by Robert Mitchum. They meet and after a few shakes and bruises along the way, on both sides, in the end get and stay together. A then 20-year old Janet Leigh plays her insecure, scared and mourning Connie Ennis with a subtlety and a maturity beyond her years. And film-noir icon rough, tough and brooding Robert Mitchum pulls the role of the lucid and warmhearted drifter off as effortlessly as he did his Jeff Bailey in 'Out of the Past'. The man was a genius. The story as well is told with such maturity and wit for those days, when one considers all the sleek and easy traps of sentimentality and mushiness one could have fallen into in making these kinds of films. 'It's a Wonderful Life' has not been as fortunate. Another reason why this film has aged so infinitely well, is the well-drawn, 3-dimensional characters. As opposed to, again, 'It's a Wonderful Life', where some of the characters almost fade into caricature. Here we see REAL people as it were. Real people with real problems. Especially in Leigh's character, such as getting over the loss someone dear to us and how to move on and not be scared after that. But also in Wendell Corey's character. A man in love who knows she's not in love with him and who tries to hang on at any cost. But he's not depicted as a jealous, malevolent, crazed Iago-type character who does everything and anything to prevent her and Mitchum from coming together, nor does he play an overly-good, almost idioticly noble character who "just wants her to be happy" and who therefore gives her up. No, he plays a reasonable, slightly torn up man who sees the end is nigh for him and her, who's willing to fight but when he sees the battle is lost gives up graciously, a predicament which the otherwise somewhat wooden Corey conveys onto the screen wonderfully well. This, plus the little boy who for a child-actor performs amazingly well and the fantastic, almost over the top (but not really) ending, might make this into the best Christmas-movie ever made. Yes, EVER made! Leave not this film unseen! 10/10.

World War II widow Janet Leigh supports herself and her son Gordon Gebbert with a job as a comparison shopper who runs afoul of salesman Robert Mitchum. Mitch is a rather footloose character who's got a temporary job at the Christmas buying season in New York so he can earn enough money to buy a ticket back to California where he wants to spend time building boats and living carefree.

Of course Leigh's interested, but not enough to give up the stability for herself and her son that lawyer Wendell Corey could provide and he's most interested in matrimony. So will she take Mitchum or Corey?

A Holiday Affair is one of those gazillions of films about war widows and their romances that Hollywood made for about 10 years after V-J Day. Janet Leigh is certainly a bright addition to the rolls, in her youth she had a nice innocent charm to her which in fact got her the film.

She was loaned out to RKO and Howard Hughes for a three picture deal and A Holiday Affair was the one Hughes interfered the least with. Her other two films in the package were Two Tickets to Broadway and Jet Pilot. Of course the reason she was at RKO was because Howard Hughes had his hormones in overdrive over her. She had a couple of dates with him and she was less than impressed, but Hughes took a while to get the message she wasn't interested.

She did enjoy working with both Mitchum and Corey. According to Lee Server's book on Mitchum, the set was a relaxed and happy one, but that Mitchum and Corey were full of all kinds of practical jokes. Never a dull moment.

Mitchum had some good chemistry with Leigh and with young Gordon Gebbert. Best scene in the film was at a police station where Mitchum is arrested on Christmas Day and Leigh and Corey go to straighten out a mistake. There's a droll performance by Harry Morgan as the patient police sergeant who's always up for a new story.

A Holiday Affair is a nice unpretentious little film about Christmas in New York and hopefully people will catch it TCM in December.

Christmas is six months away from now, but I felt to comment on this film now. Holiday Affair is one of the best holiday films out there. Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum are perfect as the widow and unemployed store clerk, plus the boy who plays Leigh's son performance in the picture is excellent. This film shows the true spirit of Christmas during the holidays. A film not to pass up during any time of the year especially on Christmas.

This is very much a 'film of its time', but it was designed to be precisely that. It dealt with one of the major social issues of the immediate postwar years, the problems of the grieving young women whose husbands had been killed in the War. The main character in this film is just such a pretty young war widow, played by Janet Leigh. She keeps framed photos of her husband in uniform all round her apartment and beside her bed, and can't let him go. Her little boy Guy is turned into what she calls 'the man of the house'. She cannot come to terms with her loss or make a new life for herself, despite the fact that three or four years have gone by. America was full of women in her condition at this time, women who had been deeply in love with their husbands, lost them in combat, and were then expected to find a new man. Janet Leigh just can't do that. A boring and 'stable' admirer, played by Wendell Corey, has been patiently courting her for two years and keeps telling her that friendship is enough for a marriage and she doesn't need to love him. She is gradually bringing herself round to accept this kind of a future and even says yes to him at last, convincing herself that it will give her 'a quiet life' and a father for her boy (who does not like Corey and keeps insulting him). This film was given a misleading title, because there is no 'affair' and the 'holiday' refers merely to the fact that it is Christmas time. However, this is not, as some imagine, just 'a good Christmas film'. Christmas is merely the convenient background for the story. The story is really about Janet Leigh's struggle to come to terms with her loss. Through an amusing, if somewhat hectic, series of circumstances, Leigh meets Robert Mitchum. He is working in a New York City department store selling toy trains and she is a 'comparison shopper' working for a rival department store. She goes around buying things, taking them to her employer for study, and then returning them and getting a refund. Mitchum discovers this and is about to turn her in, but when he hears she is a war widow with a child, he takes pity on her and lets her go. This is spotted by the floorwalker, and Mitchum is instantly fired. Then a highly complex relationship develops, involving the boy, a train set, various misunderstandings and comic coincidences, and Fate, which obviously had it in mind all along, brings them closer and closer together. This gets up the nose of Corey, who takes it very badly indeed. Little Guy adores Mitchum, and the story is really very ingenious and amusing, as to how things go on from there. I can't reveal what happens in the end, but you could say Leigh is really on the spot and struggles between boring safety and passionate uncertainty. Mitchum proposes too, and which one will she, can she, choose? This film would have gone straight to the heart for many thousands, probably tens of thousands, of young American widows in her position at that time. As social history it is very important. The film is very sensitively done and must have been a big hit when it came out. It is entertaining to watch, has many amusing moments, and excellent performances.