TCM Greatest Classic Films: Holiday (4FE/DVD)
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938) Reginald Owen portrays Charles Dickens holiday humbug Ebenezer Scrooge, the misers miser who has a huge change of heart after spirits whisk him into the past, present and future. From sets to stars to story, this triumphant adaptation adds a glow to the season. Like Tiny Tims benediction, it blesses us every one. CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT (1945) A magazine columnist totally devoid of the homemaking skills espoused in her column had better get some fast: her boss has invited himself and a recently returned war hero to her home for Christmas. Laughs, romance, holiday cheer: thats the recipe Barbara Stanwyck and a stellar company follow in this perennial favorite. IT HAPPENED ON 5TH AVENUE Home for the holidays! GI families hit by the post-World War II housing crunch take over an abandoned New York City mansion. THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER In the third of their four screen pairings, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart engage in retail romance wrapped in the ribbon of director Ernst Lubitschs trademark touch of wit and charm. They play bickering store clerks who are unknowingly secret pen pals. Your patronage will be cheerfully rewarded when you watch this enchanting tale.
Amazon.com Christmas in Connecticut Christmas in Connecticut is a holiday film that plays 365 days of the year. Barbara Stanwyck gives a brilliant, sardonic performance as Elizabeth Lane, a columnist for Smart Housekeeping magazine, whose enticing descriptions of the exquisite meals she prepares for her husband and baby on their bucolic Connecticut farm earns her fame as "America's Best Cook." A writer, she is; a cook, she is not. As she types the words, "From my living room window, as I write, the good cedar logs cracking on the fire..." the view is of clothes flapping on the line outside her bachelorette Manhattan apartment. An able supporting cast keeps her lie on life support: her editor, her stuffy and detestable architect suitor, and the wonderful "Uncle" Felix (S.Z. Sakall), an English-garbling Hungarian chef who provides the recipes that fill her column. Cut to Jefferson Jones, a sailor adrift at sea for weeks after his destroyer is torpedoed. Memories of the food described in Lane's columns are central to his survival. After his rescue, as he's recuperating in a naval h
