To me, this movie is perfection.

just watch it!

Better Late Then Never

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Do you love films about "Christmas"? If you do then you must see this film. Because its is an old film there is something about this film that makes it timeless and most of all enjoyable. Christmas in Connecticut is a story about Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) is a single food writer living in New York whose articles about her fictitious Connecticut farm, husband and baby are admired by housewives across the country. Her publisher, Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet), is unaware of the charade and insists that Elizabeth host a Christmas dinner for returning war hero Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan), who read all of her recipes while in the hospital, and is so fond of her that his nurse wrote a letter to the publisher. Facing a career-ending scandal, not only for herself, but also for her editor, Dudley Beecham (Robert Shayne), Lane is forced to comply. In desperation, Elizabeth agrees to marry her friend John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner), who has a farm in Connecticut, even though she does not love him. She also enlists the help of another friend, chef Felix Bassenak (S.Z. Sakall), who has been providing her with the recipes for her articles.Heads up. There is something said in this film that I had to look up. At the beginning you hear "The Old Magoo". It helps to know that "Magoo" is "Someone is too good to be true". One of my favorite films to see. If you have to buy it DO IT!

At 102 minutes, this Barbara Stanwyck/Dennis Morgan entry is allowed to run too long. After all, it is – as every customer will instantly recognize – one of those movies that give away their entire plot line in the cast credit titles. It's obvious that the beautifully photographed Barbara Stanwyck is going to fall for and marry serviceman Dennis Morgan. Anything Barbara has to say to anybody else in the cast is just wasting time – unless she says something particularly witty or humorous. She doesn't! If I was writing this screenplay, I would be sure to add plenty of humor to Barbara's dialogue. I'd make sure that she was always bitingly sarcastic, particularly in her exchanges with Sydney Greenstreet. But in fact, she doesn't assert herself at all. Why the hell not? Instead, she treats him with kid gloves and sucks up to the self-opinionated moron. Why? I'll admit the writer was aware of this problem, so he or she or they paint the Stanwyck character as a liar. And an opportunistic liar at that! One of those liars who will tell you anything either to get out of a scrape or to advance their own career! I'll admit Barbara does her damnedest to soft peddle this aspect, but it's there all the same! In fact, soft peddling is the wrong approach. You make her someone who glories in her lies, not someone who's ashamed of them. That's ridiculous! There's an excellent performance here by Greenstreet as the mogul you love to hate and whom you'd just adore to see getting his comeuppance from a fiery Barbara – but it doesn't happen! I could go on and on, but let's just agree that C. in C. is easy to sit through once, but it's a movie of hundreds of missed opportunities. That's an exaggeration. Let's say, dozens of missed opportunities. Available on an excellent Warner Brothers DVD.

Like "It Happened on 5th Avenue", I never saw this movie until TCM showed it at Christmas time! Nobody else shows black & white movies! Like 5th Ave, it revolves around an ex-serviceman and love at first sight. A "Betty Crocker-Martha Stewart" type magazine columnist writes about her lovely country home and down-home recipes. She is a complete fraud as she lives in a NYC apartment and gets all her cooking tips from her Hungarian restaurant owner "Felix", very well played by character actor S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakal. So, Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) gets caught in a lie and has to fabricate the whole thing, right down to the country ranch, husband and baby. All fake. She's single, childless, and lives in the city. Along comes a Navy hero who gets invited to her "home for the holidays". She can't even boil water, so "Felix" tries to teach her to cook, complete with flapjacks stuck on the ceiling! As mentioned, she falls in love with the Navy guy and the movie becomes even better. The sub-plots include her overpowering magazine boss (Sidney Greenstreet), a friend who she almost mistakenly marries, and a borrowed baby who changes sexes and hair colors! It's a "screwball" comedy. Great fun for all and highly recommended! The film runs a bit rough on both TCM and the DVD. Horizontal "wobble" and minor film damage for the first 20 minutes. It must have been hard to restore! There is also a 1992 TV remake with Dyan Cannon out there, but the original is far better.

Let's hear it for serendipity: In a shop specializing in Region 1 dvds I stumbled across one of those pantechnicon boxed sets, this one featuring four Christmas-themed movies. The selling point in my case was The Shop Around The Corner, which I have seen several times on TV but never owned and the set also boasted three other titles that were either new to me (It Happened on Fifth Avenue) or titles of which I'd heard of but hadn't seen, like this one. Okay the leading man was something of an acting joke, wooden as both Punch and Judy combined, but Barbara Stanwych seldom lets you down and if she was having an off-day here (she wasn't) Sydney Greenstreet, S. Z. Zackall, Regineld Gardiner and Una O'Connor were running interference and there was no way they could all be lousy at the same time. The premise was that Stanwyck plays a character based loosely upon Gladys Taber who, for several decades wrote a column in Family Circle in which she did little more than chat in a homely way - and/or dispensed 'Butternut Wisdom' about her farm in Connecticut, lacing the text with recipes, gardening tips etc. The twist in the film is that Stanwyck writes her column from Manhattan, couldn't boil water without burning it, would require an illustrated recipe to make toast and relies on the expertise of restaurateur Zackall to provide the cooking tips/recipes. She's doing all right if anybody asks you until the owner of the magazine, Greenstreet, decides not only to spend Christmas on the fictitious Stanwyck farm but also to bring war hero Morgan to supply the human interest angle. Luckily Regineld Gardiner, who has been pursuing Stanwyck unsuccessfully for years, just happens to have a farm in Connecticut which he is prepared to 'lend' Stanwyck should she agree to marry him, and naturally there is room also for Zackall to do the cooking. Now, of course, it's just a matter of waiting to see how long Stanwyck can keep the balls in the air, or how many near-misses she can survive. There's a lot of charm at work here and it's sobering to think that in 1945 this could have easily got lost in the shuffle at a time when they were churning out stuff like this at the rate of half a dozen a year whilst today it beckons like an oasis in a desert of mediocrity. Highly recommended.