Product Description
-------------------
TCM Greatest Classic Films: Holiday (4FE/DVD)
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938) Reginald Owen portrays Charles Dickens’
holiday humbug Ebenezer Scrooge, the miser’s 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 Tim’s
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: that’s 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 Lubitsch’s 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.
]]>
.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 hospital, a marriage-minded nurse
thinks she might nudge Jones to the altar if he could only
experience a real domestic Christmas. And it just so happens that
she was nurse to the grandchild of Alexander Yardley, the wealthy
and powerful publisher of --you guessed it--Smart Housekeeping
magazine. And so, she pens the letter that could unravel Lane's
carefully constructed fraud. She writes to Yardley asking that
Jones be included in America's ultimate Christmas--the one to be
held at the Lane family farm in Connecticut. The pompous Yardley
(ably portrayed by Sidney Greenstreet) believes the Lane myth and
instantly sniffs a story that will send his magazine's
circulation skyrocketing. And staring down a lonely holiday, he
decides to join the Lanes for Christmas on the farm, too. Now,
all Lane has to do is come up with a farm. And a husband. And
let's not forget the baby. Christmas in Connecticut is classic
screwball entertainment of the best kind, with its on-target
skewering of social convention and house-of-
cards-about-to-tumble tension: a perfect farcical vision of
domestic blitz. --Susan Benson
A Christmas Carol 1938
This is the desert-island choice of the many versions of A
Christmas Carol, with a magnificent, full-bodied portrayal of
Ebenezer Scrooge by Alastair Sim that leaves everyone else in the
dust. Lean and direct, this film's version of the story wastes no
time trying to impress viewers with the magical nature of the
spirits' visitations. Director Brian Desmond Hurst keeps the
focus on Scrooge's life story, beautifully simplifying and
underscoring the theme of lost women with a haunting musical
refrain from the folk song "Barbara Allen." Sim's commitment to
the role is at times astonishing; his Scrooge's Christmas-morning
ecstasy is a marvel of giddy technique. Watch for Patrick Macnee
(Steed in The Avengers) as the young Jacob Marley--the actor made
his screen debut in this 1951 production. --Tom Keogh
The Shop Around the Corner
One of the most charming and romantic films around, this 1940
comic romance finds James Stewart (, It's A Wonderful
Life) working in a small shop in Budapest and longing for a girl
to call his own. His coworker, Margaret Sullavan, feels the same,
and soon they are both corresponding and falling in love with
their respective pen pals. What they don't realize is that they
are writing to and falling in love with each other, but the
problem is that they can't stand each other in person. The
beguiling nature of the mistaken identity formula that influenced
countless films is done to perfection here, and the wry
combativeness and delightful banter between the two leads makes
this a very special film. --Robert Lane
It Happened on 5th Avenue
Making his winter home in a vacant New York City mansion,owned
by vacationing industrialist Michael O'Connor (Charlie Ruggles),
a philosophizing hobo decides to take in a homeless ex-G.I.
O'Connor's unhappy daughter, Trudy (Gale Storm), running away
from finishing school, returns home unexpectedly but doesn't tell
anyone who she is or who her dad is when he comes looking for her
disguised as a butler. Meanwhile, O'Connor unwittingly competes
with the ex-G.I. in a land deal. The film, nominated best
original story, contains a worthwhile message of self worth.