My Top 6 Favorite Holiday Movies

by B Condon 2:27 PM

The Man Who Came to Dinner

(1942)

 

What happens when a cynical New York critic and radio show host breaks his leg while on tour in the Midwest? Well, in a nut shell, he wreaks havoc with his "Hollyood" ways complete with comedian friends, a vixen actress, a gaggle of penguins,  an octopus and lots of yelling and other shenanigans while simultaneously ruining the lives of an Ohio family. But maybe Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Woolley) isn't entirely ruining the family's life, showing the kids they need to live a greater life and the movie ends up becoming a damn awesome cat and mouse game between Whiteside and Grant Mitchell's Ernest Stanley.

 

Regardless, this movie is full of awesome hilarity although dated and with less scandalous dialogue from the '40s as the censors stripped Kaufman and Moss's stage play into what could be considered "Disney" to its original production. Which means the show can only be even better on stage! Despite that and Ann Sheridan's very alert nipples in the last half of the movie, I cannot say anything bad about "The Man who Came to Dinner" and I also rank this in my top 10 favorite movies of all time. 

 

Best quotes:

  

Sheridan Whiteside: "My great aunt Jennifer ate a whole box of candy every day of her life. She lived to be 102 and when she'd been dead three days she looked better than you do NOOOWW."

 

Sheridan Whiteside: "Will you take your clammy hand off my chair? You have the touch of a love-starved cobra."

 

Banjo: "I can feel the hot blood pounding through your varicose veins."

 

Richard Stanley: "I had to go to three different stores."

Sheridan Whiteside: "How did you travel? By ox cart?"

Lorraine Sheldon: "Who is that man?"

Sheridan Whiteside: "He comes down every half hour and tells me the time."

Lorraine Sheldon: "Why Sherry, whatever for?"

Sheridan Whiteside: "I LOST MY WATCH!"

 The Man Who Came to Dinner Trailer

 

Holiday

(1938)

 

 

Holiday is another movie that I consider in my top 10 favorite movies, a classic Cukor "chick flick" he did so well that said more than girl meets boy. In Holiday (another hit play from Philadelphia Story stage writer Philip Barry), boy (Cary Grant's Jonny Case) meets girl (Doris Nolan's Julia Seton) then meets the family on Christmas Day to discover they are very very rich and finds himself over time creating a fondness for girl's sister (Kate the Great's Linda Seton) who is a clear abuse victim of the money games her father sets on their family while her sister is her father's favorite.

 

Philip Barry was an expert of writing plays about class definition, case in point with Philadelphia Story and this one. Holiday is probably more blatant than P.A. Story with the reality of abusing money and the games one can play with the money lifestyle onto their own family. Jonny Case has decided early in life to make his million and take a few years off to really discover how he can contribute to humanity, which seems to be a tragic travesty to Nolan and her father, Edward Kolker's Edward Seton.

But through all the seriousness, the movie is truly a funny movie with the help of Jonny's friends, Professor and Mrs. Potter (Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon) who steal every scene they are in. And the children's room party scene shows its stage fluidity and damn good dialogue and that classic Hepburn and Grant back and forth we know and love so well.

 

Favorite Quotes:  

 

Linda Seton: "For the love of Pete, it's the Princess and Dopey"

(everyone salutes)

 

Jonny Case: "When I find myself in a position like this, I ask myself what would General Motors do? And then I do the opposite."

 

Ned Seton: (walking slowly to the door) "Walk, don't run, to the nearest exit."

 Holiday trailer

 

The Muppet Christmas Carol

(1992)

 

I like to believe that it's impossible to hate The Muppet Christmas Carol, but there are people who are sticklers for the specifics from Dickens's classic. This version does water the original short story down to the essential scenes in the Past, Present and Future scenes, but you can forgive that since kids are watching. Like Gonzo -- excuse me, Mr. Dickens -- says "It's alright, this is culture." This results in one of Gonzo's best stints in the Muppet movies to date with his hysterical chemistry with Rizzo the Rat. In fact, they really are the best part of the movie, next to Michael Caine. 

 

I do not blame anyone for preferring Alastair Sim or Reginald Owen over Michael Caine, but I like to believe that Caine played Scrooge with a quiet and seething embodiment. True, the way he speaks his lines are a little slow and spaced out, but he is essentially working with puppets, we can forgive that, right? And oh the feels in his emotional scenes as he looks in the past, singing along with his first love and you hear his voice breaking.

 

It is sometimes hard to watch this movie knowing that it is an homage to Jim Henson, who died two years before and the first muppet movie made without him. But this movie was destined to happen, especially coming from a sign when puppeteer Steve Whitmire (more famous for being the voice of Rizzo) had a dream the night before going in to record Kermit's songs. In the dream Whitmire met Henson in a hotel lobby and Henson assured him that he would be awesome. It's that sentimentality and how much we love the muppets like that that makes this movie perfect.... and Michael Caine.... and Gonzo the Great.

 

Favorite Quotes

 

Rizzo: (being chased by a cat) "Hey kitty, nice kitty... I'M FROM JERSEY!"

 

Rizzo: "Mother always taught me never eat singing food."

 

Vegetable: "Hey, I'm being stolen! Hey, help me! Help me!"

 

(Gonzo accidentally lights Rizzo's tail on fire)

Rizzo: "Hey, hey, hey, light the lamp, not the rat. Light the lamp, not the rat! What are you doing? Put me out, put me out!"

Gonzo: (notices a bucket of frozen water under the lamp post) "Rizzo."

Rizzo: "What?"

Gonzo: (pushes Rizzo off the lamp post into the water)

Rizzo: "Ahhhh!" (comes up from water) "Th-th-th-thank you."

Gonzo: "You're welcome!"

 

Rizzo: "I fell down a chimney and landed on a flaming hot goose."

Gonzo: "You have all the fun."

 

Sam, the American Eagle: "Remember, don't tip the driver."

 

Scrooge: "How would the bookkeeping staff like to be suddenly... UNEMPLOYED?"

The Rats: (singing) "Heatwave! This is my island in the sun. Oy oy."

 

Mice: (singing) "No cheeses for us meeses."

 



 

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)/In the Good Old Summertime (1949)/You've Got Mail (1998)

 

Going along with movies that are impossible to hate (admit it, you have a closeted love for "You've Got Mail" to some degree unless you're proud of it like I am), this whole franchise is impossible to dislike. Originally Miklos Laszlo's stage play Parfumerie and a wonderful response to blind dates/pen pals, this story is primarily about attraction and chemistry between two people and how often hate ends up turning into love.

 

Ernest Lubitsch's first contribution to the string of adaptations, "The Shop Around the Corner" is an absolute MGM gem between the adorable boyishness that is an early James Stewart pre-Philadelphia Story (you really can't tell I'm obsessed with that movie, can you?) and that beautiful yet subtle regality of Mr. Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan. To me, the B-line of this movie speaks volumes to an already cute and snappy chick flick that is the main story line of the two pen pals who end up working together in a shop in Budapest, struggling to sell an annoying music box. I won't bother anyone with anyone who is already familiar with the overriding storyline, but the B-side is dark as hell which only shows that Frank Morgan was and still is the quintessential character actor of the '30s and can be more than just Mr. Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz, but a shop owner who discovers his wife is cheating on him with one of his employees no less. And the results stun and amaze.  

 

"In the Good Old Summertime" seems very much a contradictory name to this "almost-Christmas" movie, but they make up for it with the beautiful Christmas music at the end of the movie when Van Johnson and Judy Garland, although with stale chemistry and more believable hate for each other, discover that they are each other's "Dear friend" pen pal. This movie, like so many other '40s MGM musicals, relies greatly on the music. In the now-music shop based out of Chicago, the B-line ends up being the shop owner's (S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, one of my many favorite character actors) attachment to his favorite violin which I think is too stinking cute and endearing once he... as River Song says, spoilers.

 

Judy Garland, like the music, makes the movie completely her own; even ironically considering at the end of the movie which flashes forward five years later with Johnson and Garland's characters with their daughter who is none other than little Liza Minnelli in her first role. But then Garland has an inability to suck at anything, even her sound test singing "I'll Plant my Own Tree" for Valley of the Dolls which, like her casting, was scraped. But I digress...

 

Her voice is at the top of its game, singing the typical standards of the '40s as well as my number one favorite song of hers (Sorry, Somewhere over the Rainbow), "I Don't Care" and even during the Christmas portion, "Merry Christmas" which continues to be overshadowed by her rendition of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" which is a damn shame. Despite her chemistry with Johnson and the fact this was one of her last MGM movies, her musical comic awesomeness still shines just as brightly as when she first entered Oz.

 

 

A lot of people contribute Christmas in New York as one of the most romantic times of the year; I can believe it after the Christmas segment in "You've Got Mail." It's 90s New York, just when the internet has taken off and everyone is emailing everyone else. Instead of letters it has become forums, where "NY152" (Hanks's Joe Fox) and "ShopGirl" (Ryan's Kathleen Kelly) meet up cyberly and email each other back and forth about hats, butterflies in the subway, waiting in line at Starbucks, everything and anything except details of who they are.

 

It just ends up being the ultimate karma that they both legitimately hate each other, at least in the beginning (which makes them the winners of best chemistry spurned by Laszlo) with the backdrop of the book business. Joe Fox is apart of Fox Books, a Barnes and Noble corporate book department store. Meg Ryan is an owner of a small independent and very loved children's book store called... what else? ... The Shop Around the Corner which she inherited from her mother. Maybe that's why I love it so much... books....

 

The Christmas portion works perfectly in the storyline's favor as Meg Ryan's Kathleen and Greg Kinnear's Greg attempt to sing together during her employee's Christmas party to the tune of The Instrument Song but it falls flat and shows they are just not meant to be together. In what I consider the most beautiful part of the movie, complete with the backdrop of Joni Mitchell's "River" as Kathleen puts up Christmas decorations and believes that "There needs to be more twinkle lights." A woman after my own heart... This whole series is perfection, regardless of decade or place.

 



 

 

It Happened on 5th Avenue

(1947)

 

"It Happened on 5th Avenue" is one of those fantastic rare movies that faded in the background as "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Miracle on 34th Street" has been watched on repeat. And as of 2008, this fantastic little Allied Artist movie was finally released on DVD and at last available to watch Victor Moore being an adorable yet a cynical homeless man who has made a career out of squatting in rich people's houses when they're out of town. And Aloyisius T. McKeever's (Moore) quiet Christmas by himself has been ruined as he lives in Michael J. O'Connor's New York mansion by the simple act of taking in ex-soldier and now homeless Jim Bullock (Don DeFore) who invites his friends from the war, also homeless and with wives and children, to live in the Connor house for the time being.

 

To add fuel to an already annoying fire, Michael O'Connor's daughter (Gale Storm) runs away from boarding school and goes straight to the New York home while her father is staying at the winter home in Virginia. Right away she pretends she is homeless and was stealing clothes so she had something to wear to a job interview and finds herself over time falling for DeFore's Bullock. Her father finally finds her and somehow manages to get roped into pretending he is homeless so Storm's Trudy can show him that the man she's in love with isn't so bad. And in the process, the rich O'Connor Grinch's heart grows three sizes as he finds himself learning more about life and people from McKeever while trying to get Bullock out of the country, not entirely learning his lesson until the very end of the movie.

 

This movie takes its time, a rarity for a good Christmas movie as everyone likes a quick plot line, but you watch the process of Michael O'Connor falling back in love with his ex-wife and repairing his relationship with his daughter is not as easy as a magical movie plot device. And with that it takes a lot of dinner table discussion about who they believe who O'Connor truly is: a corporate, too rich to care egomaniac. You start to feel for what we believe is the bad guy and end up really feeling the truth about what he says about McKeever in one of his last lines, "You know, Mary, there are some people far more richer than I am."

 

Perfection. 

 

Favorite Quotes:

 

Felton: "That joint's as empty as a sewing basket in a nudist camp."

 

The Bishop's Wife

(1947)

 

Every 90s kid or anyone who lived through the 90s knows you can't beat Denzel Washington's suave and sweet role in the "The Preacher's Wife," a remake of "The Bishop's Wife." But, sorry, you can and he likes to call himself Cary Grant, the original silver fox. Cary Grant plays Dudley, an angel sent from the big guy upstairs as an answer to David Niven's prayers to give him guidance for the building of a new cathedral. But instead of financial guidance, his wife Julia finds herself enamored with the angel and the guidance becomes more about his family life than his work.

 

The issue I have with the "Preacher's Wife" versus "The Bishop's Wife" is that there was far more chemistry between Washington and Houston versus Grant and Young. While there was a huge attraction between the two modern actors, Houston's chemistry with Courtney Vance was a little less believable. In "Bishop..." you can see why, although the marriage being a little stale, Young and Niven are wonderful together. The chemistry between Grant and Young seems a bit more life affirming as Mr. Silver Fox brings fun and quirkiness to her dull church wife status. The only difference is that Dudley is nuts about Julia but her love will always be Henry.

 

The movie also features Elsa Lanchester (Katie Nana in Mary Poppins, The Bride of Frankenstein...) and the man who came to dinner, a somewhat subdued Monty Woolley as an old friend of the Broughams, a professor of history who butts heads with Dudley about historical facts and somehow he comes around from his Atheism being charmed by an angel.

 

Favorite Quotes

 

Professor Wutheridge: "God Bless You!"

Dudley: "Thank you! I'll pass that recommendation along."

 

Henry Brougham: "Tonight I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking. Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child's cry. A blazing star hung over a stale and wise men came with birthday gifts. We haven't forgotten that night down the centuries; we celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, the sound of bells and with gifts. You give me a book; I give you a tie. Aunt Martha has always wanted an orange squeezer and Uncle Henry could do with a new pipe. We forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled... all that is, except one. And we have even forgotten to hang it up. The stocking for the child born in a manger. It's his birthday we are celebrating. Don't ever let us forget that. Let us ask ourselves what he would wish for most... and then let each put in his share. Loving kindness, warm hearts and the stretched out hand of tolerance. All the shining gifts that make peace on earth."