Holiday Movies

PERFECT HOLIDAY MOVIES

“Hans Christian Anderson” (Goldwyn/RKO) and “The Red Shoes” (Rank) offer incredible escapism with ballet, surreal sets and amazing technicolor.  See them together and you’ll forget about the wild fires and the Franken debacle.  

Definitely “holiday” movies!

MUST SEE HOLIDAY FLICKS

Department stores were devine palaces and hemlines were closer to the ground in the holiday movies that I adore, including “Bundle of Joy” (1956) and “Holiday Affair” (1949).

It’s a cinderella story in BOJ where the character played by Debbie Reynolds falls for the jazz singer department store prince played by Eddie Fisher (real life husband and wife.)  The music is enjoyable and the RKO Scope and Technicolor are supreme.

“Holiday Affair” is a deeper look at the post war funk where a war widowed mom played by Janet Leigh struggles to survive as a department store “shopper/snoop.”  She has to choose between officious lawyer played by Wendell Corey or the Robert Mitchum sexy drifter/sales clerk.  Gordon Gebhert steals the movie as the toothless kid and now, in real life, teaches at Columbia University.  He later appeared as the teenage Audie Murphy in “To Hell and Back.”

BOJ got bad reviews and HA was a box office flop, but both of these RKO gems enjoy a December resurgence on Turner Classic Movies.

TIRED SCRIPT PREMISE

The lowly reporter falls for the handsome European prince who is not all he seems in the Netflix new movie “Christmas Prince.”  Hasn’t this story been told repeatedly.  Ho hum.