TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Holiday (Christmas in Connecticut / A Christmas Carol 1938 / The Shop Around the Corner / It Happened on 5th Avenue)
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Actor: Barbara Stanwyck, Don DeFore, James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Reginald OwenBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 367 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-11-03
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- 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 totall
DVD Reviews of TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Holiday (Christmas in Connecticut / A Christmas Carol 1938 / The Shop Around the Corner / It Happened on 5th Avenue)
DVD Review: 3 1/2 stars-Pleasant holiday diversions for a great price
Summary: 3 Stars
These four films would cost you you about 4 times the price if you were to hunt for them individually.The only fly in the ointment is that the movies are on two double sided discs.This can send some screaming into the night,but if it doesn't bother you then you're laughing.
A Christmas Carol(1938)is a Christmas Carol light;for those who want their taste but not all the "calories"!.Clicking in at a speedy 69 min.it is no wonder this film was a TV staple for years until they began pushing the Alistair Sims version back in the 70s.The film is non stop and is over far too soon.By now we all know the plot of a miserly businessman who abhores Christmas and who gets his wake up call courtesy of three spirits;becoming a new man.The film doesn't linger on little plot nuances(that would have improved it immensely)like the door knob coming to life,or his old love,or his reunion with his nephew,etc.When Owen(Scrooge)argues with Fred watch the spittle literally coming out of his mouth and don't mind the wires when he "floats" out the window with the ghost of Christmas present.Also Scrooges'young sister talks very much like Stan Laurel while Feziwig,not to be outdone,does his best Stan Laurel smiling;it's uncanny! 2 1/2 stars.
It Happened on Fifth Avenue(1947)stars Gale Storm(well known later for her own show on TV),Don Defore(to become well known on TV as Ozzie and Harriets'next door neighbour and later Hazel's boss),veteran character actors Victor Moore and Charles Ruggles.Moore is the central character,a street bum,who inhabits a mansion that gets deserted so many months a year by its millionaire owner played by Ruggles.The games begin when the house becomes inhabited by more and more people and who are eventually caught by the owners' daughter.But she plays along as a fellow down-and-outer and falls in love with an ex-GI(Defore),even getting her father and mother in on the act.The film has its' charm but is not engaging enough to maintain interest on a consistent basis.Moore's den-motherish tongue waggings can get a little old quite fast and he seems a little out of place in such a lead role.Funny enough the gags in this film are the best things about it.Good and funny lines are given just throw away status and have little of the punch they otherwise would have had in a better film.Further,later in the film there is a beautiful sequence with Defoe and Storm sitting at a wobbly legged table and a waiter who tries to fix it.He comes to one side,goes under and reappears at the other side,and is repeated much to the couples amazement.It is so good it is out of place.Overall there just isn't enough spark in this film to give it any more than a 3 star rating.
Christmas in Connecticut(1945)stars Barbara Stanwyck(of TVs Big Valley fame;and yes she was a substantial star way back when!)who is a columnist who writes about her daily life and her cooking in a beautiful home in the country,with her hubby and child.Trouble is it is all made up;even her boss(Sydney Greenstreet)doesn't know it.But the jig is up when the boss invites himself to her "place" for Christmas.Stanwyck enlists the help of her Uncle Felix(SZ Sakall)for cooking and general back-up chores and a hubby-wanna be played by Reginald Gardiner.Throw in a hero GI(Dennis Morgan)who falls in love with this "married" writer and bedlam reigns supreme.This is a film that tries hard to be better than it is.Stanwyck and Sakall really do dominate this picture but their efforts aren't enough to save it from its' 3 star status.
The Little Shop Around the Corner(1940)stars Jimmy Stewart as a head clerk who toils in a general store in Budapest,run by Frank Morgan(stage and screen vet and the wizard in the Wizard of Oz).At first all is seemingly ok but Morgan has private troubles with his wife and he thinks Stewart is behind it.As tensions build a new clerk starts at the store played by Sullivan and Sullivan and Stewart start rubbing each other the wrong way.Morgan fires Stewart because of his suspicions and is suicidal.He ends up in the hospital,apologizes to Stewart when the truth comes out and makes him acting manager.All along both Sullivan and Stewart have had pen pals and Stewart is amazed to learn his pal is none other than Sullivan,but she remains oblivious to the end.This is a very smart and engaging film.Lubitsch reigns the actors in and all really under-play their parts to get a more immediate and "real" effect for their characters and it works wonderfully.In typical Lubitsch style it is a film that wants to tell its' story in its own way and if you keep with it you will be rewarded hansomely.Many films would have had Sullivan and Stewart in the dark for much of the film(with a double late-film revelation)but here he lets one of the two in on the "secret" and we watch how Stewart tries to deal with it,adding an extra dynamic to the plot which otherwise wouldn't have been there.This film deserves its' 4 1/2 stars;the best film in this collection.
All films have been transferred pretty well and all have the same features present on the discs than if you were to buy them seperately.An FYI,It Happened on Fifth Avenue has no features or even scene selections on it at all(!),just a play option.
Overall,for the price,this is a nice collection of mostly average Christmas films with Christmas Carol the poorest,The Little Shop Around the Corner the best and the other two falling into the middle.If you can stand the two double sided discs then this is certainly worth getting.
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Description of TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Holiday (Christmas in Connecticut / A Christmas Carol 1938 / The Shop Around the Corner / It Happened on 5th Avenue)
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.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 (Vertigo, 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.
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