Barbara Stanwyck and company spend Christmas in Connecticut in this amusing little romp
"Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan and Sydney Greenstreet wish you a Merry Christmas."
So says the seasonally tailored title card that opens 1945's Christmas In Connecticut, and in very short order, right after director Peter Godfrey's name appears, Stanwyck, Morgan and Greenstreet ensure that merriment with ninety minutes of good-natured comedy as fluffy as a coat of holiday snow.
Well Sustained Premise
The thin but well sustained premise begins at sea, where naval commander Morgan, whose All-American looks are labeled with the perfectly matching moniker of Jefferson Jones, finds himself adrift after an assault on his ship. A holiday stay in hospital brings on pining for an old fashioned country Christmas, complete with belly-filling feast - where better, then, than the Connecticut residence of Elizabeth Lane, the wartime Martha Stewart?
The Divine Miss S
The complication, of course, is that Martha is Barbara - as in Stanwyck, as in, as is ever the case with the divine Miss S., an independent, cosmopolitan working girl. She'd rather wrap herself up in a mink than in the arms of a husband, and sooner work over a cigarette than a hot stove. Nevertheless, she soon finds herself in a roomy cottage in Connecticut, bravely fronting as wife, cook and mother for her unsuspecting boss (Greenstreet,) her natty, dull-witted fiancée ("The next time you kiss me," she advises, "don't talk about plumbing.") and of course, war hero Morgan, whose light Irish tenor renders her weak enough to drop tree ornaments.
The Final Act
It all starts to fall apart at a country Christmas dance - a ho-ho-hoe down - where Stanwyck and Morgan begin to waltz close enough to set Grenstreet's jowls aquiver. What follows is a Kaufman and Hart style final act, where crazy characters come and go - including a jolly judge, a pair of crying babies, even a runaway cow - and strands of plot come apart like clumps of stubborn tinsel.
Radiant Barbara
Buoyed no doubt by the seasonal spirit of the piece, Stanwyck here is at her most radiant. Her tiny, tense mouth, her long, Roman nose and her frilly, flowing locks are never instruments for her sad, soldiery quality nor for her sly, sexy desperation. Instead, they conspire to anoint her with the girlish glow of her earliest films.
Morgan and Greenstreet
Morgan's one-dimensionality has rarely been better used - his performance prompts a Christmas cross-reference to the tin soldier of The Nutcracker - and Greenstreet is a scene-stealing delight, spending half the film as good natured as Santa Claus, the other half blustering like a winter storm.
A Little Gem
Often, it isn't the big gifts we get that we end up treasuring the most. It's the little gems. And so it is with Christmas movies. Forgoe the perennials, then - It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Scrooge - and spend Christmas in Connecticut.
