The Holly and the Ivy - 1952

The Holly and the Ivy (1952) brings together a stellar cast in the simplest of settings: a country church parsonage, but against the backdrop of a family reunion made anxious by unresolved issues.  It is Christmas, when the ethereal joyous aspects of the holiday fight all-too-human depression, where a need to mend ties is hampered by resentment of those ties.  The movie is a British production in a decidedly good old English story, but the theme and the feelings are universal to any culture.

The British seem to have mastered Christmas, giving us many of our customs, our carols, and inasmuch as Dickens has provided our most treasured allegorical Christmas theme of modern redemption in the form of A Christmas Carol.  The Holly and the Ivy also gives us redemption, in a much softer manner: Ebeneezer Scrooge had a restless night with three ghosts to take him backward and forward decades in time to learn his lesson, but while it takes the Greogry family roughly the same overnight Christmas Eve hours to ride a storm and emerge the better for it on Christmas Day, their challenges are easier to overcome, with a little understanding.

One of the criticisms of the movie seems to be that it does not deal in depth with the characters’ problems and motivations.  That’s usually a fair complaint, but in this movie, I think the brief sketch we are given is enough.  Certainly, animosity between family members is not always due to complex reasons or ferocious events; quite often it stems from ordinary misunderstanding and miscommunication.  We are not mind readers, and that is sometimes our biggest hurdle in human relationships.  We rarely forgive each other for it.

Sir Ralph Richardson plays a clergyman running a rural church in the county of Norfolk, the part of England bordering the North Sea known as East Anglia.  He was originally from Ireland, but settled into his assignment in this parish as a young man.  The parsonage may be a simple home, but the church is described as a venerable edifice from the 14^th century.  We don’t see much of the church, just a few Currier and Ives-type shots of a snowy village church that belong on a Christmas card—a comforting and inspiring illusion.

Sir Ralph is elderly, a bit of an absent-minded professor, with a cheerful nature and a kind heart, but may overpower his family with his chatty enthusiasm that won’t let them get a word in edgewise and that serves as a barrier to them ever piercing his optimistic armor with their nagging problems.

He is a widower, having lost his wife earlier in the year.  One criticism I would make is that we don’t know enough about her and her influence on her family and their sense of loss and grief, but the kids’ issue is really Pop.  

Every Christmas, he extends invitations to his sister, his wife’s sister and brother, and to his three grown children to gather at the parsonage for Christmas Eve.  The movie opens with the ebullient carol, “The Holly and the Ivy,” and the family receiving their invitations and deciding whether or not to come—all but Celia Johnson, who plays his eldest child, who still lives at home and runs the household for her father.  We’ll come back to her.

The first invitation comes to his sister-in-law played by Margaret Halston, herself a childless widow who lives in a residential hotel.  She hopefully collects her mail at the front desk and happily sees the envelope from her brother-in-law, anticipating it to be the annual invitation to spend Christmas with his family.  The desk clerk asks if she’ll be remaining in the hotel for Christmas, as they have some refreshments planned to cheer up those with nowhere to go.  When Miss Halston opens her invitation and reads it, she triumphantly responds, “No, I shall not be here for Christmas.”  Her eyes shine with anticipation and relief that is touching and sad. 

Like Sir Ralph, she is also elderly, playing a kind aunt, appearing at first to be somewhat dotty, but through her fey appearance, we come to see she is wise, intuitive, and with a generous heart.

The other aunt, Sir Ralph’s Irish sister who has not lost her Dublin accent, is played by Maureen Delany.  She is a spinster, renting a room that is far simpler than Miss Halston’s lodgings, denoting her reduced circumstances.  She is blunt, occasionally rude, and quite funny.  She delivers frankness with a deadpan expression, and if her standards are rarely met to her satisfaction, we may realize that that is not really her greatest disappointment; she rather enjoys human failings after a fashion.  However, she does carry a regret that has hampered her happiness and even brought about her reduced financial circumstances:  she, like Celia Johnson, remained at home to care for her elderly parents and lost the chance to have a life of her own by putting them first.  She and Aunt Margaret Halston have become friends through these annual Christmas visits, and Miss Halston even gives up her first class train carriage to sit with Miss Delany in third class so they can catch up.

Hugh Williams plays an uncle reading his invitation in a pub with friends around discussing his Christmas plans.  He is one character I would like to know more about, as there is some great depth of understanding about him.  He is godfather to the younger daughter, played by Margaret Leighton, whom we only hear discussed but do not see until the movie is halfway through.  He makes special effort to contact his niece, Miss Leighton, to get her to go to the family gathering, but we are told she is very busy with her career as a fashion journalist.  There is more to his concern for her, but we shall see that soon.

There is something poignant in him, this dapper career army officer with the trim mustache, when his mates remark that it must be boring to visit a country parson for Christmas, but Mr. Williams confides that he once wanted to be a clergyman.  When he was a young man, his father offered him two choices: go into the army or to the church.  When Williams replied he wanted to become a clergyman, his father laughed at him, “and I found myself at Sandhurst.”  Sandhurst, of course, is the British military academy.

Fathers have a lot to answer for in this movie, as one way or another, they are the deciders of their children’s futures.

The last member of the family is currently in the British army, too, but he is a lowly enlisted man fulfilling his couple of years of “national service.”  He is Sir Ralph’s son, played by Denholm Elliot, and he also has a choice waiting for him when his service is completed.  His father is saving his meager clergyman’s salary to send his son to Cambridge University, but Mr. Elliot, a roguish, boyish scamp, wants nothing to do with higher education when he gets out of the army.  He doesn’t seem to know how to tell his father.  There are many strong and wistful characters in the movie, but Elliot just seems weak, and maybe that happens when so many about one are strong.

Now we come to Celia Johnson, busily decorating (with holly branches) and cooking and preparing for the family Christmas. We might expect her to be a sentimental homebody, but there is a hard edge to her that suggests something more under the surface.  Though she dotes on her father and briskly handles the hostess duties for this family holiday, she seems to steel herself with a resolute sense of duty, rather than enjoying her position in the family. 

She has a problem.  Unknown to her family, she has a fiancé, played by John Gregson.  He is an engineer, and has a job lined up in South America for the next five years and wants to take her with him.  They are not children; they are in their thirties, their lives been on hold for many years due to her late mother’s illness, passing, and her father’s needing her.  She turns him down, but Mr. Gregson continues to implore her to reconsider.  He thinks her younger sister should take a turn at looking after the old man.  Naturally, no one considers the son to be an appropriate caregiver; he has an education, a career, and one day, a family of his own to pursue, as is the prerogative of male children.

“I don’t know what I’d do without her,” her father exclaims more than once, meaning it to be a compliment, but we flinch, as she does, because it is a burden.

The guests arrive, and the uncle, Hugh Williams, explains Margaret Leighton’s absence with the excuse that she has the flu.  That is a lie, and he will feel foolish when she finally arrives by herself.

She is a sophisticated Londoner now, a professional.  Her father admires her success and takes an interest in her work, fusses over her when she comes home, but she is distant with everybody except Uncle Hugh, with whom she appears to have a comfortable relationship.  He knows her secret, but protects her privacy.

Aunt Maureen Delany, with her caustic Irish manner of being funny without realizing it, scoffs at Celia Johnson’s sacrificing her future to care for her father, reminding her that she did the same and regrets it.  “There I was stuck looking after me mother until I’m 45 and my figure gone.”

Celia Johnson, considering the holly branch in her hand, notes it has a bitter smell when broken, as in the song, “bitter as any gall.”

The aunts feel the father should retire, move to smaller digs that would enable him to care for himself, thereby sparing Ceilia any further responsibility for him, but Sir Ralph, who does not know about his daughter’s fiancé or his son’s wish to not go to university, has no intention of retiring.  He feels vital and vibrant still, despite always needing someone to hand him his galoshes.  Yet, he also has regrets about his work.

He knows that during his Christmas sermon, one of thousands he has written in his lifetime, his congregation would rather be home, “basting the Christmas goose.”

Meanwhile in the kitchen, the sisters have a showdown while washing dishes.  Celia comes out with her problem and asks her sister to stay and look after Pop, but Miss Leighton refuses. 

Celia observes, “You’ve grown hard.”

Margaret replies, “Life does change people.”

Celia notices that her sister is not happy, and finally gets her secret from her.  Miss Leighton had an American lover during the war, and he was killed.  She was pregnant.  The mores of the day made coming home to her parents with this problem difficult for her, but worse, she felt, since her father was a minister.

Her child was born, and she kept him and raised him with the help of a friend in the city.  She named her baby boy Simon, and apparently enjoyed motherhood even as she kept the secret from her family.  Simon died six months earlier, just before her mother, of meningitis. 

Coping with this heartache meant drinking, and Uncle Hugh kept both secrets from the clan, letting Margaret lean on him when she chose. 

Celia Johnson is surprised and moved, and understands the awkwardness of telling their father.  Margaret remarks offhandedly, “He thinks of me as someone I no longer am.”

Christmas and its preparations are painful for her, and yet something has brought her home.  Perhaps it is no longer needing to hide Simon.

As cranky as Aunt Maureen Delany is, she’s the one to answer the door to carolers and drops coins in their box. 

As the older relatives settle for a quiet Christmas Eve night around the fire and each other’s company, Margaret Leighton and brother Denholm Elliot head out for the movies, which dour Aunt Maureen thinks is scandalous, and even Sir Ralph sheds some of his affability by remarking with disgust that the cinema has more influence in the lives of people than the church does.

Later on, son and daughter both return drunk.  They have not gone to the cinema.  Margaret Leighton passes out on the floor, and Denholm Elliot has found the courage from the bottle to shout at his father and accuse him of being someone who cannot be told the truth.

The tense, dramatic scene melts into the next morning, Christmas Day, with the bachelor uncle quietly coming down the stairs with a few wrapped presents to place under the scraggly tabletop tree.  There’s something quite poignant about that, but we never get more info on the uncle.  Miss Leighton plans to leave this morning, not able to endure anymore Christmas with her family, and he will drive her to the train station. 

Denholm Elliot, no worse for wear for a night drinking, and not even particularly shamefaced about it, offers a begrudging apology to his father, and there is a nicely framed scene of their difficult discussion through the branches of the tree, with the Christmas tree between them.  Sir Ralph demands to know why he cannot be told the truth, and the son finally explains that because he is a clergyman, his children cannot come to him with their problems.  He tells Sir Ralph about Margaret’s issues and that Celia wants to get married and go to South America.

He's crushed and feels like a failure as a father, just as he has often felt ineffectual as a minister.  “I’ve been of no use to you.”

But despite what his children believe is his innocence due to a religious life, their father manfully tackles this problem and their image of him head-on.  In another nicely framed scene, he sits on the stairs with his daughter Margaret and confronts her, and expresses heartfelt sympathy and understanding for all she has experienced.  He takes charge and provides the guidance she needs and proves, as he states, “Do you think that because I’m a parson I know nothing about life?” 

He knows more than they do, and in his empathy, shows far more sophistication than his children.  As a clergyman, moreover, he is distressed that their impression of him means he has been distorting and misrepresenting religion.  He warns her not to turn her back on life. 

Margaret Leighton, suddenly as if a great weight is lifted on her shoulders, decides to stay, not only for the rest of the Christmas family holiday, but to remain with her father (one suspects he needs no one but she needs him), so that Celia Johnson can marry her beau and take off for South America.

The son seems to have no great resolution for his complaints, but perhaps they were petty after all and he just needs a little more growing up to do.  Quite possibly his bellowing sergeant may knock the self-pity out of him, if not his mischieviousness.

The end credits roll as they head off next door to church to watch the old man do his thing.  One senses it is without a sense of obligation this time, but rather a sense of pride that they gather in the back pew for a little Christmas magic.

 

Next week, Christmas Day, we’ll have a look at some Hollywood stars’ voicing 1960s and 1970s television Christmas cartoons.

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GIFTS FOR THE CLASSIC FILM FAN!!!!!!!

Christmas in Classic Films provides a roster of old movies with scenes to conjure Christmas of days gone by.  Makes a nice gift, if you know an old movie buff, or if you just like to give presents to yourself.  

The paperback is available at Amazon, but also here at Barnes & Noble.

The hardcover, so far, is available only at Amazon.

Here are a few other classic movie books I've written for your gift-giving pleasure:

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. - for sale in paperback and hardcover at Amazon,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Ingram,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Barnes & Noble.

And in paperback here at Walmart.

Hollywood Fights Fascism -  here in paperback at Amazon.

Movies in Our Time - here in paperback at Amazon.

And all of these books are available as well at my page on Bookshop.org, which helps support independent bookstores.

 

 

 

 

 

Bush Christmas (1947)

Bush Christmas (1947) is a window on a world of the past that seems almost fanciful, to our modern perspective, as to be dreamlike, but it existed. This era, this world, was more hardscrabble than many of us might understand, and yet there was a simplicity that brought joy and freedom in ways we might also find difficult to imagine.

This all sounds rather airy, but I think this is the impression one leaves with at the end of the movie.  In its way, it may not leave us (at least in America) with Christmas nostalgia, but it does evoke nostalgia for the imagination and adventure of childhood.

The movie was an Australian-British production, filmed by director Ralph Smart with the intention of making a children’s movie for the British market, specifically for what were “cinema clubs” – Saturday matinees.  Showing British kids stories of the then Empire countries in this post-World War II era was an important and entertaining way to bolster ties between them. 

John McCallum, a popular Australian actor who appeared in numerous British movies, narrates the movie.  Chips Rafferty, a then up-and-coming Australian movie star is given top billing and plays one of the bad guys.  Most of the cast featured adults with minor film or stage experience in Australia, and they are secondary to the children in the movie, who get most of the screen time and most of the rather scant dialogue.  

Some of the kids had some radio experience, and Helen Grieve, who plays Helen, had done a previous film with Chips Rafferty.  She is the oldest child and more polished than the others, but even the inexperience of the other kids and the few lines they say to each other are astonishingly irrelevant to the success of the movie.  From McCallum’s introduction to the film that sets us in the Australian Outback, telling us of an event that happened last year, we are lulled into a comfortable storytime. 

We are reminded at the outset by the narrator that in Australia, Christmas occurs during summertime.  The kids in the story are just being let out of school for the Christmas holidays, and they joyously run from the little Outback schoolhouse to—their horses. Already, we’re astonished at how different their world may be to ours.

The children are played by Helen Grieve, the oldest; Nick Yardley and Morris Unicomb as her younger brothers; and Michael Yardley as a British boy who is in Australia as one of the kids evacuated from Great Britain during the Blitz.  The narrator tells us that he is home in England by now (it being 1947). 

The other member of their group is an Aboriginal child named Neza, played by Neza Saunders, who was discovered at a mission station.  He, like the other kids, is given little to say but is quite natural and unaffected.  The native people are always referred to as The Blacks in the movie, and though he is clearly one of the gang, riding away from the school on his horse (though we don’t know if he actually attends with them), we see that the other kids still regard him as a “type” rather than a person.  When he won’t join them on a ride to a certain place, saying it is a bad place, they scoff at his superstition. When they smear soot on their faces to pretend they are commandos, they laugh when he copies them because his skin is already dark.  

Though Neza, through his knowledge of bushcraft, actually keeps them alive when they are alone in the Outback, they are not above seeing him as clownish. Likewise, Old Jack, played by Clyde Combo, is also played by an Aboriginal actor and he helps to track the kids when they are missing. He is shown as a knowledgeable stockman employed by the kids’ father, and without him, they might still be missing.

For the most part, however, Neza is given due attention by the director as an authentic and interesting part of life in Australia to British kids who will never travel there.

The kids, on a detour on their way home, come across two men played by Chips Rafferty and John Fernside, who discuss horses with them.  They want to buy horses, and the kids supply information on who in the valley has the best horses to sell.  These men are actually horse thieves scouting the area.  They give two bob (which is two shillings) each to the kids to not tell anyone they were there, giving the excuse that they want to buy the horses before rival horse traders can get to them.  This all seems innocent enough to the kids, so they take the money and promise not to tell.  When Helen gets uncomfortable with this, they go back to return the money, but the men are gone.

When the kids return home to the ranch, or “station” as they are called in Australia, they tell their father that they are late because of a Christmas party at school. 

They are preparing for Christmas at home, too.  All of them look forward to a trip to “the city” where they will buy presents for each other. Their father is played by Pat Penny and their mother is played by Thelma Grigg.

When horses are stolen in the valley that evening, including a valuable mare and foal from their father, the kids put two-and-two together and realize they allowed the bad guys to do this.  They confess, dad is angry, and the kids feel that they must be responsible and make it right.

So they tell their parents they’re going camping for a couple days at a nearby watering hole, which evidently is nothing to worry about because their parents don’t.  The kids’ real plan, however, is to trail the bad guys, with Neza’s expert help, and bring back the stolen horses.

What follows is an adventure that for all its daring, doesn’t really seem improbable, given the remote location and the obvious independence of the children, most of whom appear to be under 12 years old.

They track the bad guys, now joined by a third ruffian played by Stan Tolhurst. One of the men, Fernside, is a bit of a lazy oaf, but all three appear to be quite dangerous, so this is no tale of smart kids besting a bunch of adult buffoons.  There is real danger present, both from the rustlers and from the unforgiving environment.  At one point, the kids run out of provisions and Neza shows them how to live off the land by eating cooked snake and live grubs.  They’re willing to try the snake, but the grubs don’t go over as well. 

It reminds me of a painting I bought when I was in the Outback many years ago (which I mentioned in this previous post on A Town Like Alice (1956). The painting on fabric, called “Bush Tucker” shown here, depicts snake, frog, and grub cuisine by Aboriginal artist Julie Nabangardi Shedden. Tucker is Australian slang for food.

A testament to the kids’ independence is the reaction of their parents when, after some days, the kids don’t return from their camping trip.  Mother decorates a spindly tabletop scrub pine, and in an unworried tone, “Time the children were home.” 

Father responds, “Probably forgot what day it is.”

Though the kids are resourceful when they catch up to the bad guys—stealing their boots and food when they sleep, and pushing small boulders down a hilly trail to keep from being caught when the bad guys are after them—there is real suspense, particularly in a few harrowing moments when young Michael loses his glasses and stumbles too close to a cliff.

There is a happy ending, where horses have been returned and the local constable, finding the bad guys through trailing the kids, proclaims, “These kids have proved themselves to be good citizens.”  Certainly, a compliment not often heard today, nor aspired to, but quaint to hear.

Their Christmas lunch around the table, the family, and Neza, all wearing the traditional paper crowns from their Christmas crackers, enjoy their mince pies and Christmas pudding, traditional English fare that migrated here. 

Next week, we take the traditional English Christmas back to Blighty with The Holly and the Ivy (1952), and a rather untraditional Christmas story.

Bush Christmas is here on YouTube.

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GIFTS FOR THE CLASSIC FILM FAN!!!!!!!

Christmas in Classic Films provides a roster of old movies with scenes to conjure Christmas of days gone by.  Makes a nice gift, if you know an old movie buff, or if you just like to give presents to yourself.  

The paperback is available at Amazon, but also here at Barnes & Noble.

The hardcover, so far, is available only at Amazon.

Here are a few other classic movie books I've written for your gift-giving pleasure:

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. - for sale in paperback and hardcover at Amazon,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Ingram,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Barnes & Noble.

And in paperback here at Walmart.

Hollywood Fights Fascism -  here in paperback at Amazon.

Movies in Our Time - here in paperback at Amazon.

And all of these books are available as well at my page on Bookshop.org, which helps support independent bookstores.

 

Toyland Premiere - 1934

Toyland Premiere (1934) unites favorite studio theme of a gathered cast of caricatured movie stars – with Santa Claus.  Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is the host for this holiday party, more about gags and mischief than seasonal joy or, heaven forbid, peace on earth.

We discussed several cartoons that featured caricatures of Hollywood stars in this previous post.  This escapade in Toyland Premiere brings us cartoon images of Tarzan, Shirley Temple, Frankenstein’s Monster (this is a Universal cartoon, if you haven’t figured it out by now), and Bing Crosby, who croons a brief hello.  Shirley sounds more like Betty Boop.  There are others in tow, but highlighted are Laurel and Hardy, whom we visited last week in Babes in Toyland (1934).

Santa arrives at the party, after a slow start in his workshop when he discovers his famous red suit has been eaten by moths. Helpful elves spray paint his blue coveralls red and slap some popcorn strings on him to simulate the white fur trim – hey, it’s the Depression.  We have to make do.

Oswald gets Santa to make an appearance at a large downtown department store, and a parade of giant balloons, not unlike the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, greets him. On the toy department floor is where the party and the Hollywood stars await him.  

It turns into a bit of a melee when Laurel and Hardy are prevented from eating cake by the Frankenstein Monster, who growls at them and warns them off.  They get stuck in a dragon suit and are attacked by toy soldiers, not unlike the ones in Babes in Toyland, made the same year (see this previous post from last week) which is probably the inspiration for this scene.  A little cross-publicity never hurts.

Santa laughs at all this and the cartoon ends suddenly and without any explicable conclusion.  I suppose most Christmas parties are like that.  Except for the Frankenstein Monster part, but I’ve never met your friends, so I don’t know with whom you associate.

We’ll revisit Hollywood stars’ representation in Christmas cartoons in a few weeks when we conclude our annual Christmas series of posts, but for the next two weeks, we’re going to take a detour to other parts of the globe.  Next week, Bush Christmas (1947) will take us to Australia.

***********************************

GIFTS FOR THE CLASSIC FILM FAN!!!!!!!

Christmas in Classic Films provides a roster of old movies with scenes to conjure Christmas of days gone by.  Makes a nice gift, if you know an old movie buff, or if you just like to give presents to yourself.  

The paperback is available at Amazon, but also here at Barnes & Noble.

The hardcover, so far, is available only at Amazon.

Here are a few other classic movie books I've written for your gift-giving pleasure:

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. - for sale in paperback and hardcover at Amazon,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Ingram,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Barnes & Noble.

And in paperback here at Walmart.

Hollywood Fights Fascism -  here in paperback at Amazon.

Movies in Our Time - here in paperback at Amazon.

And all of these books are available as well at my page on Bookshop.org, which helps support independent bookstores.

Babes in Toyland - 1934

Babes in Toyland (1934) stars Laurel and Hardy in a fairytale land battling evil and proving that virtue conquers all.  There’s quite a bit of bumbling going on, but it all comes out right in the end.

The boys are boarders in the shoe of the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe.  They work in a toy shop which, we may be surprised to learn, is a supplier to Santa Claus.  Perhaps his elves were on strike, otherwise why would there be this outsourcing?  There were a lot of strikes in the Great Depression; quite possibly the elves had poor working conditions and low pay and no coffee breaks.  Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong! 

Charlotte Henry plays Little Bo Peep, who keeps losing her sheep.  She’s got an even more dreadful problem, however.  A villain named Silas Barnaby, played with old-time mellerdramer exaggeration by Henry Brandon (even his makeup is exaggerated), lusts after the winsome shepherdess.  Bo Peep is also a resident of the shoe, on which there is a mortgage – held by Barnaby, of course.  He demands of the Old Woman, played by Florence Roberts, that she force Bo Beep to marry him, otherwise, he will take her shoe.  The big one that they live in.  She’s behind in payments.  It’s the Depression.

Meanwhile, Tom-Tom, the Piper’s Son, played by Felix Knight, is in love with Bo Peep, and after a duet or two, we see the feeling’s mutual.  He’s a trilling tenor (it’s a musical, of sorts), but he is no match for the persevering evil Henry Brandon as Barnaby.  Here’s where Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee step in, and that’s Stan and Ollie.

At first, they plan to take their life savings ($1.48) to pay off the mortgage, but failing that, they hope to ask their toyshop boss, played by curmudgeonly William Burress, for a loan. 

But the boss fires them for making a huge mistake…and it is huge.  The toy soldiers they were to make on order for Santa (because his long-suffering elves are on strike for a decent wage and an end to child-elf labor), have been made the wrong size.  They’re HUGE, a little bigger than life size, and when they are wound up (actually, just push a button on their backs), they clomp around like Frankenstein’s monster and are almost as scary.

The boys try to steal the mortgage document from Barnaby, Ollie nearly gets drowned in a judicial ducking, and Bo Peep, trying to save the Old Woman’s home, tearfully agrees to marry the villain.  Stan bursts into tears.  “Upset?  I’m housebroken!”

The whole menagerie of Mother Goose (who’s also there, played by Virginia Karns and sings “Toyland”) characters live in the snug little village, and we might be reminded of the later Wizard of Oz (1939) set, but this one is in black and white.  It also has, like Oz, a race of monsters seemingly controlled by Barnaby, not unlike the flying moneys, called Bogeymen, who live in the dreadful Bogeyland.  They are creepy.  Their netherworld cavern reminds one a little of the lair of the Phantom of the Opera.

After much travail, Stan and Ollie save the day with their earlier mistake – the giant toy soldiers.  They are put into action and in the movie’s climax, the battalion vanquishes the hideous Bogeymen and Barnaby, to the tune of Victor Herbert’s “March of the Wooden Soldiers.”  Some of them are figures brought to life with stop-motion animation, and in other scenes are actors.  I think the most striking scene is when one of them, in Frankenstein monster-like fashion, bursts through a wall and loses his head.  It’s funny and upsetting at the same time.

Another weird and creepy creature is a money-like Mickey Mouse.  It’s his earlier version, but it’s seeing him alive and hopping around and teasing a cat that puts one off.  Definitely, not our beloved and recognizable Mickey.

The movie has since been colorized, but the original black-and-white version is still available, including on YouTube.  For many a Boomer, this was a beloved annual holiday tradition, despite its flaws.  I can’t say it was in my house—there were other movies that were considered “musts” for the holiday season, but I think any time spent with Laurel and Hardy is well worth it.

Next week, we’ll have another visit to a mythical toyland with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in Toyland Premiere (1934).

Until then, may I wish Americans here and abroad a very Happy Thanksgiving!

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Christmas in Classic Films provides a roster of old movies with scenes to conjure Christmas of days gone by.  Makes a nice gift, if you know an old movie buff, or if you just like to give presents to yourself.  

The paperback is available at Amazon, but also here at Barnes & Noble.

The hardcover, so far, is available only at Amazon.

Here are a few other classic movie books I've written for your gift-giving pleasure:

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. - for sale in paperback and hardcover at Amazon,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Ingram,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Barnes & Noble.

And in paperback here at Walmart.

Hollywood Fights Fascism -  here in paperback at Amazon.

Movies in Our Time - here in paperback at Amazon.

And all of these books are available as well at my page on Bookshop.org, which helps support independent bookstores.