One week to go until the Caftan Woman's Blogathon!

One more week to go until we launch the Caftan Woman's Blogathon!  If you haven't signed up, or haven't chosen a topic yet, you still have time!

See you next Friday, May 6th!

Happy Birthday, chum.

 I hope the birthday cake in heaven is pretty spectacular, Paddy.   Blessings to your loved ones today.

The Caftan Woman Blogathon – Honoring Patricia Nolan-Hall

 

“The Caftan Woman Blogathon – Honoring Patricia Nolan-Hall” will be hosted here at Another Old Movie Blog and by Patty at Lady Eve’s Reel Life on Friday, May 6^th.

On March 7^th, the classic film blogger world lost one of its greatest writers and champions of classic film, Patricia Nolan-Hall, also known as The Caftan Woman, the name of her delightful blog.  You can visit her blog here.

Paddy was very supportive of other bloggers, and eagerly contributed to many blogathons, always graciously commenting on the posts of others.  It seems fitting to celebrate her time with us with a special blogathon in her honor.

Here’s the banner above, designed by Patty Schneider, to place on your blog to advertise the blogathon. (The photo of Paddy is courtesy of her sister, Maureen Nolan, used by permission.)

The range of topics on which to write is wide open, since Paddy’s interest and knowledge of pop culture was quite broad.  You might post on a movie or TV show she liked and wrote about, a genre you both loved, or about any topic she discussed on her blog (it wasn’t always about TV or movies), or about a comment she might have left on your own blog. You may post on any music, TV, or films from the silent film era through the 1960s, or spotlight stars or character actors from those decades.  Share your memories, the laughs, and the inspiration of this witty and kindly woman.

You can name your topic by leaving a comment on this post.  A blogathon page with all the entries will be posted here at Another Old Movie Blog and Lady Eve’s Reel Life on Friday, May 6^th.  When you publish your post, link back to that page and leave a comment with your link so we can update the roster.

Be sure to visit each other’s posts and comment.  You know Paddy would.

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Another Old Movie Blog -- The Case of Charlie Chan and The Caftan Woman.

Make Mine Film Noir --   Union Station (1950)

A Shroud of Thoughts -- Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Final Fade-Out"

Once Upon a Screen -- Remember Caftan Woman and her Words

Lady Eve's Reel Life -- Champagne for Caesar (1950)

Pale Writer -- Our Dancing Daughters (1928)

A Person in the Dark -- The Binding Ties Made of Film

Hometowns to Hollywood -- TBD

Laura's Miscellaneous Musings --  Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952)

Let Yourself Go...To Old Hollywood -- Ida Lupino, TBD

The Stop Button -- Ball of Fire (1941)

Vienna's Classic Hollywood -- Paul Lukas

By Rich Watson -- Saturday Night at the Movies

Moon in Gemini -- Ride the High Country (1962)

Paula’s Cinema Club -- Powell & Pressburger

Realweegiemidget Reviews -- Comments by Caftan Woman

Dubism -- Caftan Woman’s Sports Education -- A Prime Example of Her Support for Bloggers 

Shadows and Satin -- Man of the West (1958)

Silver Screen Modes -- Treasure Island: From Page to Screen to Cable

Taking Up Room -- The Patsy (1928)

Movies Silently: William S. Hart -- TBD

Silver Screenings -- The Secret Garden (1949)

Outspoken & Freckled -- The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

Silent-ology -- Supporting Actors of the Silent Era

The Old Hollywood Garden -- Paddy's positive impact, TBD

In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood -- The Proud Rebel  (1958)

Classic Film Observations & Obsessions -- Harry Carey, Sr. Film -- TBD

Rick’s Real/Reel Life -- The Women (1939)

Hometowns to Hollywood -- Betty Grable's Hometown

Spellbound with Beth Ann -- TBD

Crítica Retrô --  Fitzwilly (1967)

18 Cinema Lane -- The Song of Bernadette (1943)

Kristina at Speakeasy --  “An Appreciation” of Paddy

Peter Gunn meets Diahann Carroll - "Sing a Song of Murder"

Peter Gunn (1958-1961) was a unique program, one would hope to say a forerunner in its genre, except that it was not a forerunner.  There has been nothing since to compare with it, it stands alone.

This is my entry in the 8^th Annual Favorite TV Show Blogathon at the A Shroud of Thoughts blog, see more bloggers here.

Gunn was a private eye.  Both the character and the show were vastly stylistically different from private eye programs then or since.  Played by tall, handsome Craig Stevens, Gunn was intelligent, witty, dressed with tailored, conservative, Madison Avenue-sans-a-belt chic, more Ivy-leaguer than back-alley gumshoe.  Not that Gunn didn’t find himself tailed into back alleys, and there was plenty of shooting and punching in what was generally a half-hour show filled with requisite violence in between commercials. 

But Peter Gunn was not the usual glum, hard-drinking private eye who trusted neither dames nor the police, who were usually rivals.  Gunn enjoyed a monogamous relationship with girlfriend Edie, played by Lola Albright.  She was a singer at Mother’s bar and jazz club.  Mother was played by Hope Emerson in the first season, and by Minerva Urecal the last two seasons.

Gunn didn’t have an office with his name on the door.  Mother’s was his “office” where they took phone messages for him.  Gunn was a connoisseur of “cool” jazz that was flying eastward from California in those days.  Henry Mancini wrote the Peter Gunn theme, a tune so unrelentingly cool and forever identifiable with Peter.

There was jazz in each episode, and the start of the show usually featured a short ripple of thumping bass to glide us into the action, before a burst of trumpet flashed the title of the show across the screen.

Peter was not bitter, hardened like other TV or movie PI’s, but he was serious and questioning.  But with that slight amused smirk whenever he spoke to suspects, criminals, stool pigeons or even Mother and Edie, he seemed to find life an enjoyable and entertaining puzzle that he watched like a fly on the wall.

Perhaps this studied air contributed to his appearance of aloofness, though he was also engaged with his work, his ladylove – with whom scenes of sultry passion occur at astonishing sudden moments of simple “helloes.”

Rather than an adversarial relationship with the local police, Gunn had a teasing, but ultimately mutually respectful relationship with Lt. Jacoby, played with sarcasm that was somehow self-deprecating by the wonderful Herschel Bernardi.  They jabbed each other with brotherly insults, but always came to each other’s rescue.

There were others in Gunn’s orbit and his relationships with them show a lot about Craig Stevens’ deftness at playing the role, and at creator/producer/sometimes writer and director Blake Edwards’ intelligent creativity.  Gunn always smoothly sat down when talking to informant Babby, played by Billy Barty.  One suspects this was not just because Mr. Stevens was tall and Mr. Barty was a “little person,” but rather because the director knew that sitting to make himself less towering over the little man was part of Gunn’s empathetic character and not just for the convenience of a camera shot.  Gunn never uttered "small” jokes, and if he smiled it was because Babby was a pool shark of no little bravado, who gave valuable information but expected to be well paid for it like the businessman he was.

Gunn was inevitably courtly to women, and indeed, treated “Mother” protectively, like his mother.  For an ultra-cool guy who liked jazz, had an upscale apartment with tasteful works of art, Gunn was a square, and daring to be so may have been his coolest moments.  He charged a high fee for his talents, but sometimes did pro bono work if his heart was touched.  He was a conundrum, and that was the most special quality about him.  You couldn’t figure him out, and you’d come back episode after episode to try to do just that.

The episode I chose for this blogathon, “Sing a Song of Murder,” could be seen as a landmark episode in the history of television, but was just another day in the life of Peter Gunn.  Diahann Carroll guest stars as a lovely singer in swank jazz club, whose life is in danger.  She is the focal point of the episode.  It aired March 7, 1960, marking a breezy new decade in which Peter Gunn seemed more at home than the 1950s.  

In two years, Diahann Carroll would be the first Black actress to win Broadway’s Tony Award, and in eight more years, she would be the first female Black actress to star in her own television show in a non-stereotyped role:  Julia (1968-1971), but it had been only four years since Nat King Cole’s TV show debuted and was canceled, and opportunities for Black actresses mostly involved domestics.  It was no big deal having her on Peter Gunn; Pete took it for granted she belonged anywhere she wanted to be.

The show opens with a funeral graveside service breaking up, and Pete is left standing in the cold, gray cemetery, the leafless early spring trees and bare branches, the collar of his trench coat turned up.  It’s not a double-breasted trench coat like Bogie wore of another generation, it’s the lapel-less model of the modern man, and Pete does not wear a fedora.  Like JFK, the next President, Pete doesn’t wear hats.

The mournful sound of a clarinet draws him to a man seated by a monument.  He has contacted Gunn to meet him here at this funeral, the funeral of his wife.  He is a down-and-out musician.  He thinks his wife has been murdered and he wants Pete to find the killer.  He can’t pay much, but Pete gently says, “We’ll work it out.”  One can see by his expression he isn’t sure there’s really a case here, and it might just be that this poor slob, who feels guilty about being away from his wife for so long and not being able to support her because he’s been sick, just can’t accept that she died and it isn’t anyone’s fault.

Pete visits a couple of his sources, one a kooky hack musician, and the other a glum bartender, and both know something but tell him very reluctantly because they want to do the right thing but don’t know what the right thing is.  It’s a common malady in Pete’s world.

He is directed to visit a bar across the river.  Pete lives in a town that is always nameless and through which runs a working port river that is always shrouded in fog and full of dead bodies.  He pulls his flashy car up to the classy joint, and we see he is being followed.  Pete’s always being followed.

Inside, a gorgeous Diahann Carroll, triple-strand of pearls at her throat, sings the sad ballad “Don't Worry 'Bout Me.”  In this episode, Miss Carroll gets to sing two songs straight through, which is unusual because Pete’s girlfriend Edie usually only gets to sing clips of songs before the camera shifts to another dead body going in the river.

She is followed by a tight combo; the horn has a mute.  Pete, his superior knowledge of cool jazz, releases a slight, appreciative smile as he watches her.  When he tries to speak to her after her number, she tells him she must change and to wait at the bar. 

She never shows up.  Pete pumps the dour manager, who reluctantly gives him the address of her apartment, because he wants to help but doesn’t know what’s the right thing to do.

When Pete enters the apartment, she has bolted out the window and onto the fire escape, and when he catches her, they have a sad, breathy conversation, looking like Tony and Maria in each other’s arms on the fire escape, and we have her back story.

She’s the down-and-out clarinetist’s wife.  She faked her death.  He’s just gotten out of prison, a jealous monster who wants to kill her.  A shot rings out.  Pete has been followed here.  (But of course) and now the jealous husband knows where she is.

Since the show is only a half hour, it’s surprising how much happens in every episode.  We move from quick action scenes to quiet dialogue and exposition, from another body plunked into the river, to Lt. Jacoby’s office where we discover a few missing pieces of the story.  Ultimately, they set up a sting where Diahann Carroll will return to the jazz club and perform, and hopefully, draw out the would-be killer so they can catch him.  Edie’s worried about her, but Diahann faces facts that she’s never going to be able to get on with her life if she keeps running.

At the club that night, Pete teases Lt. Jacoby, who is wearing a false mustache and pretending to be a waiter.  There are other cops undercover here, too.  In an intriguing ceiling-to-floor shot, Diahann steps into the spotlight, and we see, from behind an unknown man’s shoulder, a pistol being loaded.  Is he a cop?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Diahann sings “I’m Through with Love” and after the song, the jealous husband shows himself, but Lt. Jacoby gets his man.  Miss Carroll stays around to sing another set.

It’s just another night in the life of Peter Gunn, but a landmark night in television.

For more great posts on classic TV, visit the 8^th Annual Favourite TV Show Blogathon at Terence Towles Canote's A Shroud of Thoughts blog here.

This one's for you, Paddy.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.

Patricia Nolan-Hall, a.k.a. The Caftan Woman - Requiescat in Pace

 

Twitter photo - posted by Maureen Nolan

 

The classic film blogging community is mourning the loss of Patricia Nolan-Hall, known as Paddy, known as The Caftan Woman.

She was a lady of intelligence, keen humor, and enormous generosity.  I’ve posted before on this wonderful person here and also here, and her kind and insightful comments to my posts are peppered throughout this blog, but to really appreciate her knowledge of classic film and television, you need to read her blog here.

My deepest condolences to her family and friends, most especially to her beloved children and husband whom she shared with us; but also, to the classic film bloggers who loved her, and for whom as well this is a heartbreaking loss. 

Photo from The Caftan Woman blog

It would be fitting to hold an annual blogathon in her name, since she participated in so many and was such a faithful and supportive commenter on other’s blog posts.

I loved her, and one of my wishes in life was to one day meet her in person. I will think of her all my days and with every old movie I sit down to watch, wondering what she might have thought of it. We are lucky that she left a written record of so many.  It is a testament to her noble spirit that so many in our classic film blogging community who never met her will miss her so much.  I hope that tribute of their love and respect for her might be of some small comfort to her family.

May angels guide her to her rightful place in heaven, now that her valiant struggle is over.  She was, as her father might say, “a dandy.”

Slava Ukraini.

 

Hal Stanton - Grand Sheik - The Sons of the Desert

This is a tribute and a belated thank-you note to a gentleman who left me with warm and wonderful memories early in my childhood.  His name is Hal Stanton.  He was a big fan of Laurel and Hardy.

I've mentioned before on this blog that I never was really "introduced" to classic films as a child; there were just on TV, used as filler the way infomercials are now.  They were not curated, they were cut up with commercials, and they were on pretty much anytime -- at least until sign-off when TV went dark in the wee hours.  It was easy to become very familiar with classic films when I was young because they were easily accessible, and they were a daily part of free TV. 

Of course, in the 1960s, the 1940s were only "20 years ago," so the images we saw did not seem nearly as remote in the mists of time as they perhaps might today to a young person.

However, despite this world of old movies being easily navigable on a do-it-yourself basis, there were a few TV hosts out there who presented old movies, and Hal Stanton's beat was "The Wonderful World of Laurel and Hardy."  He hosted this show on Sunday afternoons from 1965 to 1968 on WWLP, Channel 22 in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Now, since I was only six years old in 1968, I suspect his show might have run in repeats afterward, just because I remember it so well.  My twin brother and I looked forward to the show and sat in front of the TV, mesmerized by the antics, with Mr. Stanton like an uncle figure making it seem that what we were watching was really important.  As I look back on those days, it seemed that John and I watched this show, just as we watched our favorite cartoons, in utter seriousness.  I don't remember laughing out loud at a cartoon until I was older, like maybe in my teens.  In early childhood, Laurel and Hardy going from job to job was, for me, a sober epic full of pitfalls and tragedies.  Like Dostoevsky, only with slapstick.

Hal Stanton lived his enjoyment of Laurel and Hardy.  He was Grand Sheik of the Night Owls "tent" of the international brotherhood of The Sons of the Desert.  He had joined in 1965, just about when his program started, and he founded the Night Owls branch of western Massachusetts.

Born in Pennsylvania, he later settled in western Mass., worked for a number of movie theaters, eventually retiring as an executive after a long career with Bay State Film Productions.  He was 86 when he passed in 1998.  Mr. Stanton actually corresponded with Stan Laurel for a couple years in the early 1960s and even spoke with him once by phone, which he recorded and played on his show.

There are, as I understand it, some 150 "tents" of The Sons of the Desert worldwide, and they gather to have a dinner and watch Laurel and Hardy films, with hearty toasts, and fez hats, and blazers with the club escutcheon, parodying the fraternal groups that Laurel and Hardy lampooned in The Sons of the Desert (1933).

Mr. Stanton was also a Shriner and a Mason, so perhaps he embraced the silliness of The Sons of the Desert with the aplomb of one who knows how fraternal organizations should be conducted.  Of course, The Sons of the Desert was not a service organization like the Shriners or the Masons, but it did do a kindness to two little kids watching solemnly on Sunday afternoons, as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy tried their best, once again, to get out of another scrape.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.

Public Domain Day - 2022

Once again, annually, we have a look at this year’s batch of copyrighted films that as of January 1^, 2022, will enter U.S. public domain.  This year includes movies made in 1926.  I would note that, additionally, this year some 400,000 sound recordings made before 1923 will enter public domain.

Some of the movies from 1926 that are now in public domain include:

Battling Butler with Buster Keaton

The Son of the Sheik with Rudolph Valentino

Don Juan with John Barrymore, Mary Astor, and Warner Oland

3 Bad Men – which we covered here in this previous post.  

Beau Geste with Ronald Colman

La Bohème by King Vidor with Lillian Gish

Flesh and the Devil – John Gilbert and Greta Garbo

The General with Buster Keaton – which we covered here in this previous post.  

Here are previous posts on Public Domain Day 2020 and 2021.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.

Requiescat in pace - Sidney Poitier

Sidney Poitier, a young Bahamian-American who failed his first acting audition when he was a teen because he could not read the script (was, as he recalled in interviews, tutored for weeks by an elderly Jewish waiter to learn to read and to pass his audition to join the American Negro Theater), became a giant in the acting profession, a leader in social causes, a diplomat, and a role model.

He was driven and he was talented, and he was truly great in that he aspired to and achieved greatness.  He can be admired for many achievements in his life, but what I will miss most about him is that he was a man of his era.  I will miss the movies of deep social comment that don't seem to be made anymore, and I will miss an era of elegance and glamor at the Oscars that has long since faded away under the auspices of a cruder generation that doesn't seem to know how to behave in such a venue, or indeed, in public.

I'm glad Sir Sidney came to us when he did, and was not struggling to launch his career in films in say, the 1930s when the kinds of films which he made in the 1950s and 1960s were not being made.  He was a man of his time, thankfully, and we are the better for that.

Vigilance against evil.

The blog goes dark today in remembrance of the fascist coup attempted one year ago, the greatest threat to our democracy this country has ever known. Prayers for the arrest, indictment, and incarceration of all the filthy traitors who participated in any way.

Happy New Year! ...and book cover reveal

This is to wish you all a very Happy New Year!

And to reveal the cover of my upcoming book, Christmas in Classic Films.  It's a collection of essays from this blog and some new material, and though I had intended it to come out this month, some other things got in the way and so I'll be offering it as a pre-order on Amazon probably sometime in the spring, with publication at the end of next summer at several online shops.  I'll keep you posted.

The design is by your friend and mine, Casey Koester, whom you might know from her excellent Noir Girl blog, which I encourage you to visit.

Thank you all for the pleasure of your company this year.  See you in 2022!

A Christmas Story - 1983

 

A Christmas Story (1983) perhaps unlike any other Christmas movie, has reached icon stage in American pop culture.  Its meteoric rise in stature—to the level where the house in Cleveland where some exterior scenes were shot has been turned into a tourist attraction, and Major Award Leg Lamps are to be found for sale as T-shirts, earrings, tree ornaments and actual lamps.  The movie’s dialogue has become a universal language.  Even hallowed favorites among classic film fans like White Christmas (1954) or Christmasin Connecticut (1945) have not become so widely quoted, merchandized, or watched.

This is the final film in our series on holiday movies.  I’ll link to the other movies we discussed below.  This series was meant to lead up to the release of my newest book—a collection of essays on Christmas classic films, but life, as the saying goes, got in the way.  That book will have to wait a little longer, and I’ll discuss that more next week.

While I don’t personally consider A Christmas Story a classic film (my criteria follows that it must be produced before 1965), nobody who loves classic films can deny the special attraction this movie has for classic film fans.  It achieves a unique quality of being a “retro” movie by virtue of its setting in about 1940, but unlike other movies, even very good and well-researched movies set in the 1930s and 1940s, it accomplishes this with effortless submersion into a world that most viewers, even in 1983, did not remember personally but understood instinctually.  This was achieved without mawkishness, or parody.  Though the movie is clearly a love letter to the era, it is never sentimental, and yet is it still without the brutish pseudo-sophisticated sarcasm of modern films and TV shows.

It is a look at the travails of Christmas through the eyes of a child, yet it is narrated by the adult the child has become and we also see the parents’ and other grown-ups’ view of things.  There is no linear story, but the movie is told in splintered vignettes woven together as Christmas draws ever closer, with the anticipation of marking off the calendar.

Directed by Bob Clark (who also has a short role as “Swede,” the guy to whom Ralphie’s father brags about his Major Award), the movie was co-written by humorist Jean Shepherd (who also appears briefly in line waiting for Santa) from his series of semi-autobiographical stories.

Peter Billingsley had the role of a lifetime as Ralphie, a wide-eyed bespectacled kid who is innocent but not naïve, and who desperately wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, despite being warned by every grown-up he encounters that “You’ll shoot your eye out.”

Darren McGavin is his father, or “the Old Man.”  I love him in this role.  He is the perfect curmudgeon with the soft heart who eventually grants the boy’s wish.  His thrill at watching his son open the box is priceless.  His grumpiness is true to life and hysterical.  My favorite line of his: “You used up all the glue on purpose!”  He reminds me of my own father.

Melinda Dillon is the mother, who in every way is the perfect consort to the blustering McGavin.  I will say, though, the only thing I don’t like about the movie is her hairdo.  It should have been more of a 1940s style.  She looks too modern.  Her battle at getting Randy into the snowsuit is epic.

Ian Petrella plays Randy, and Ralphie’s pals are R. D. Robb as Schwartz, Scott Schwartz as Flick, and the bully Scut Farkus is played by Zach Ward and his toady Grover Dill is played by Yano Anaya.  The movie was made nearly 40 years ago and yet these guys will always be kids whose place in pop culture is so cemented as to override the fact that they were really just actors saying lines. 

Tedde Moore is the longsuffering teacher Miss Shields, who meets every obstacle with a raised eyebrow.  I love her arch inspiration of announcing to the students they are to be given the assignment of writing…a theme.

It’s hard to say if the blueprint of this movie—script, casting, storyboard, cinematography—is a masterwork of brilliance in the planning or if the sum total of the movie’s parts were just a happy accident.  There is a feel of serendipity about the film and where it takes us.

The details are there to enjoy that have little to do with the plot: the teacher’s drawer full of confiscated trinkets including Big Little books (I had some, did you?), and my favorite, the Terry and the Pirates comic strip on the back of the newspaper Darren McGavin is reading on Christmas morning.

The Orphan Annie decoder was a particular topic of discussion in my family, as my mother, who as a child in the 1930s—and a huge Orphan Annie fan (I learned the theme song at her knee as a young kid…”Who’s the little chatterbox, the one with pretty auburn locks? Whom do you see, it’s Little Orphan Annie….”)—and who could not afford to send for the decoder to get Annie’s secret messages, cleverly figured out the cipher key herself on paper.  She would not affirm that each message was about Ovaltine, the sponsor, but agreed the commercialism was pretty heavy-handed.

“Fragile—must be Italian,” and not sticking your tongue to cold metal are scenes so indelible this must be the one film where the plot—even though there is one—seems unnecessary at times.

We are taken on Ralphie’s rollercoaster emotions of the season and face trials of how to ask for the present he knows his parents won’t approve of, facing the frightening experience of a too-loud Santa in a line of fretful kids, an especially facing the awful bully.  Using the "oh fudge" line rather than explicitly using the vulgarity is actually funnier than if we had been allowed to hear Ralphie's uncensored slip into profanity, just as Mr. McGavin's indecipherable sputtering is funnier than if we had been able to understand his frustrated rant over the furnace. 

About the only aspect of Christmas missing from the movie that many of us would identify with is the religious themes and overtones, which we catch only a glimpse of at the beginning of the film with the church choir singing on the street corner.  Missing are the mysteries of the Nativity, which most kids comically mix up and about which they come to very strange conclusions.  I have always personally enjoyed the kids’ reenactment at church of the First Christmas with unruly shepherds, sheep that won’t stand still, and angels that shove Wise Men when they step on their line.  The theatricality of Christmas could be another movie, but it’s not something Ralphie has to endure. He has enough on his plate.

At the end of it, Ralphie gets his heart’s desire, and the adult voiceover rejoices and confirms that it was his best Christmas present that he would ever receive.

There is a poignant note of sadness in that.  Never to have topped the Christmas when you were eight years old?

Perhaps that is because as children, all our experiences, big and small, happy and sad, hit us so acutely.   It is not just believing in Santa or in wishes that come true, but rather that we live the season so passionately, down to our bones. 

We look for messages in Christmas films, if only because most of them, at least the modern Hallmark versions, bludgeon us with them.  If A Christmas Story has any message for us, it is just to take the holiday season for what it is, make the best of it, and keep your sense of humor.  And if there are any good memories, keep them.  Treasure them.  Stretch them in the retelling.  They will sustain us long after the much-desired presents of childhood have been broken and thrown out.

But the reason for the film's popularity and ascendance to pop culture icon is not only due to the film's excellence.  Many wonderful movies have not reached this stage of familiarity or have been entirely lost to us.  It is because of the canny repetitive broadcasting every year, not just once but several times, even an annual 24-hour marathon on one cable station. That, like Orphan Annie's Ovaltine "secret message" Ralphie was desperate to decode, is pure clever marketing.  There is nothing sentimental about that, but you can't argue with success.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. 

The films in this series were:

Cover Up (1949)

The Lemon Drop Kid (1951)

Fitzwilly (1967)

It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947)

Big Business (1929)

Beyond Tomorrow (1940)

 

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.