God Bless Us Every One

When you’re a theater critic, this is a very busy time of the year. This weekend, we are seeing the next two Christmas shows. We have already seen two different versions of A Christmas Carol and a weird show called Prime Time for the Holidays. Friday night we see The Christmas Story (with the kid who gets his tongue stuck to a metal post) and on Saturday a British panto version of Cinderella, a traditional holiday treat for one of the Sacramento theater companies.  Next week we see David Sedaris’ very funny Santaland Diaries about his experiences working as an elf one Christmas in Macy*s Santaland.. Then I think I can hang up my jingle bells until next year.

I’ve always enjoyed Christmas stories, but until I became a critic and started reviewing stageshows, they were all movies. I don't remember the first Christmas movie that I ever saw, but it was probably Miracle on 34th Street, which remains to this day my favorite Christmas movie. It had everything, especially magic that may or may not have been real. I still get chills at the end when they find the cane by the fireplace. The newer made for TV version just can’t hold a candle.  (For one thing, it doesn't have Natalie Wood!)

I love the old movies. Loretta Young looking luminous in The Bishop's Wife while Cary Grant plays an angel sent to earth to help her minister husband remember the real meaning of Christmas. Loretta also returns as Sister Margaret, with Celeste Holm as Sister Scholastica sent off, with nothing, by their Motherhouse to find land and build a hospital in Bethlehem, PA in Come to the Stable. Sappy tearjerker with both surprising and predictable twists.

I remember when there was a station that ran It's a Wonderful Life 24/7 from Thanksgiving Eve through Christmas day. It's a good movie, but I have pretty much had it with that movie. I avoid it like the plague.

However, I can see White Christmas over and over again. I don't even mind seeing the stage production of it (which I just reviewed recently–the stage show isn't nearly as good as the movie).

I love the original Christmas Carol story versions (I specify "original" because at their root, pretty much most Christmas movies contain all the same elements--a grinch, a good guy, a little kid, an element of magic, and a happy ending). From the Reginald Owen 1938 movie version down through the Muppet Christmas Carol they have all been good. It has been performed by humans, puppets, cartoon characters, dogs and muppets. Ebenezer Scrooge has been played by Lionel Barrymore, Stan Freberg, Vanessa Williams, Captain Picard, Frasier, Mr. Magoo and Scrooge McDuck among a host of others.

I even love the silly tear jerkers like Elf...though many wouldn't think of Elf as a tear jerker, but it has a tenderness to it that makes me tear up every time.

Nowadays we are flooded with Christmas movies. The Hallmark Channel becomes the Christmas Channel from Thanksgiving to Christmas, showing Christmas movies nonstop, the schlockier the better. I haven’t watched any of them in two years, protesting loss of Frasier and Golden Girls reruns.

There is one called The Christmas Gift, though, which stars John Denver, the only reason I watch this movie. I do like John Denver, even though his acting talents were somewhat iffy. In this movie, he played a widowed New York City architect who takes his young daughter on a Christmas vacation and ends up in a small mystical town in Colorado where everyone belives in Santa Claus. That's the IMDb definition. Actually, this is just another version of The Christmas Story, where Denver's boss (the Scrooge figure) sends him to buy up property in the little town, which will change it into some big metropolis which will make big bucks for the boss. There is a guy whose house is going to be foreclosed (the Bob Cratchit character). With the help of Jane Kaczmarek, who is certainly the ghost of Christmas present, Denver magically gains a spine, stands up to his boss, falls in love with Jane, and decides to settle down in the little town. And, like Scrooge's transformation, the whole thing takes place in 2 days. Magic.

There are all those other classic Christmas animated things that I watched because our kids watched them and didn't admit to watching them because I liked them too!

The grandaddy of them all, of course, is A Charlie Brown Christmas, which has to be on everybody's favorite. (Ironically, this is the only movie which touches on anything Biblical.)  I believe this was the first of the Peanuts movies and I wasn't sure how I felt about having actual voices put to the characters I knew so well from the comics, but fell in love with it. And who can pass by a scraggly Christmas tree, left on an old tree lot without thinking that if you wrapped a blanket around it and gave it a lot of love, it would magically become a beautiful tree? God bless us every one.

Along came How the Grinch Stole Christmas and sweet little Cindy Lou Who gathered with the other Whos happily singing even though there are no Christmas presents.

And there is Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, which was a real favorite around here. How can you not like a story about an elf who wants to be a dentist?

I can really get them all in one night, if a theater company is producing the right show. Every Christmas Story Ever Told is. I’ve reviewed it 4 times now and always look forward to seeing Gustav the Green-Nosed Rein-goat (to avoid copyright infringement) again.

But (shhh...don't tell anyone)... I will be glad when December 26 comes and it’s safe to go to a play or watch TV without some sappy Christmas plot again!

Scrooged

Topic #4
Favorite Holiday Movies/TV Specials

I don't remember the first Christmas movie that I ever saw, but it was probably Miracle on 34th Street, which remains to this day my favorite Christmas movie. It had everthing, especially magic that may or may not have been real. I still get chills at the end when they find the cane by the fireplace.

I remember when there was a station that ran It's a Wonderful Life in back to bakc showings from Christmas Eve through Christmas day. It's a good movie, but I have pretty much had it with that movie. I avoid it like the plague.

However, I can see White Christmas over and over again. I don't even mind seeing the stage production of it (which I just reviewed recently--stage show isn't nearly as good as the movie).

I love the old movies. Loretta Young looking luminous in The Bishop's Wife while Cary Grant plays an angel sent to earth to help her minister husband remember the real meaning of Christmas.

I love the original Christmas Carol story versions (I specify "original" because at their root, pretty much most Christmas movies contain all the same elements--a grinch, a good guy, a little kid, an element of magic, and a happy ending). From the Reginald Owen 1938 version down through the Muppet Christmas Carol they have all been good.

I even love the silly tear jerkers like Elf...though many wouldn't think of Elf as a tear jerker, but it has a tenderness to it that makes me tear up every time.

Nowadays we are flooded with Christmas movies, so many of them that they have to start showing them 24/7 on the cable stations to get them all in. Most of them are pretty schlocky and made for TV, but even among the schlock there are movies I will watch.

There is one called The Christmas Gift, which stars John Denver, the only reason I watch this movie. I do like John Denver, even though his acting talents were somewhat iffy. In this movie, he played a widowed New York City architect who takes his young daughter on a Christmas vacation and ends up in a small mystical town in Colorado where everyone belives in Santa Claus. That's the IMDb definition. Actually, this is just another version of The Christmas Story, where Denver's boss (Scrooge) sends him to buy up property in the little town, which will change it into some big metropolis which will make big bucks for the boss. There is a guy whose house is going to be foreclosed (the Bob Cratchit character). With the help of Jane Kaczmarek, who is certainly the ghost of Christmas present, Denver magically gains a spine, stands up to his boss, falls in love with Jane, and decides to settle down in the little town. And, like Scrooge's transformation, the whole thing takes place in 2 days. Magic.

There are all those other classic Christmas animated things that I watched because our kids watched them and didn't admit to watching them because I liked them too!

The grandaddy of them all, of course, is A Charlie Brown Christmas, which has to be on everybody's favorite. I believe this was the first of the Peanuts movies and I wasn't sure how I felt about having actual voices put to the characters I knew so well from the comics, but fell in love with it. And who can pass by a scraggly Christmas tree, left on an old tree lot without thinking that if you wrapped a blanket around it and gave it a lot of love, it would magically become a beautiful tree? God bless us every one.

But then there is How the Grinch Stole Christmas and sweet little Cindy Lou Hoo gathered with the other Hoos singing even though there are no Christmas presents.

And there is Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, which was a real favorite around here. How can you not like a story about an elf who wants to be a dentist?

I have the opportunity to see all of these movies and made for TV movies on Saturday night, when I shall be reviewing the stage show Every Christmas Story Ever Told. And it is. I've seen it three times now and am still looking forward to seeing Gustav the Green-Nosed Rein-goat (to avoid copyright infringement) again.

But (shhh...don't tell anyone)... I will be glad when I can surf through my ComCast directory and see something other than hundreds of Christmas movies from which to choose.

A Celluloid Christmas

It's not even Thanksgiving yet and we've already seen our first Christmas show. It was the stage version of It's a Wonderful Life, presented at a local community theatre that I was reviewing last night. I think somewhere there is an unwritten rule that you can't have Christmas without (a) Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas," (b) some production of Dickens A Christmas Carol and of course hundreds of broadcasts of the It's a Wonderful Life movie. I remember a year where you could not turn on the television and search through the channels without finding a broadcast of It's a Wonderful Life on some channel. I may have hallucinated, but it seems to me that some cable channel ran it back to back continuously for a day or two right before Christmas.

I never understood why that has become the quintessential Christmas movie. Maybe it's easier to crown that one with the title than sift through the hundreds of Christmas movies that are out there. I mean it's a nice story and all--and who wouldn't love Jimmy Stewart getting all emotional--but surely there are others as worthy of the attention.

If you think about it, 90% (unscientific number) of all Christmas movies have a predictable structure.

There is a curmudgeon, there is a cute little kid, there is a character who is imbued with the Christmas spirit and refuses to get discouraged, there is an element of magic or good will that softens the hardest of hearts, and, most important of all, the ending leaves me in tears.

They are all variations of the granddaddy of Christmas stories, Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There's curmudgeonly Scrooge, cute little Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchet who is full of the Christmas spirit, his dire straits to the contrary, and the four Ghosts (starting with Marley) to add an element of magic that softens Scrooge's heart and leaves me sobbing as he becomes a friend to Tiny Tim and a good boss to Bob Cratchet. It doesn't make any difference if Scrooge is a venerable old actor, a cartoon character or a muppet. It gets me every time.

My personal favorite Christmas movie is the original (1947) Miracle on 34th Street, where our curmudgeon is Maureen O'Hara, who has just worked for Macy*s too long and has become jaded. Her cute little daughter Susan (Natalie Wood), is following in her mother's footsteps. Neighbor John Payne is determined to let the little girl experience the magic of Christmas, and then a guy named Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) adds that element of magic and when Susan discovers Kris's cane in the empty home that was the house of her dreams, my tears begin to flow.

(O'Hara was the curmudgeon again in the 1995 made-for-TV movie,The Christmas Box, starring Richard "John Boy" Thomas as the discouraged father who takes a job as the caretaker for O'Hara's home on the arrangements made by his idealistic wife (Annette O'Toole). Their cute little daughter (Jenna Evans) eventually melts O'Hara's heart with the assistance of a box which takes on the "mystical" qualities that are required to fit my predictable structure.)

At the moment, the Hallmark channel seems determined to run Christmas movies 24/7 until Christmas. This morning I watched Christmas in Aspen, because I can't not watch a John Denver movie, no matter how corny they are. Denver is the discouraged widower with adorable daughter Alix (Gennie James). The whole "mystical town" (as IMDB describes it) is filled with the Christmas spirit and everyone in town, adult and children alike, write letters to Santa each year. Denver has come to assess the town for his boss, curmudgeon Thomas Renfield (Edward Winter) who wants to make the town the next big ski resort and is foreclosing on homes even on Christmas eve. (I'm not sure why the movie is called Christmas in Aspen, since it is not the ski resort and, in fact, is a very small town). The magic of the season puts holly in every heart, the foreclosure doesn't happen, Renfield takes his business elsewhere, and Denver quits his job, decides to move to the town, and starts a relationship with the post office mistress (Jane Kaczmarek). And as they ride off into the sunrise in their one horse open sleigh, I reach for the tissues.

And so it continues from November 13 up to Christmas....A Season of Miracles. Fallen Angel, The Most Wonderful time of the Year, A Christmas Visitor, A Christmas Without Snow, One Magic Christmas, etc., etc, etc. Sooner or later they will get to It's a Wonderful Life, with the curmudgeonly Mr. Potter, out to ruin idealistic George Bailey's Savings and Loan. There are all those cute little Bailey kids and magic Clarence Odbody looking to win his angel wings.

The structure even works for the original Christmas story, except that curmudgeon Herod was never converted and instead of having his heart softened, he killed a bunch of babies instead. But other than that, the structure works!

Nothing's perfect.

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I don't want to jinx it or anything, but there is someone interested in Polly. Not until at least after Thanksgiving, but she really seemed to like her. And Polly didn't seem to hate her.