‘Christmas in Connecticut’
WHILE THE HOLIDAY CLASSIC WASN’T FILMED HERE, IT DOES HAVE TIES TO SOUTHBURY
There’s so many reasons to love the romantic comedy, “Christmas in Connecticut.” And it’s not just the story shared in this 1945 classic, or the picture-perfect stone farmhouse where it takes place. It’s also the connection to Gladys Taber, the beloved Southbury author whose 1940s Ladies’ Home Journal column, “Diary of Domesticity,” likely inspired the film about a magazine food writer whose column is called “Diary of a Housewife.”
Taber’s granddaughter, Anne Colby, said she’s been asked about it so often “because it’s out there on movie websites,” she wound up researching the question a few years ago.
There’s “considerable circumstantial evidence,” said Colby, who owns the Taber home, Stillmeadow Farm, with her sister. “I can tell you how it
came to be a sort of fun fact that we’ve never confirmed, but always believed in our family.”
Never seen the film? (It’s still on TV and streaming services.) Just in case, here’s the story. Elizabeth Lane, played by Barbara Stanwyck, is a popular magazine writer like Taber. But unlike Taber — who excelled in culinary arts and country living — she can’t cook and lives in a New York City apartment.
Elizabeth, who is single, portrays herself as a Connecticut farm wife who’s a whiz in the kitchen. All is well until her pushy publisher forces her to host a fan of her column, a returning war hero, at her home for the holidays. Her job on the line, she pretends to be everything she’s not, using a suitor’s farmhouse as her base. (The suitor, an architect, claims to love her but she’s told him it’s not mutual.) When handsome Navy hero Jefferson Jones (actor Dennis Morgan) shows up, she falls for him.
With a name like “Christmas in Connecticut,” you might think this movie, or at least parts, were filmed here. Not true. The farmhouse wasn’t even real. It was a set built on a Warner Bros. soundstage in Burbank, Calif., said Julia Sweeten, whose popular blog, “Hooked on Houses,” shares her obsession with memorable movie and TV houses, celebrity houses and HGTV.
“Besides the fabulous Barbara Stanwyck and her amazing wardrobe in the movie, the primary draw for me was the setting,” she said, of the house, with a grand fireplace so tall, the mantel is over the heads of the people. When she researched the movie for her blog, she was intrigued by the Taber link.
Colby said being a female writer in the 1930s wasn’t easy, but her grandmother made it work. Her grandfather, a music teacher and composer, “had a tragic loss of hearing” that made him unable to earn a living, so “she had to support the family in the middle of the Depression.”
They were lean times, but Taber, who bought her Connecticut house with another family, hit her stride when she came upon the idea of writing about rural life on a 1700s farm. “The series really took off; it was an early form of the lifestyle article. The title, ‘Diary of Domesticity’ is somewhat cringe-worthy today, but the series was a huge hit for Ladies’ Home Journal.”
That compelling column delighted readers from 1937 through much of the 1940s, and was especially popular when the movie debuted. Two of the film’s writers were women, one of whom was based in New York. “So the name of the column Elizabeth Lane writes is not ‘Diary of Domesticity,’ but ‘Diary of a Housewife.’ It’s about our old house in Connecticut.”
Further, “copies of Ladies’ Home Journal were sent in care packages to GIs and we have proof. One I found in my grandmother’s files is a wonderful letter from a GI — a fan who wrote to her and said that reading this column made him feel like it was a letter from home and had given him a lot of comfort when he was overseas during the war.”
Taber included recipes in some of her columns. So there’s a parallel with the movie in that the war hero, Jefferson, fantasizes about tasting Elizabeth’s cooking after reading some of her pieces.
Colby said the concept of intel
lectual property wasn’t strong back then, so even if her grandmother was consulted, there’s no record.
“It wasn’t until I was an adult and kept getting this question by a new generation of Gladys Taber fans who picked it up from somewhere, that I actually took a good hard look and thought OK, we don’t have direct confirmation but the story had always been in my family so I assume my grandmother handed that idea down to my mom.
“It’s clear to me there are just too many coincidences for it not to have at least offered the seed to the two ladies who wrote this story and screenplay. If anyone out there knows for sure, we’d love to hear from them, but we’ve always felt we had enough circumstantial evidence to feel for ourselves that that must have been the case.”
What Colby does know for sure is that Taber was a professional who wrote dozens of books, including cookbooks, and whose fan base continues to grow. “We have fans dropping by Stillmeadow a lot; it’s nice to see and means a lot to us.”
Susan J. Turnley, editor of the Friends of Gladys Taber (FOGT) quarterly journal, helps keep her writing alive.
Turnley said “Christmas in Connecticut” is a favorite of hers and while details differ from Taber’s life, there’s similarities, too. Taber wrote for one of the top women’s magazines at the time, and it’s likely a competitor would have wanted to steal her away. (Elizabeth writes for “Smart Housekeeping” and competition was a subplot in the film.)
“Gladys loved to cook and enjoyed good meals with gusto, every bit as much as the heroine, Elizabeth Lane, did in ‘Christmas in Connecticut,’ as she ate her Uncle Oscar’s delicious meals,” Turnley said.
“Gladys enjoyed good relationships with her colleagues at the magazine, just as Elizabeth Lane did in the movie. Gladys even suggested to one man that he and his wife might enjoy moving to Southbury, and they did! Their house is not far from Stillmeadow,” she noted.
A final similarity: Elizabeth and Taber certainly knew how to create memorable Christmases. Elizabeth’s “how we met” story with Jefferson is filled with chaotic holiday fun, and Taber was a wonderful writer and true friend to all who knew her or knew of her.
“Christmas is a bridge,” Taber wrote. “We need bridges as the river of time flows fast. Today’s Christmas should mean creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday.”
And not only that. She really was an awesome cook. Here’s one of Taber’s recipes.
Holiday Eggnog Makes 4 pints
6 egg yolks
1/4 cup white sugar
1 cup brandy
2 cups cream
2 cups milk
1/4 tsp salt
6 egg whites
Beat egg yolks until very light and then beat in gradually sugar, brandy, cream and milk. Whip the egg whites until very stiff with salt and fold them lightly into the other ingredients. Serve the eggnog into individual punch glasses with a silver ladle and top each glass with cinnamon or nutmeg, as desired.
This is a traditional Christmas and New Year eggnog which for some reason I associate with Charles Dickens and the stuffed goose and Tiny Tim.