CATCH A CLASSIC

Barbara Stanwyck Christmas Romantic Comedy Classics

TCM, Beginning at 1 p.m.

During her heyday in Hollywood’s golden age, legendary actress Barbara Stanwyck was among the most versatile of the great actresses of that era, flawlessly and believably moving from characters in heavy dramas to bleak films noir to lighthearted romantic comedies. In the 1940s, Stanwyck notably headlined two classic romantic comedies with a Christmastime backdrop that are airing this afternoon and early evening on Turner Classic Movies. First up is her better-known one, Christmas in Connecticut (pictured). This beloved 1945 holiday farce stars Stanwyck as single New Yorker Elizabeth Lane, who in her job as a food writer has been pretending to live the life of a perfect farmer’s wife and mother, earning the admiration of real housewives nationwide under false pretenses. But when Elizabeth’s editor (Sydney Greenstreet), who is unaware she is lying, insists that she host a Christmas dinner for returning war hero Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan), a big fan of Elizabeth’s recipes (which she has been getting from someone else), she needs to scramble and cobble together both a farm and a “family” to pull off the dinner. Things get even more complicated when she meets Jones and it’s love at first sight. Following this is the Christmas romantic comedy Remember the Night (1940), which boasts a screenplay by the great Preston Sturges (the last film he wrote that he did not also direct). Stanwyck co-stars with Fred Macmurray, four years before their second and more iconic, and much darker, teaming in the classic 1944 film noir Double Indemnity.

Here, Stanwyck plays Lee Leander, who is on trial for shoplifting. Assistant D.A. John Sargent (Macmurray), realizing that a conviction against a woman during the holiday season is nearly impossible, manages to get the judge to adjourn the case until the new year. Feeling guilty about Lee having to spend Christmas in jail, John posts her bail, and, eventually, over the course of a road trip from New York City to Indiana, where John takes Lee to spend Christmas with his family, a romance begins to develop. But how will that impact Lee’s impending trial?

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