classicsoncall For the longest time I thought I'd already seen this picture, but reading the cast list when it appeared on a cable channel listing, I realized that wasn't so. I must have been thinking "Holiday Inn", having a similar style setting and taking place in Connecticut. Both also have a story that defies credibility, though this one has more humorous elements to make it a fun, breezy offering.Veteran actors step out of their usual film personas to create interesting characters here. Barbara Stanwyck usually goes for the strong willed woman type while Sydney Greenstreet often portrays a more somber character. I don't know how many times it might have happened, but this is the second time Greenstreet happened to be called a 'fat man' in a picture. He had the same distinction as Signor Ferrari in "Casablanca", a movie in which S.Z Sakall also appeared doing a humorous bit similar to the one he performs here as Felix Bassenak.You know, I think the screen writers missed an opportunity when they brought in the second baby to confound the guests at the Sloan residence. Wouldn't it have been neat if Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) had to change the baby one more time and discovered that he had a spare part? Why didn't they think of that? Well as holiday films go, this one skirts the idea by virtue of taking place around Christmas time, but the tree is in place with the presents underneath, and even offers up "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" as one of the musical offerings. If you decide to tune in, don't get mixed up like me and confuse it with other holiday flicks that show up around the same time of year. Especially when the opening scene begins the story on a German submarine!

Hitchcoc This is a great movie if you don't mind the discomfort of watching people perpetuate a cover-up. Barbara Stanwyk plays a food editor for a magazine. She has gained a national reputation but in reality has no skills at all. She has been given her information and her recipes from a man she works for. Everything comes to a boil when she is asked to host a man who is a war hero and who is on a special diet at her home in Connecticut. Of course, they have to stage things in order for her not to lose her career and what ensues is one close call after another with people coming and going, trying to cover up for her. This is one of those really fun movies that defies reality but that doesn't matter.

gkeith_1 Rating. Eight out of ten. Not a blockbuster, but rather delightful.Barbara's reputation. She is a very tough cookie in other films, and many times portrays quite an unlikeable character. She is not sentimental, in the stereotyped image I have of her.Barbara as a real woman. I remember Barbara in later life, in The Thorn Birds, portraying an elderly woman in love/lust with a young priest (horrors!). She is wealthy, and wants to rule the world of her rural fiefdom. She wants to control her whole world. She, Barbara, is jealous of a younger woman who also lusts after said priest. Elderly Barbara admits that the young priest causes her to melt into jelly, and that, if I remember, she feels she is surely soon going to hell because of her sinfulness.True lies. In this film, Barbara is a fake food columnist for a magazine. She isn't fake, but the food doesn't exist. She is a total klutz in the kitchen. Just imagine if some of today's well known chefs couldn't even boil water or fry an egg. Barbara is nicer here than in some of her other films that people remember. She is even rather naïve here, and almost sympathetic/nice.Swoon. Dennis Morgan was a real hunk. He was a lovely singer, witness his role in My Wild Irish Rose. My fave Jack Carson is missing here, but if competitive Jack had vied for Barbara's hand in this film it would have just been confusing. Dennis and Jack, that irascible pair, would have been totally hilarious playing off each other and opposite Barbara. They could have both been fighting over her. Hope and Crosby knockoffs, indeed. Do a song and dance, Jack and Dennis. The old soft shoe.The feed bag. Dennis' food in the hospital was horrible. His friend's was better. Worse food than Dennis' was the doctor-recommended diet of the Sydney Greenstreet character -- a cardboardish pile of nothingness that Greenstreet abhorred. Was Greenstreet's menu item turnip mousse or soufflé or something like that?Shades of JFK. In this film, Dennis is stuck at sea on a raft after being attacked in World War Two. I am reminded of JFK and his famous similar situation. Consider if JFK had ended up like Dennis's character: crappy food in hospital, while fantasizing about Ms. Perfect Cook from a magazine -- and the bimbos are trying to hook up with him.Sexism: women should not be judged for cooking ability or other outdated marriage qualifications. Let the man learn how to cook. Then he can blame himself for burned meat or boiled over coffee. The woman should not have to wait on the man hand and foot.Rosie doesn't roll up her sleeves. The World War Two stereotype of women is Rosie the Riveter who works in a factory. In this film however, Barbara, the lead woman, actually has a career away from the manufacturing plant. She has a salary, not an hourly wage. Maybe she is a college graduate. Meanwhile, the babies' mothers actually work in factories, from what I remember. They are certainly not the main protagonist of this film. They are in the background, and seldom appear.Two fat men. SZ Sakall was the real chef in this film. It was funny when he called Greenstreet The Fat Man, because Sakall was no Skinny Minnie. It seems Sakall was always somebody's uncle or buffoonish financial adviser.Sydney trying to be an almost lovable curmudgeon. Greenstreet was a mean guy in other films, but here he was actually sort of funny in spots while trying to stay gruff and scary in others.Dennis deft with the infants. The two babies were different than each other. One had dark hair, and one had blonde hair. Morgan had a way with the babies, while Barbara didn't know how to bathe them or do anything else with them for that matter.Eight out of ten.

Scarecrow-88 Spunky, fun Christmastime balderdash has popular magazine article writer Barbara Stanwyck stuck in the predicament of hosting a faux Christmas Eve/Day homemaking extravaganza for her boss (Sydney Greenstreet) and a war hero (Dennis Morgan) who survived (along with a fellow soldier/pal) on a raft on the ocean for several days without food…the problem is she isn't the amazing cook, sensational mother, and superb farm-marm that leaps from the pages of her articles. The real cook with all the gourmet dishes isn't Stanwyck but SZ Sakall from Budapest who is fortunate enough to benefit from her fame. Sakall will accompany her to a farm supplied by architect Reginald Gardiner (he is always habitually asking Stanwyck to marry him) if Stanwyck will marry him. Reluctantly, she will but her betrothal to Gardiner keeps getting delayed by Sakall who knows she doesn't love him. The child is brought by to be babysat by a mother who works at the war factory (female one day, but the next is a different worker with a male baby!), so Stanwyck (who doesn't know a thing about being a mother) must wing it, aided (much to her delight) by Morgan (he grew up with children and knows how to bath and feed them). The problem that arises for Stanwyck is that she falls head-over-heels for Morgan and must somehow steer her affections/lust for him away and focus on successfully fooling Greenstreet into believing she is actually exactly as she claims. The whole comic angle is Stanwyck masterminding this grand charade even as her behavior and heart yearn for Morgan. Greenstreet expects what he reads in her articles to be articulated in person and Stanwyck must find ways to escape. This is designed like a screwball comedy or something you might see from Preston Sturges. There's constant activity, evasive maneuvers, close-calls, daunting tasks demanding think-on-your-feet (or just plain luck) responses, lots of wooing and romanticizing, and unexpected developments (baby is "kidnapped" by his actual mom much to Greenstreet's dismay; the male-female baby change; Greenstreet expecting Stanwyck to "skillet a flapjack" in his presence; the "theft" of a horse carriage that lands Morgan and Stanwyck temporarily under arrest) that complicate matters further. Stanwyck had a magnetic screen presence even in films like this that feel like holiday, feel-good fodder, perhaps considered a notch or two behind the Lady Eves and Ball of Fires, but I thought "Christmas in Connecticut" would be easy to go down with some eggnog and cookies. It has that holiday atmosphere (the farm is idyllic and snowy, the house is elegant, there's the decoration of the gigantic Christmas tree, the piano-played carol, and the cast are breezy and fun to watch). When you are needing something Christmassy for a night in December, this is as entertaining a film as I could recommend…it has all the ingredients without schmaltz or melodramatics.