Old Movie Watching with Rob's video: Christmas in Connecticut 1945 - Movie Review

Christmas in Connecticut was a fun little romantic comedy from 1945 starring Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan. Now I can say with some honestly never seen a Hallmark movie before, but this type of film is the closest that I can imagine a Hallmark movie is like. The story here is basically that Barbara Stanwyck plays newspaper writer Elizabeth Lane (wonder if that was a take on the name Lois Lane, as she is a vibrant, outspoken newspaper writer?) In any case, she has been crafting a fiction in her writing as being the perfect housewife, who lives in the country, making country foods and so on, but the trust is, she's just a single woman living in New York with no cooking skills. In fact, her recipes are coming from her friend Felix, played here amazingly by S.Z. Sakall of Casablanca fame (hey, any Casablanca connection instantly makes a film even better to me.) So here's the conflict of the film: Dennis Morgan plays Jefferson Jones, a war hero who has come home and who wants to visit Miss Lane's farm. Her editor Yardley (played by Sydney Greenstreet, also of Casablanca fame - he was the big guy who ran the rival club opposite of Rick's place) well, he's all for the idea, so now Miss Lane is in a pickle. What will she do? Well, it turns out that the architect John Sloan (played by Reginald Gardiner), who has been romantically interested in Elizabeth for a long time, proposes to marry her, at his farm in Connecticut, and that she can brings Felix along to help complete this farce and not lose her job at the paper. She goes along with this idea, but you can tell she isn't really that interested in Sloan. In any case, she gets the country house all setup, including even incorporating a neighbor's baby that they pretent is their own. Soon enough, Dennis Morgan shows up as Jefferson Jones, and he buys into everything going on, but alas, as you would predict, both he and Elizabeth start to fall in love, and it is a cute love story. There are some silly moments such as her complete inability to bathe a baby (note: Stanwycks character is sharp and intelligent, she's an ace writer in the city. The gag is that she doesn't know basics like bathing her "own" baby, etc.) In any case, the complications continue to arise in this relationship, all in what you would expect from a wacky comedy, but there is a sweet love story at the core here, and when Jones and Lane take the snowy carriage ride together, that was a sweet scene, and this was a cute romance. I won't ruin the ending, but you go and check it out. It was a fine romantical comedy. Not to heady but just silly fun, and Barbara Stanwyck is just amazing in everything. Some closing thoughts: again, neat to see some of the Casablanca characters here. It was fun to see Sydney Greenstreet (the big guy from Casablanca) in more of a humorous role, not necessarily as the bad guy. And S.Z. Sakall as Felix the cook was a hoot. "Everything is hunky dunky!" Also noteworthy was seeing Una O'Connor as Nora. I've seen her in a bunch of the old Universal monster movies, as the lady who goes all loopy, generally when there's a monster on the move. This was a fun film and worth checking out, Christmastime or whenever. Free music courtesy of: https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary