Tradition! Five Quirky Christmas Movies if You're in the Mood for Quirk - Again

Babes in Toyland aka March of the Wooden Soldiers 

Try to find the black and white version if you can. The later colorization is blech!

This is an updated version of last year's post simply because these are the quirky films I never get tired of watching at this time of year and of course if I didn't do it every year it wouldn't be a tradition. 

1) MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS (1934) is watched religiously by me every year either at Thanksgiving or Christmas. It is ritual. I know the songs by heart and can often be heard tunelessly humming along with the music and if I'm really in the mood, I'll sing the words too. When it comes to this movie I am incorrigible. Laurel and Hardy, Santa Claus, Little Bo-Peep and Boogeymen - what more could you want?

Okay, you talked me into it. Here's my thought: If you don't like this movie then, I mean, we simply cannot be friends. Well, at any rate, not really, really good friends. Ha!

Check out fellow movie maven, Caftan Woman's take on this very same film - what a coincidence!

2) THE THIN MAN (1934) Obviously '34 was a good year for Christmas movies. The very suave and sophisticated Nick and Nora Charles solve a murder or two, drink endless martinis, kibbitz in local Manhattan eateries and dives, and celebrate Christmas with a hotel room full of wise-cracking NY riff-raff. Again I ask, what more could you want? And when was the last time you saw a movie featuring someone named Minna Gombell? I ask you.

I know I asked this rhetorical question last year, but I think it's worth asking again. Poor hapless Minna looks perpetually shell-shocked in this one. I think it's the eye-makeup. Elizabeth Arden it ain't.

3) AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS (1951) If you can find this early black and white television version, then this is the one to watch. A short opera written for television by Gian Carlo Menotti (who was one of the directors), it remains fixed in my mind and heart as sheer Christmas perfection. The Three Wise Men, following their star, must stop and rest for the night and choose the very humble abode of a desperately poor widow and her young, mischievous, handicapped son who hops about on a crutch and can't help getting into trouble. He's very inquisitive, you see.

There's no cuteness though, it's all just glorious singing to unexpectedly glorious music as well as some dancing villagers and, near the end, a miracle. If you've never seen this, you're in for a wonderful treat. This unique production is one of the reasons I am a life-long opera fan.

4) LADY ON A TRAIN (1945) starring Deanna Durbin as a ditzy society babe, out from under the watchful eye of her indulgent dad, just in from the coast to spend Christmas in NY with her aunt. But as the train pulls into Grand Central the deb spots a murder from the window of her compartment and the hunt is on for a killer. (What else is a nice young lady to do in NYC on Christmas eve?) 

There is a cast full of character stalwarts from the forties, including Edward Everett Horton, David Bruce, Ralph Bellamy (at his ultra creepy best), Dan Duryea (equally creepy, he just can't help himself), Elizabeth Patterson, Allen Jenkins and George Coulouris, there to prop up Miss Durbin who does a creditable job playing the ditz who drives everyone crazy. I watched this again the other night and enjoyed it even more than the first two or three times.  

I'll bet you will too.

5) THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1942) starring Bette Davis, Monty Woolly and Ann Sheridan in a loony-toony tale of a famous New York radio personality/curmudgeon who is forced by circumstance - a slip and fall incident - to spend the holidays in the home of a 'normal-seeming' small town midwestern family (with money) whose lives he upsets in a hilarious variety of ways. This is SO much fun and as the quips and insults fly by quickly - you gotta' pay attention. Bette Davis plays quietly sweet (if gently acerbic) very well as the curmudgeon's secretary and general factotum.

Some of the more entertaining aspects of this very funny movie: penguins, an octopus, a batty aunt, a hotsy-totsy movie queen, an Egyptian sarcophagus and an adorably engaging impersonation of Noel Coward by Reginald Gardiner. (His short scene almost steals the movie away from the ferocious Monty Woolley whom I adore.)

Read fellow movie maven Dorian's take on THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. Hint: She loves it as much as I do.

P.S.

Three Christmas cartoons (I've tried to find the ones with the best resolution) from the past when cartoons were really cartoons, drawn by hand and photographed cell by cell and all had a certain jaunty 'je ne sais quois' and one very sweet stop action animated television delight from those days once upon a time when we used to sit eagerly around the set and watch the yearly Christmas 'Specials'.

Silly Symphony's Santa's Workshop 1936

Silly Symphony's Night Before Christmas 1933

Fleischer Brothers 'Christmas Comes But Once A Year' 1936

Rankin and Bass - Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer 1964

This is my entry in Tuesday's Overlooked (or Forgotten) Movies, the weekly meme hosted by Todd Mason at his blog, Sweet Freedom. So don't forget to check in and catch up on what other overlooked or forgotten films (or other A/V) other bloggers are talking about today.

Tuesday's Overlooked (or Forgotten) Films: MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS (1934) starring Laurel and Hardy

What can I say? Not forgotten by me. But just in case you might have overlooked it...

MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS (aka Babes in Toyland) is my favorite Christmas movie (next to A CHRISTMAS CAROL).

Tuesday is Overlooked (or Forgotten) Films day around here. This is the weekly meme hosted by Todd Mason at his blog, SWEET FREEDOM. Don't forget to go take a look and check out what other films, other bloggers are talking about today.

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Christmas just wouldn't be the same without Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy helping to save Toyland and vanquishing the vile boogeymen forever. Laurel and Hardy (or Fat and Skinny as a friend of mine called them growing up) are one of my favorite comedy combos of the past. Most especially their work in this wonderful movie.

One of my favorite things about Oliver Hardy is the way he has of always looking at the camera - his expression a kind of shared exasperation. As if he and the viewer are in this together. LOVE it.

Ever since WPIX, Channel 11 in NYC began showing the movie around the Holidays many, MANY years ago, my family and I have been hooked on this strangely endearing Hal Roach production based loosely on the operetta by Victor Herbert.

Needless to say, I prefer the purity of black and white even if the 'colorized' version is the one more readily available for purchase. To that I say: Blech!

Here's the plot:

All is not sweetness and light in the kingdom of Toyland. Stanley Dum and Ollie Dee (Laurel and Hardy) have lovingly promised their landlady, Mother Peep (Florence Roberts)  to come up with the final mortgage payment on her shoe (There was an old lady who lived in a shoe...Get it?) so that the evil owner of the house, the icky Barnaby (Henry Brandon aka Henry Kleinbach) won't foreclose and kick the family out on the street.

But wait, creepy Barnaby has a hideous compromise: If Bo Peep (Mother Peep's daughter played by the oh-so-cute Charlotte Henry) will marry Barnaby, then he'll magnanimously tear up the mortgage as a wedding present.

Bo Peep is terrified of a fate worse than death: marriage to Barnaby. (Hey, I'd be terrified too.) Besides she has her eye on Tom, Tom the Piper's Son (Felix Knight) the handsome tenor of the piece. Bo Peep runs to her mom for comfort and Mother Peep assures her that everything will be okay since Stannie and Ollie are going to borrow the money from their boss, the toy-maker.

Icky colorized version, but only photo I could find of Peep and her Ma.

But, the grumpy toymaker (William Burress) is in a very bad mood indeed, he has no time to listen to Ollie's request, Santa is dropping by to see how his order of toys is coming along. Christmas is just around the corner.

Ollie and Stanley and their snarly toymaker boss.

When Stanley reveals that he misunderstood Santa's order for 600 one foot tall wooden soldiers as 100 wooden soldiers 6 feet tall, both he and Ollie are instantly fired. Though Santa finds the whole thing hilarious.

In the meantime, Bo-Peep has lost her sheep (again) and she and her beau Tom, sing a nice duet. He announces their plans to wed and the citizens of Toyland gather round to congratulate them and join in the chorus as the little band of sheep return to the fold.

Peep and her beau, the handsome Tom, Tom the Piper's Son.

When Stanley and Ollie must break the news to Mother Peep that they've been unable to get the necessary loan and in fact, they've been fired, the worst appears about to happen.

The rest of the story is all about how Stanley and Ollie try to foil the evil machinations of Barnaby played with wonderful, over-the-top facial expressions and hand gestures (left over from silent movies) by Henry Kleinbach who later went on to make dozens of movies as Henry Brandon. He is almost unrecognizable here in what I think was one of his first films. He practically steals the picture with his ham-bone interpretation of a laughably nasty dude.

(We like to mimic his hand gestures as the story goes along and, of course, we join in the singing of the songs and hum along with the soundtrack. Well, at least, I do.)

One of the side plots involves Stanley substituting for Bo-Peep as the bride in a farcical wedding scene which culminates in Ollie telling Stannie that since he's now married to Barnaby he must stay in his house. "But I don't love him...!" cries Stanley.

Eventually, Barnaby resorts to framing Tom the Piper's son for pig-napping. He has one of his henchmen kidnap...uh, pig-nap, one of the Three Little Pigs. He then leaves behind a link of sausages and some straw in Tom's house.

Tom is tried, found guilty and banished to Bogeyland across the alligator infested moat.

When Stanley and Ollie reveal (by taking a couple of bites of the evidence) that the sausage is beef and not pork, the King realizes that Tom is innocent and he orders Barnaby held for trial. But Barnaby is too swift for the King's men and he escapes through an underground passage (at the bottom of a well) on his property. The secret passage leads to Bogeyland.

Hot on his trail are Stanley and Ollie.

Turns out that Barnaby is the leader of the Bogeymen. Who knew?

Incensed, Barnaby leads the bogeymen in an all out attack on Toyland. Oh the horror of it!

But that's when Stanley's original mistake pays off. His six foot tall soldiers save the day and in the end, evil is vanquished - Barnaby and his bogeymen are sent packing - some to be eaten by alligators in the moat surrounding Toyland - hey, nobody said it wasn't a cruel world.

No matter how old I get, I still manage to fall under the spell of this movie each and every year.

We're still not quite sure how this little mouse creature works. I think it's a monkey in disguise.

To learn about Laurel and Hardy, please use this link.

...and here's the original trailer for MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS.

Happy THANKSGIVING!

Wishing you all a very happy day full of fun, food, family and friends. (Thanksgiving tidbits from the Food Pages of the NY Times you might like to read when you have a moment to spare.) It's a typical November day here in New Jersey, chilly, gray and overcast, but Rocky and I are visiting with family, so what could be better? Not much.

Have a wonderful day everyone!

P.S. We'll be watching Babes in Toyland aka MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS starring Laurel and Hardy, later. Our annual tradition! The uncolored version, of course.