Best known for writing Bob Hope & Danny Kaye vehicles, Don Hartman directed only a handful of films. An inadequately developed skill set which may explain why this sweet-natured, unusually nuanced Christmas story, from an Isobel Lennart script, lands a step shy of classic status. Pretty good though, and more tough-minded than this description will make it sound. Christmas Shopping Season: Young widow/single-mom Janet Leigh* and free-spirit Robert Mitchum meet-cute at Crowley’s Department Store in Manhattan - he’s clerking/she’s a professional comparison shopper. He should turn her in, but takes pity on a working mom with a six yr-old and winds up getting fired for being a nice guy. Meantime, her near engagement to ‘butter-and-egg man’ Wendell Corey is perpetually stalled. Spurred on by the pleasurable threat of Mitchum’s obvious interest, along with her young son’s distressing preference for the new guy, all relationships come to a head. No bad guys here, no villains, not a cheap shot in the whole thing, but a real ebb-and-flow liveliness, even if Hartman tends to sit on risk-free medium shots. Plus enough character comedy (check out a police station scene with Desk Lieutenant Harry Morgan showing early comic chops) and uncomfortably rude straight talk from Mitchum to keep up momentum. Even the kid avoids Hollywood cuteness. A certain patness and a rushed ending don’t help, but don’t kill it either. A welcome change from the usual Christmas pics aired every year.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: There was a Crowley’s Department store at the time, not in NYC but in Downtown Detroit near Grand Circus. Eight floors of it, navigated with some of the choicest narrow wood-slatted stair escalators still in use by the time Crowley’s closed in the 1990s. A few examples of these clunky marvels can still be found escalating on some of the higher floors at MACY’s in Manhattan. Just take care if you’re wearing heels!
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Janet Leigh, very busy with six films in 1949, was all of 22 yrs-old. Pretty young to play Mom to a six-yr-old. Yikes!
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