MOVIE SHOWCASE: MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET

I remember seeing the original MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET as a child, and I really believed that Edmund Gwenn was Santa Claus. MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET is a 1947Christmas film written by Valentine Davies, directed by George Seaton and starring Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Natalie Wood and Edmund Gwenn. It is the story of what takes place in New York City following Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, as people are left wondering whether or not a department store Santa might be the real thing. Because of its Christmas theme, the film has become a perennial Christmas favorite.

The film won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Edmund Gwenn), Best Writing, Original Story (Valentine Davies) and Best Writing, Screenplay. It was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to Gentleman's Agreement.

Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) is indignant to find that the person (Percy Helton) assigned to play Santa in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is intoxicated. When he complains to event director Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara), she persuades Kris to take his place. He does such a fine job that he is hired to be the Santa for Macy's flagship New York City store on 34th Street.

Ignoring instructions to steer parents to goods that Macy's wants to sell, Kris tells one shopper (Thelma Ritter) to go to another store for a fire engine for her son that Macy's doesn't have. She is so impressed, she tells Julian Shellhammer (Philip Tonge), head of the toy department, that she will become a loyal customer. Kris later informs another mother that archrival Gimbels has better skates for her daughter.

Fred Gailey (John Payne), an attorney and neighbor of Doris, is babysitting the young divorcee's six-year-old daughter Susan (Natalie Wood) and takes her to see Kris, who makes an impression on the young girl. When Doris finds out,she asks Kris to tell Susan that he really isn't Santa Claus, but Kris surprises her by insisting that he is.

Fearing that he may be insane, Doris decides to fire him out of a concern that he might harm someone. However, Kris has generated so much good publicity and customer goodwill for Macy's that a delighted R. H. Macy (Harry Antrim) promises Doris and Shellhammer generous bonuses. To overcome Doris's misgivings, Shellhammer proposes getting Granville Sawyer (Porter Hall) to give Kris a "psychological evaluation". Kris easily passes the test, but antagonizes Sawyer by questioning Sawyer's own psychological health.

The store expands on the marketing concept. Anxious to avoid looking greedy by comparison, Gimbels implements the same referral policy throughout its entire chain, forcing Macy's and other stores to respond in kind. Eventually, Kris accomplishes the impossible: Mr. Macy shakes hands with Mr. Gimbel (Herbert H. Heyes).

Pierce (James Seay), the doctor at Kris's nursing home, assures Doris and Shellhammer that Kris's delusion is harmless. Meanwhile, Fred offers to let Kris stay with him so he can be closer to work. Kris makes a deal with Fred – he will work on Susan's cynicism while Fred does the same with the disillusioned Doris, still bitter over her failed marriage.

Then Kris learns that Sawyer has convinced a young, impressionable employee, Alfred (Alvin Greenman), that he is mentally ill simply because he is generous and kind-hearted (Alfred plays Santa Claus at his neighborhood YMCA). Kris confronts Sawyer and, in a fit of anger, raps him on the head with his cane. Doris and Shellhammer only see the aftermath; Sawyer exaggerates his injury in order to have Kris confined to Bellevue Mental Hospital.

Tricked into cooperating and believing Doris to be part of the deception, a discouraged Kris deliberately fails his mental examination and is recommended for permanent commitment. However, Fred persuades Kris not to give up. To secure his release, Fred gets a formal hearing before Judge Henry X. Harper (Gene Lockhart) of the New York Supreme Court. Ordered by Mr. Macy to get the matter dropped, Sawyer pleads with Fred not to seek publicity. To Sawyer's dismay, Fred thanks him for the idea. As a result, Judge Harper is put in an awkward spot – even his own grandchildren are against him for "persecuting" Santa Claus.

Fred quits his job at a prestigious law firm to defend Kris and has a falling out with Doris, who calls his resignation an "idealistic binge" over some "lovely intangibles." He replies that one day she might discover that they are the only worthwhile things in life.

At the hearing, District Attorney Thomas Mara (Jerome Cowan) gets Kris to assert that he is in fact Santa Claus and rests his case, believing he has prima facie proven his point. Fred stuns the court by arguing that Kris is not insane because he actually is Santa Claus – and he will prove it. Mara requests the judge rule that Santa Claus does not exist. Harper is warned privately in chambers by his political adviser, Charlie Halloran (William Frawley), that doing so would be disastrous for his upcoming reelection bid. The judge buys time by deciding to hear evidence before ruling.

Fred calls R.H. Macy as a witness. Mara pointedly asks if he really believes Kris to be Santa Claus. Macy starts to equivocate, but when Mara asks him point-blank, Macy remembers the expressions on the faces of small children upon seeing Kris and firmly states, "I do!" On leaving the stand, Macy fires Sawyer. Fred then calls Mara's own young son to the stand. Thomas Mara Jr. testifies that his father had told him that Santa was real and that "My daddy would never tell a lie!" Outmaneuvered, Mara concedes the point.

Mara then demands that Fred prove that Kris is "the one and only" Santa Claus on the basis of some competent authority. While Fred searches frantically, Susan, by now a firm believer in Kris, writes him a letter to cheer him up, which Doris also signs. A mail sorter (Jack Albertson) sees that it is addressed to the courthouse and realizes that the post office could clear out the many letters to Santa taking up space in its dead letter office by delivering them to Kris.

Kris is uplifted by Susan's letter. Just then, Fred learns that over 50,000 pieces of mail have been delivered to Kris. He presents Judge Harper with three letters addressed only to "Santa Claus", which the U.S. Post Office (which was then a Cabinet-level department of the federal government) has just delivered to Kris. When Harper demands that Fred produce "further exhibits", the judge is soon hidden behind many bags of letters. Harper rules in favor of Kris. Afterwards, Doris invites Kris to dinner, but he reminds her that "It's Christmas Eve!"

On Christmas morning, Susan is disillusioned because Kris was unable to get her what she told him she wanted most. As they are about to leave, Kris gives Fred and Doris a route home that will supposedly avoid traffic. Along the way, Susan is overjoyed to see the house of her dreams (exactly matching the drawing she had given Kris earlier) with a For Sale sign in the front yard. Fred learns that Doris had encouraged Susan to have faith, and suggests they get married and purchase the house. He then boasts that he must be a great lawyer, since he managed to do the seemingly impossible. However, when he notices a cane leaning against the fireplace that looks just like the one Kris used, he wonders "Maybe I didn't do such a wonderful thing after all."

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER CO-STAR DIES

An Affair To Remember star Neva Patterson has died at the age of 90.

The veteran actress, best known for playing Cary Grant's onscreen fiancee in the 1957movie classic, passed away at her home in Los Angeles on Tuesday after suffering complications from a broken hip.

Her daughter Megan Lee confirmed the sad news to the Los Angeles Times.

Patterson began her career on the New York stage, notably appearing in a 1952 production of The Seven Year Itch on Broadway and scoring her first movie role a year later (53) in Taxi.

She remains best remembered for her role in An Affair to Remember, but gained legions of sci-fi fans when she appeared in 1980s TV series V, which was brought back to life for a new generation in 2009.

She also enjoyed roles in 1978's The Buddy Holly Story, as well as TV classics including Ironside, The Dukes of Hazzard and St. Elsewhere.

RIP: BLAKE EDWARDS

Blake Edwards, a writer and director who became a Hollywood master of screwball farces and rude comedies like “Victor/Victoria” and the “Pink Panther” movies, died Wednesday night in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 88.

His publicist, Gene Schwam, said the cause was complications of pneumonia. Mr. Edwards’s wife, the actress Julie Andrews, and other family members were at his side at St. John’s Health Center, Mr. Schwam said.

What the critic Pauline Kael once described as Mr. Edwards’s “love of free-for-all lunacy” was flaunted in good movies and bad ones: in commercial successes like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) and “The Pink Panther” (1963) — the first of a series of films starring Peter Sellers as a bumbling French policeman — and in box-office disasters like the musical spy extravaganza “Darling Lili” (1970), starring Ms. Andrews.

Mr. Edwards’s last major success, “Victor/Victoria” (1982), was a farce about a starving singer (Ms. Andrews) who pretends to be a homosexual Polish count who performs as a female impersonator. Mr. Edwards received an Academy Award nomination for his “Victor/Victoria” screenplay, which was adapted from a 1933 German film written and directed by Reinhold Schünzel. It was his only Oscar nomination. But he was given an honorary award by the Motion Picture Academy in 2004 for his “extraordinary body of work.” That work spanned more than four decades.

After writing several zany comic soufflés, including “Operation Mad Ball” (1957), for the director Richard Quine, Mr. Edwards began directing his own light and buoyant comedies, including “This Happy Feeling” (1958), “The Perfect Furlough” (1958) and “Operation Petticoat” (1959). He later turned his comedy to the dark side in films in which middle-aged male protagonists — unlucky womanizers, artists at the end of their creative tethers — are just one banana peel away from disaster.

The critic Andrew Sarris wrote in 1968 that Mr. Edwards had gotten “some of his biggest laughs out of jokes that are too gruesome for most horror films.”

Those jokes include a long sequence in which Tony Curtis embarks on a slapstick three-continent car marathon in “The Great Race” (1965); a desperate Peter Sellers is unable to find a bathroom in “The Party” (1968); Burt Reynolds’s death while staring at the legs of a nurse in “The Man Who Loved Women” (1983); and nearly every incident in “S.O.B.” (1981), a movie in which Mr. Edwards takes an ax dipped in cyanide to the movie industry, which alternately embraced and spurned him.

After a series of critical and box-office failures in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Mr. Edwards spent several years in self-imposed exile in London and Switzerland. He returned to write and direct three “Pink Panther” movies between 1975 and 1978, followed by the unexpected critical and commercial success of “10” (1979). One of his most personal films, “10,” starred Dudley Moore as a composer whose 42nd birthday causes a whopping midlife crisis and an obsession with a beautiful young woman, played by Bo Derek, whom he considers a perfect 10.

Although Mr. Edwards is known for his comedies, one of his most successful films was “Days of Wine and Roses,” a harrowing drama about an alcoholic couple. According to Mr. Edwards’s commentary on the DVD of the movie — which was based on a “Playhouse 90” television play by J. P. Miller and starred Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick — Mr. Lemmon, whom Mr. Edwards often said was his favorite actor, felt that the material was so bleak, it needed a director who could inject some humor.

Both men were drinking hard in 1962. When he stopped drinking about a year later, “the film had as much to do with it as anything did,” he told The Times in 2001.

Mr. Edwards’s string of successful movies ended in the late 1960s, as did his first marriage, to the actress Patricia Walker. His marriage to Ms. Andrews, the Academy Award-winning musical comedy star, sprouted a year after his divorce. At the time, Ms. Andrews’s public image was of the endlessly cheerful governess she had played in “The Sound of Music.” According to a joint interview the couple gave Playboy in 1982, Mr. Edwards, who had never met Ms. Andrews, wowed a party crowd that was speculating on the reason for her phenomenal success. “I can tell you exactly what it is,” he said. “She has lilacs for pubic hair.” Ms. Andrews sent Mr. Edwards a lilac bush shortly after they started dating, and their marriage lasted 41 years.

His survivors include a daughter, Jennifer, and a son, Geoffrey, from his first marriage; two Vietnamese daughters, Amy and Joanna, whom he and Ms. Andrews adopted; and a stepdaughter, Emma — Ms. Andrews’s daughter from her marriage to the Broadway designer Tony Walton.

“My entire life has been a search for a funny side to that very tough life out there,” Mr. Edwards once said. “I developed a kind of eye for scenes that made me laugh to take the pain away.”

WHERE ARE THEY NOW: PATRICK CRANSHAW

Who is Patrick Cranshaw you may ask? The name you may not remember, but the face you definitely will. Joseph Patrick Cranshaw was born on June 17, 1919 ,and he was known for his distinctive look and deadpan humor.

He is best known for one of his last roles, that of Joseph "Blue" Pulaski, a fraternity brother in the 2003 hit comedy Old School. Cranshaw also starred as Sheriff Bob in the Air Bud movies and he played the same role in Air Buddies the final time.

Despite an acting span of more than 40 years and some 102 appearances, Cranshaw's first credited film role came at the age of 41, in The Amazing Transparent Man(1960). Cranshaw's mild-mannered and gentlemanly demeanor led him to a number of roles as bank tellers, store managers, and grandfathers. His major credits include Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Nothing to Lose (1997), Broken Vessels (1998), Best in Show (2000), Bubble Boy (2001). He also appeared in over 50 television shows, including a recurring role as Mel's Diner regular Andy on the sitcom Alice.

Sadly, he died of natural causes on December 28, 2005 at the age of 86. He is survived by three children, Jan Ragland, Joe Cranshaw and Beverly Trautschold; his sister, Billie Vi Gillespie; six grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren...

BORN ON THIS DAY: FRANK SINATRA

One of the most famous crooners of all-time, Frank Sinatra, was born on this day in 1915. Born on December 12th, Sinatra was the only child of Italian immigrants Natalie Della Garaventa and Antonino Martino Sinatra. Sinatra was raised Catholic. He left high school without graduating,having attended only 47 days before being expelled because of his rowdy conduct. His mother, known as Dolly, was influential in the neighborhood and in local Democratic Party circles, but also ran an illegal abortion business from her home; she was arrested several times and convicted twice for this offense. Sinatra was arrested for carrying on with a married woman, a criminal offense at the time. Sinatra's father, often referred to as Tony, served with the Hoboken Fire Department as a Fire Captain. During the tough years of the 1930s, when the Great Depression hit North America, Dolly nevertheless provided ready pocket money to their son for outings with friends and fancy clothes.Sinatra then worked for some time as a delivery boy at the Jersey Observer newspaper, and as a riveter at the Tietjan and Lang shipyard. Sinatra began singing for tips at the age of eight, standing on top of the bar at a local nightclub in Hoboken. He began singing professionally as a teenager in the 1930s.

Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers." His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (for his performance in From Here to Eternity).

He signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records (finding success with albums such as Ring-A-Ding-Ding, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".

With sales of his music dwindling and after appearing in several poorly received films, Sinatra retired for the first time in 1971. Two years later, however, he came out of retirement and in 1973 recorded several albums, scored a Top 40 hit with "(Theme From) New York, New York" in 1980, and toured both within the United States and internationally, using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, until a short time before his death in 1998...

SPOTLIGHT ON ELAINE STRITCH

I never knew too much about Elaine Stritch until her role on the television show 30 ROCK, playing Alec Baldwin's mother. I caught up on the talented actress, and I never realized what a wonderful career she has had. Stritch was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1926, the daughter of Mildred (née Jobe), a homemaker, and George Joseph Stritch, an executive with B.F. Goodrich.Her family was wealthy and devoutly Roman Catholic. Stritch's father was of Irish descent and her mother was of Welsh descent.Stritch was a niece of Samuel Stritch, a former Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago.

Stritch trained at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York City under Erwin Piscator;other students at the Dramatic Workshop at this time included Marlon Brando and Bea Arthur. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs. She is known for her performance of "The Ladies Who Lunch" in Stephen Sondheim's 1970 musical Company, her 2001 one-woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty, and recently for her role as Jack Donaghy's mother Colleen on NBC's 30 Rock. She has been nominated for the Tony Award four times in various categories, and won for Elaine Stritch at Liberty.

Her late husband, John Bay was part of the family that owns Bay's English Muffins, and Stritch sends English muffins as gifts to friends. Every Christmas, she still sends friends and family English muffins...

UNUSUAL DUETS: BING CROSBY AND DAVID BOWIE

I was saving this unusual duet for the holiday season. Here is Bing singing with David Bowie from Bing's last Christmas special in 1977. Bing died before the show aired. Their record would be issued on a record in 1983 and became a huge hit. I am sure that when Bing and David Bowie filmed this back in 1977, they never knew it would become a holiday standard...