Christmas in Connecticut

"I deceived you?"
"Yes! You're engaged!"
"You're married!"
"That has nothing to do with it!"

Elizabeth Lane (Stanwyck) writes one of the most popular food articles in New York.  Her articles share delicious recipes straight from her idyllic farm in Connecticut.  However, it is all a lie.  Lane lives in a small apartment in New York and can't cook.  Her recipes come from her friend Felix (Sakall), who owns a restaurant nearby.  Her magazine publisher, Alexander Yardley (Greenstreet) invites himself and war hero Jefferson Jones (Morgan) to her farm for Christmas.

Facing the end of her career, and that of her friend and editor Dudley Beecham (Shayne) if the truth should come out, she agrees to a crazy plan: she will marry John Sloan (Gardiner) and use his farm in Connecticut to host the holiday meal as requested, taking along Felix to do all of the cooking.  The farm is just as she describes in the articles, and during the day they borrow a neighbor's baby to pass off as their own.  Can Elizabeth keep up the charade, even as she falls in love with Jefferson?


A few months ago I read a synopsis of this film and bought it.  I had never seen it, but decided to take a chance.  And I loved it!

This is my second Barbara Stanwyck movie, and I love her!  She is great here.  She has a great supporting cast.  Dennis Morgan is charming as Jefferson Jones.  Reginald Gardiner is good as John Sloan, making him somewhat likeable while still showing that he isn't the right man for Stanwyck's Elizabeth.  But the best characters are Sydney Greenstreet as Yardley and S.Z. Sakall as Felix.  Greenstreet is gruff, but hilarious.  Sakall is perfect, I love him in all of his pictures.  When Sakall is introduced to Greenstreet's character, he makes a comment about a fat man...  Greenstreet played a character called "fat man" in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, the latter of which also starred Sakall.

The film is charming and funny, and I plan to add it to my yearly Christmas movie viewing!  Apparently they tried to remake it in 1992 as a made-for-TV movie, but it bombed.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945) 102 minutes
Director: Peter Godfrey
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck as Elizabeth Lane
Dennis Morgan as Jefferson Jones
Sydney Greenstreet as Alexander Yardley
Reginald Gardiner as John Sloan
S.Z. Sakall as Felix Bassenak
Robert Shayne as Dudley Beecham
Una O'Connor as Norah