From the 1940s: Miracle on 34th Street

1947 Comedy

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by George Seaton

Starring

Maureen O'Hara

John Payne

Edmund Gwenn

Natalie Wood

Gene Lockhart

Porter Hall

William Frawley

Jerome Cowan

Philip Tonge

Jack Albertson

Thelma Ritter

To be perfectly upfront, I had forgotten what a delightful, sentimental, heartfelt little gem this film was.  I hadn't seen it in many years and I had forgotten a number of things.  I had remembered, of course, that it starred two of my favorite Golden Age actors, Maureen O'Hara and John Payne, and that Edmund Gwenn was perfection as Kris Kringle and that darling little Natalie Wood proved why she was an exceptional child actress.

I remembered, too, that Kris Kringle said he was truly Santa Claus and that O'Hara had taught daughter Wood to not believe in silly myths.  Of course I remembered all that mail coming into court at the end of the film where Kris is on trial and I remembered how it all ended.  That may sound like a great deal but it really isn't and it certainly didn't allow me to recapture that decades old warm and fuzzy feeling... that is, until I watched the movie again a couple of days ago.

The story opens with Kris Kringle discovering an intoxicated Santa at the start of Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  He complains to the event director, O'Hara, who hires him as a replacement.  After the parade, Kris is asked to be Macy's store Santa.  He dislikes how much Christmas has been commercialized and at a point when Macy's is out of a toy a little girl has asked for, Kris tells her mother to check with Gimbel's.

Payne, who is O'Hara's neighbor and an attorney, takes Wood to see Santa.  Wood takes a liking to Kris, not particularly because he's Santa but because he's a kind, old man with whiskers.  Kris has no place to stay for the holidays so Payne offers him to bunk with him.  Together they decide to try to rehabilitate both O'Hara and Wood.  O'Hara gets to spend more time with Kris and as she sees her daughter becoming more besotted with him, O'Hara asks Kris to tell Wood that he is not Santa but he insists that he is.

Kris continues to tell shoppers to go elsewhere when items they want at Macy's are not available.  With everyone expecting a great explosion, Macy's finds that Kris has generated an incredible amount of good will for the store and he is considered a godsend to the retail giant.  While Kris teaches Wood to use her imagination and how to pretend, O'Hara decides to have Kris evaluated by a fussy HR department head, Porter Hall.

Hall gives Kris a psychological evaluation and determines Kris should be fired.  Kris reacts by striking Hall in the head with an umbrella.  He gets taken to the famous Bellevue Hospital for his violent tendencies.  Believing that O'Hara is behind all his misfortune, he stubbornly and deliberately fails his psychological exams at the hospital and is recommended for permanent confinement.

A court trial is scheduled.  Payne will be Kris's attorney.  Newspaper headlines scream Santa on trial for lunacy.

Oh that trial.  What fun.  The film is loaded with most reliable character actors and three of them appear in the court scenes.  Jerome Cowan is the easily-flustered prosecuting attorney whose Santa-believing young son appears in court to his father's frustration.  No-nonsense Gene Lockhart is the judge who wants to find Kris guilty of something.  However, the judge may be seeking a political office one day and a political hack attending the hearing, his friend William Frawley (Fred Mertz of I Love Lucy fame) says he won't stand a chance if he throws Santa Claus in some lockup.

The gig is up when Payne, who has stirred up as much publicity as he can, has U.S. mail addressed to Santa Claus delivered to the court house... bags and bags and bags and bags of mail.  A frustrated Lockhart declares the case dismissed.

Kris has seen to it that several folks have gotten Christmas presents that they wanted.  I must admit a tear (a single tear, mind you) slid down my face when a doctor, who couldn't afford to buy a badly-needed x-ray machine, found one from Santa Claus at a gift-opening ceremony.

Payne and one of his favorite leading ladies

And what about that delightful little child star of our little opus?  Well, she had once shown Kris a magazine piece featuring a beautiful home and said she would like to live in it with her mother.  After the trial Wood, O'Hara and Payne (the latter two have become a couple) are driving down a street, following Kris Kringle's written directions, and there's that very home with a for sale sign in the lawn.  

Wood yells... stop the car, Uncle Fred, stop the car.  Oh wait, why don't we just show the ending as we tidy this up?

Writer-director George Seaton's good friend, Valentine Davies, wrote a short story called The Big Heart about a man who claimed to be the real Santa Claus and he showed it to Seaton who was very impressed.  Seaton rewrote the story for the screen and showed it to 20th Century Fox boss Darryl F. Zanuck, who was equally impressed.  

Zanuck didn't intend for it to be much more than a little B picture and he combed his own ranks for its stars.  O'Hara and Payne were on his payroll.  Gwenn was thrilled when he read the script, feeling it was the type of role a character actor dreams of playing.  Payne, too, thought it was a well-written story that might have meaning for years to come.  He would come to say that it was his favorite of all the films he made.  Wood's stage mother was also quite happy because it would feature her little girl in a glorious role as a child who doesn't believe it Santa Claus.

O'Hara, however, wasn't so happy.  She had just arrived in Ireland to have a long-awaited reunion with her family.  She got a telegram telling her to return immediately to New York and begin the film.  She said she fumed all the way back.  But when she read the script she thought it was a most beguiling tale and she couldn't wait to begin.  She said it was a very happy working experience for all.  She was happy to working with her good friend Payne again, this the third of their four films together.

The urgency in O'Hara's return was that the movie company was going to be able to actually film the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and Gwenn would be on the featured float.  This was not something anyone could turn down.

In real life 8-year old Wood did believe in Santa Claus but she was on the road to changing her mind.  Meeting Gwenn seemed to postpone the change because she was so crazy about him and believed he was, in fact, Santa Claus.  She was apparently dumbstruck, however, at the wrap party when she encountered Gwenn without his beard or white hair.

She was an extraordinary child actress.  She knew the entire script and would often cue the adult actors who might have forgotten a line in a scene with her.  If that weren't enough, by the time the company left New York for shooting interiors at the studio in California, she was simultaneously appearing as Gene Tierney's daughter in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Zanuck did a most unusual thing... he released the film in June rather than at Christmastime although it's noted the movie was still playing at Christmas... and for many Christmases thereafter.

The acting of the entire ensemble is without a trace of fault.  I suppose a number of people at Fox alone could have played the two lead roles and played them well.  Payne and O'Hara are most enjoyable but they are not showy parts.  Gwenn and Wood had those.  I cannot see this film being as successful without either one of them but particularly him.  Rarely does an actor fit a role as strongly as Gwenn does as Kris Kringle.  By the end, I thought of how foolish I was all those many years of no longer believing in Santa Claus.  O'Hara has the chance to say that famous expression that certainly deserves inclusion in this film:  faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.

Gwenn was a popular winner of the best supporting actor Oscar, edging out the dramatic, psychopath performances of Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death and Robert Ryan in Crossfire.  In addition to Gwenn's win, Oscars went to both Seaton and Davies for their writing.  The film was also nominated for best picture.  Here also was Thelma Ritter's film debut as a scrappy Macy's customer, uncredited though it was.

I may have liked another one or two Christmas films as much as this one but few are as spirited and heart-warming as Miracle and it never wears out its welcome.  There can be little doubt why this is an American Christmas classic.

Not unexpectedly the Library of Congress selected Miracle on 34th Street for preservation in its United States National Film Registry citing its cultural, historical or aesthetic significance. 

If anyone did the math you found this year, 2022, is the 75th anniversary of this fine, fine film.  I am so glad I watched it again.  Happy holidays to all of you.

Here's the famous ending:  

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a guilty pleasure