Movie lovers of all ages are invited to attend a special screening of Christmas in Connecticut, Warner Brothers delightful 1945 holiday screwball romantic comedy. This Christmas Classic features Barbara Stanwyck in one of her most beloved comedic roles starring opposite one of Warner Brothers stalwart romantic leading men, Dennis Morgan.
The event will take place on Sunday, Dec. 8 from 1 to 3:30 pm in the Winn Room of the Coronado Public Library. It is free and open to the public.
This hilarious romantic comedy is a charming, lighthearted Christmas Classic suitable for the entire family. After its New York premier in 1945, the film enjoyed an enormously successful nationwide holiday release prior to the first Christmas when peace on earth truly reigned again, following the end of WWII. Dennis Morgan plays a Navy sailor rescued, to great national fanfare, after being near death, adrift at sea in a life raft, who is convalescing at a Naval Hospital. The pompous publisher of the national women’s magazine, “Smart Housekeeping” (played luxuriously by Sydney Greenstreet), sensing a great Christmas cover story, invites the celebrity sailor to be the Christmas guest of his most popular “ideal housewife” feature writer on marriage, family, cooking and food, Elisabeth Lane, and her picture-perfect family, at their Currier and Ives worthy Connecticut farmhouse. The problem? While Elisabeth, played by the inimitable Barbara Stanwyck, is a meticulous researcher and talented writer, unbeknownst to her publisher, she is a complete fraud; she has no husband, no child, no farmhouse, and can’t so much as boil an egg!
Stanwyck and Morgan pull off the romantic end of the romantic comedy charmingly. But it is perhaps the supporting cast, drawn from Warner Brother’s magnificent 1940s stock players company, that transform what could have been a predictable Rom Com storyline into comedy gold. Most noteworthy, perhaps, is a side-splitting performance by Hungarian-American character actor S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, who every classic film fan will recognize as Carl, the pugnacious head waiter at “Rick’s Café Américain” who provided similar memorable moments of comic relief in Casablanca.
ABOUT THE STUDENT CLASSIC FILM SERIES
The CIFF Student Classic Film Series began in 2022 with seed-grant funding provided by the City of Coronado Community Grant. The program is a cinematic cultural literacy program (teaching how to watch, listen and understand films) that introduces middle school and high school students to the cinematic art as it first was practiced during the Golden Age of Hollywood. As 2025 is the 80th anniversary of the Allied Victory in WWII, to honor this momentous anniversary, the theme for 2025 is “The War that Made Our World.” The student series will screen and curate two WWII themed Golden Age film classics each month, February through May. Pre-screening curation will provide history and background to properly “set the scene” for each film. Post-screening discussions will offer public and private high school and middle school students and homeschoolers a unique cinematic experience to learn about the history of WWII. Students will be encouraged to offer their opinions and analysis of eight of the greatest motion pictures about WWII made by Hollywood’s masters of the filmmaker’s craft.
