Every winter, the ultra-rich owner of a mansion on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue boards his place up for the season and decamps for a warmer climate, which creates an annual holiday tradition for a traveling hobo (Victor Moore): break in, make himself at home, and spend the winter months in luxury. This time, though, he brings along a down-on-his luck veteran (Don DeFore) and they meet the owner’s runaway daughter (Gale Storm), who conceals her true identity as she falls for the vet. Those are the first few of many complications and deceptions running through this charming farce, which celebrated a Found Family type of Christmas well before that phrase became a buzzword, and without sacrificing its high-low screwball bona fides.
3 Godfathers (1948)
Everett Collection
It takes some gumption to make a Christmas movie almost completely devoid of seasonal imagery: no colored lights (this is a western, set sometime in the 19th century), no snow (it was shot in Death Valley), and no family gatherings—at least not traditionally, because the godfathers of the title are a trio of unrelated outlaws. Instead, the fifth of the 14 collaborations between star John Wayne and director John Ford is a loose retelling of the Three Wise Men story, only here the men wind up accidentally protecting, rather than intentionally visiting, a newborn baby during the Christmas season—as they’re pursued by the law following a bank robbery. Some of that material is a little boilerplate, but once they take charge of the baby, the movie mixes light comedy with a touching depiction of male responsibility and holiday-season selflessness.
Cover-Up (1949)
COVER UP, from left, Dennis O’Keefe, Barbara Britton, 1949Courtesy Everett Collection
