Ed's Review Dot Com

Warner Brothers Pictures

Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, Reginal Dardiner, S.A. Sakall, Robert Shayne, Una O’Connor, Frank Jenks, Joyce Compton, Dick Elliott

Elizabeth Lane writes a food column for the paper.  In her fictitious life she’s a hard working farm woman, taking care of children, and an excellent wife and cook.  She describes in great detail the life that she really knows nothing about.  In reality her good friend Felix is the one who has all the wonderful recipes.   She’s a complete fraud and lives in an apartment and can’t cook a lick.  But the owner of the newspaper thinks it would be a great idea to invite a sailor who is a war hero to visit Elizabeth on the farm for Christmas and spend a lovely holiday with her and her “husband” enjoying fine food and a lovely country holiday.  Miss Lane is in trouble as she has to keep the truth about her life a secret or her whole career is over, but she has no clue what to do as she’s helpless.   As lies build upon lies, she gets worse and worse in trouble, but to make matters worse, the single Miss Lane falls for the sailor who thinks she’s an “odd” kind of married woman.

This movie was remade in 1992 with Dyan Cannon and Kris Kristofferson, and rumor is that there is going to be another remake next year.  (1945 – 1992 moved it from the newspaper to a tv show.  I wonder what the 2012 version will offer as the job of Ms. Lane.)  This is the original 1945 version.   I really have to say that the original is far superior in some ways.  The charm of the original black and white film makes it a real Christmas classic. The twists and turns Elisabeth has to take to keep the charade going is really funny.   There are many famous actors in this film, and it’s got some very charming performances.